This week: From Idea to Finished Story Edited by: Annette  
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1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
| Hello readers and writers of short stories, I am Annette and I will be your guest editor for this issue. |
| ASIN: B083RZ37SZ |
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From Idea to Finished Story
Short story writing has many benefits. Even if you are more of a novel length writer or a poet, you should try to write a short story every now and then.
Many poems are short stories in condensed form. Speaking of form: poetry forces the story within into a specific shape. There are rules about rhymes, about syllables, about the actual shape of the text. Short stories don't have those additional requirements.
Novels, no matter if 300 or 3,000 pages long are simply very (very, very) long short stories with extra details. Short story writing can teach an author to get to the point, to trim the fat, to condense wordy paragraphs, and to provide readers with a satisfying ending.
Writing.Com itself offers short story contests that have a hard limit of 2,000 words in length. These contests challenge writers to give it their best effort. Winning is also very lucrative. Who couldn't use an extra 1 million gift points? And who doesn't want to display a fancy exclusive merit badge? Writing.Com gives you a whole month to come up with the best story, get it reviewed by your peers, edited and proofread to perfection.
Site members run a whole host of short story contest that run monthly, weekly, or even daily. You can find them listed on "Writing Contests @ Writing.Com" , but sometimes they are also announced on https://www.writing.com/main/newsfeed.
No matter where you find a contest, you will become a better writer if you give yourself a chance by:
 Reading the rules and prompt and write for it.
Ask your friends for constructive critique.
Edit, revise, rewrite.
Submit and maybe win.
You can and you should also write short stories just for the fun of it. Are you a novelist? Write a short story for one of your characters. Like "A Day in the Life Of" is always a good way to get to know your characters.
No matter what your reason to write: make sure there is an inciting incident, rising tension, a moment of highest tension, declining tension, and a satisfying ending. Please keep endings that leave a reader guessing to a minimum. "I wanted the reader to decide the ending." is NOT what being an author can be about. Unless you're writing mad libs.
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And here is a brand new contest that offers a unique merit badge for entering this week:
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I received the following replies to my last Short Stories newsletter "Earn With Short Stories"
dragonwoman  wrote: Thanks for featuring 'Lookee Lou' It was fun to write!
isokarifrancis  wrote: How do we submit our short stories? For instance, I do Quotes and Words of Wisdom. But I can always provide elucidating short stories. How would we mutually benefit from these?
s wrote: Short stories are where I get most of my sales. I don't do self-publishing at all, but I have sold more than 70 short stories to magazines, anthologies, online sites (they still pay) and even as stand-alones (the old Alban Lake Press, now sadly defunct, did this to a work of mine). I have lists of markets that I check every week or two. I have about a 25% success rate when submitting short stories, which may not seem good, but is apparently quite normal (according to Duotrope). Selling shorts is great. |
| ASIN: 1945043032 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 13.94
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Short Stories: October 21, 2020 Issue [#10420]
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Thank you for all your hard work organizing [Link To Item #1919444] ! Your efforts to support and encourage the WdC erotica/romance community are greatly appreciated and I can think of no better way to thank you than with this exclusive UENG Merit Badge! *^*Bigsmile*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-UENG-1085692_10.gif)
