 Short Stories: June 21, 2017 Issue [#8352] |
  Short Stories
This week: Repurposing Structure and Form Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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Repurposing Structure and Form
How can we benefit from limiting factors on our writing? |
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I was at a wedding this past week where I got the opportunity to catch up with another writer friend of mine, a poet, in the wave of party-socializing, and as inevitably seems to happen we got to talking about craft. He mentioned that he was really struggling with a manuscript until he made the specific decision to use sonnets as a structure.
"So having that added limitation frees you up to think about everything else, doesn't it?" I asked him.
"Yes, exactly! I never really thought of myself as a sonnet writer, but it turns out that when I don't have to think about the form of something, it lets me focus on other things instead of having to think about the structure."
***
As I usually do after a nice conversation about craft, I thought about ways to implement this kind of thinking into my own process. I'm currently out on query with my first novel, so I'm working on other side projects while I wait (and wait, and wait  ) and trying to teach myself to get back to work on short fiction, since I seem to have... accidentally broken that skill of mine over time.
So I'm looking at ways that I can make the process shorter for myself. Sure, that's easier said than done, but I think it can definitely be applied to short stories! While there might not be something quite so simple or eloquent as solutions go, there's always the old standard of writing to a prompt, for example. Spending some time refining some stories around the three-act structure might also be a good use of my time. Writing stories that are just-for-me, using existing characters so that I don't have to think too hard about characterization can free me up to think more about other plot elements for my stories.
What I want to do is worry less about structure for a moment, so that I can spend that energy on things that aren't limited by the form of the story itself. Easy, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.
What are some of the ways you've used to make writing short stories easier for you? I'd love to hear what you've done to streamline your writing process!
Until next time,
Jay |
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Feedback from "Story Components--or Just Details?"
Quick-Quill  writes:
Here is a version of your story. Well, sort of. It was my first attempt at scifi.
Thank you for sending me this! I really enjoyed this story!
dragonwoman writes:
Thanks for including my flash in the newsletter. Also I got some real help from it as well.
You're most welcome! Thank you for writing something I really enjoyed reading!
QUestions? Comments? I'd be only too happy to hear from you! |
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