 Short Stories: November 20, 2024 Issue [#12847] |
This week: Enter Contests to Improve Your Writing Edited by: Shannon  
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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
Welcome to the Short Stories Newsletter. I am Shannon and I'm your editor this week.
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“A short story…can be held in the mind all in one piece. It’s less like a building than a fiendish device. Every bit of it must be cunningly made and crafted to fit together perfectly and without waste so it can perform its task with absolute precision. That purpose might be to move the reader to tears or wonder, to awaken the conscience, to console, to gladden, or to enlighten. But each short story has one chief purpose, and every sentence, phrase, and word is crafted to achieve that end. The ideal short story is like a knife–strongly made, well balanced, and with an absolute minimum of moving parts.” ~ Michael Swanwick
When I first joined WDC, I spent much time reading other people's work and entering contests. By entering contests, I ensured others read my work while garnering valuable feedback that empowered me to improve my craft. It also thickened my skin and taught me how to take constructive criticism.
I preferred contests with text or photo prompts because they helped me focus my efforts and often gave me story ideas as soon as I read or saw them. Entering short story contests also taught me to write under looming deadlines with word count restrictions.
There are many contests on WDC specifically for short story writers, and I've highlighted a few below. I challenge you to pick one and submit an entry before the end of the year.
But before you begin, here are a few tips and tricks I learned over the years that helped me write contest-winning short stories. Of course, these may not work for everyone. They are just my observations:
 Begin as close to the end as possible. Unlike novels, short stories have a limited number of words to tell your story. We don't need to know what your protagonist ate for breakfast or how much time he spent at the gym this morning (unless the story is about his breakfast being poisoned or how he was assaulted on the elliptical). When writing short stories, we must be judicious about what we include; every word should drive the story forward. Trim the fat until all you have left is meat.
Start with action. Whenever possible, begin in the middle of the action. This hooks the reader, pulling them into the story. And I don't mean every story has to start in the middle of a fistfight or a plane crash. Rather, ensure something happens in the opening paragraph of your story that propels the story forward.
Keep the character count to three or less. We've all read stories with so many characters that we struggled to keep them straight. Don't do this when writing short stories. Through trial and error, I have found that keeping my character count to three or less works best. Additionally, make sure those characters have dissimilar names, preferably names that start with different letters and don't rhyme with each other. For instance, you may want to reconsider two main characters named Don and Dale or Larry and Gary. There are exceptions to this, particularly if you're writing comedy.
Make the readers care about what happens next. If your characters are jerks with no redeeming qualities, and they're the same jerks at the end of the story that they were in the beginning, don't be surprised if no one cares about them. I can't tell you how many books I've stopped reading because every character was unlikable. If readers don't like or relate to at least one of your characters, they won't be invested in your story or care what happens. They may even stop reading.
Keep dialogue tight. It's easy to get carried away when writing dialogue, but short story writers don't have that luxury. Many WDC short story contests have a 2,000-word limit, so every interaction needs to be precise. If dialogue doesn't further the plot or provide some necessary insight into that character, get rid of it.
Short stories are events. Think of the short story as an event - something happens that changes everything and catapults your protagonist out of his/her comfort zone.
Have you won a WDC short story contest? Do you have a short story you'd like to share with the WDC community? Every registered author who shares their ideas and/or creative endeavors relating to or inspired by this week's topic will receive an exclusive trinket. The image used to make this month's trinket was created by yours truly. I will retire this month's limited-edition trinket in January when my next short stories newsletter goes live.
“When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.” ~ Truman Capote
Thank you for reading.
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I hope you enjoy this week's featured selections. Please keep in mind that the official WDC contests are active on a rotating basis, but I wanted to provide links to all of them because they were my favorites to enter when I was new to the site.
Thank you, and have a great week!
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The following is in response to "Rearrange, Rephrase, Revise" :
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Jeff  writes: Thanks for all the plotting techniques! I love learning about different types of narrative structures. 
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s  writes: I don't think about or even know which structure I use when writing a short story. I just get an idea, write in and how long it ends up, it ends up. As a pantser, the only method I personally don't like is the Snowflake. But, no, I could not tell you what method I use. And with close to 100 formal, traditional publication credits in short stories, I guess not worrying about the "how" and just doing the work has worked for me.
Sorry.
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Princess Megan Snow Rose   writes: Some good videos. I will read a story I wrote a year later and edit it. I will change my mind about a character or a storyline. Seeing a story on paper and giving it life. Editing is icing on the cake. This newsletter in informative and helpful. I enjoyed reading this.
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BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes: Always a story to write.
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Damon Nomad  writes: Fantastic coverage of story structure models; several I have not come across before. For a plotter such as myself, structual models are particularly useful. Trying different ones is very helpful.
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sindbad  writes: Hi Shannon. This is a nice and interesting Newsletter, and after going through I felt the need to write as per the methods and structures that are necessary to come up with a plausible story. This is an educative article and newsletter. Thanks for the posting..sindbad
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Pumpkin Spice Sox  writes: I think I tend towards the snowflake method but more with outlines than synopses.
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dogpack saving 4premium  writes: I write the ideas and then rewrite the story, but sometimes the first draft is the best according to reviews I've received. Editing is worthwhile for mechanics but sometimes it can make a story worse rather than better. Of course this depends on the view point of the reader. One size doesn't fit all which is why people read many of the similar stories written over and over again because they follow a particular format. Thank you for the compact yet treasure of knowledge for the useful approaches to building a story.
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Tiggy  writes: I love reviewing and I think I'm quite good at spotting other writers' errors, but I'm hopeless at noticing my own. I've found that it helps to change the font size or read my stories on a different device or a different format (for example, when I've written it in Word, post it on WdC and then read it on my phone) so the words appear in different places on the line and on the page. For some reason, typos are easier to spot that way.
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Lilli 🧿 ☕  writes: This newsletter is a keeper for all the great info! Gotta print it and add it to my writer's notebook! Thank you!
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KingsSideCastle writes: Wow I haven't heard of a lot of these structures before. The Classic, Hero's Journey and Three act structure I recognize but the rest are all new to me. The Snowflake Method seems like a similar approach to how I usually build my stories out. I should try adapt and use it in my writing in the future.
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