How To Write A Short Story

I found a great article on WikiHow, explaining How To Write A Short Story. I really like it, and thought I would post the main steps on here. Click through to the article for more details!

1. Read plenty of short stories
   
2. Gather ideas for your story - learn how to brainstorm
   
3. Choose an idea and start with the basics of a short story
   
4. Know your characters
   
5. Limit the breadth of your story - days or even minutes
   
6. Decide who will tell the story
   
7. Start writing
   
8. Come out swinging
   
9. Keep writing
   
10. Let the story "write itself"
    
11. Revise and edit
    
12. Get some second opinions
    
13. Incorporate whatever edits, revisions and suggestions are valid

Tips

• Do research - i.e. if it's set in the 1950's
• Use music to help connect you to emotions and events you want to convey

Guardian Short Story Competition

Are you a budding writer? Do you have a story tucked away that you've never had the nerve to show anyone?

Every year, in August, the Guardian's Weekend magazine publishes a selection of original fictions by the some of the best authors writing today. Last August's fiction special featured Annie Proulx, Julian Barnes, Alice Sebold and Tessa Hadley, among others, and this summer we'll be unveiling another line up of stellar names. But this year, yours could be among them: for the first time, we're inviting readers to submit their stories to our annual summer fiction issue.

We've asked authors William Boyd and Julie Myerson to judge your submissions, and they will be looking for the most original, gripping and well-crafted pieces of writing. Their favourite story will be published in the magazine; the five runners-up will have their stories published on guardian.co.uk/books.

All you need to do is send us a story of no more than 2,000 words by 10 July. It can be on any theme, but it must be previously unpublished and we can only accept one story per entrant.

If you've got a story languishing in a drawer, or you've always wanted to try your hand at writing, but never had the reason – or the discipline – to get started, now's your chance.

Send your story by 10 July to Short Stories, Guardian Weekend, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or short.story@guardian.co.uk. Please include a phone number.


See full article in the Guardian for full terms and conditions.

Still Planning...

Just in case you'd all wondered where I'd got to, I'm still busy planning out ideas for my new story involving little people. I'm now thinking of leaving out the Supernatural elements of the story, and have the only science fiction element of it being that they get shrunk in a top secret shrinking machine built by the government. I have heard that when creating a fictional story, if it's science fiction, then it's best to use only unbelievable thing, make sure everything else in the story conforms to the rules and technology of the world we live in now. That way it becomes more believable by the audience, and they won't just think the whole thing is completely made up. I hope that works anyway!

The basic idea is that the government is working on a top secret project where they intend to shrink human soldiers down to 5 inches tall, and have them work covertly in enemy territory. They would make excellent spies, and would be well trained to get the job done. Brings a whole new idea of warfare if you imagine miniature armies fighting each other. Tiny Soldiers could assassinate a Prime Minister, they could easily infiltrate government buildings and individual homes being so small.


My story will mainly focus on a small group of civilians, who either accidentally get shrunk, or the government uses them as test subjects, and then they escape. I just need to think of a reason why the government would use these people as test subjects, would they be people the government wanted to disappear? Or would they volunteer to be test subjects, assuming it's some medical testing, and not knowing exactly what it is until it's too late? Perhaps they desperately need the money? Especially given the economic climate!

Any help and advice would be gratefully received! :)

Reading Challenges

In stumbling across a bunch of Blogspot blogs, I found Bobbi’s Book Nook. It features lots of book reviews, but also some reading challenges, like the Graphic Novel Challenge and the Short Story Book Challenge. Basically the challenges seem to consist of reading 6 books in 6 months, or whatever amount in whatever time scale they set. It sounds like fun and I could certainly do with the encouragement to do some more reading. I have stacks of novels I keep meaning to read, and a challenge like this might be enough to get me to read them! :)

Happy Reading Everyone! :)

A New Story...

I have the idea of a new story, not really sure of the characters yet, or much of what they're going to do. I've heard it's a good idea to get to know your characters first, and then decide what you're going to do with them. So I better figure out who they are!

Here's the idea so far:

A bit like Supernatural meets The Borrowers. A bunch of people/hunters get magically shrunk to 6 inches tall. They have to find a way to survive, as well as fighting various supernatural enemies at their reduced size. I'm thinking rats possessed by demons/ghosts, small gremlin-like creatures and chupucabras towering over them, but able to chase them through most small openings. And maybe have a government/police organisation trying to find them (a little Land of the Giants influence too!).

I'm not sure whether to have a couple of people shrunk, or a group of them, from all different walks of life. I haven't figured out the characters yet, so I could have any. Also thinking of having a miniature society of people, perhaps people that have been magically shrunk in the past and somehow survived and bred their own hidden society, maybe out in burrows in the countryside. Of course, this society might not be too friendly or helpful, and may be a little territorial.

Any other ideas or inspiration would be greatefully received while I try to plan this out! It's nice to not have to panic with planning this story, as I don't have a deadline nor is it for a challenge like ScriptFrenzy or Nanowrimo. So I can relax with the planning stage and hopefully come up with something good!

Easter Slump - 33 pages down, 67 to go!

I last worked on my Gargoyle script for ScriptFrenzy on 11th April, with a massive 10 page sprint to reach 33 Pages! I was so impressed and pleased with myself, I took the next day off, enjoying Easter, eating a whole army of chocolate eggs, nests, even chocolate custard in a trifle! But now a week later, I realise my day off has lasted much longer than one day!

Now still on my 33 pages, with 12 days to go, giving me a writing target of 5.58 pages a day to write the next 67 pages by April 30th! Higher than the original target (3.33 pages a day), but still doable as I have managed 10 pages in a day! So time to get writing again I think!

ScriptFrenzy - 14 Pages!

After a couple of days stuck on a scene and taking a break (mainly playing with my FortunaFanspace page, a fansite for professional dancer Brian Fortuna - it's 'writing' HTML, so it's kinda writing! lol), I've finally caught back up to 14 pages! I'm still a little behind, but I'm getting back with it now, and should still be able to complete 100 pages by 30th April! Providing I remember not to play with my fansite again, although I could do, if I just make sure I've done my allotted pages for ScriptFrenzy first!

I think I definitely have a problem committing to something once I decide to do it, I really want to do something, until it actually starts, then I really really wanna do anything but that! Why is that? Such a pain, I'll just have to learn to be tough on myself and make sure I do it earlier in the day and don't miss it out!

For anyone on ScriptFrenzy, my username is Green_Raven, you can add me as a friend on there and we can compare word counts! I need something to chase! lol!

Happy Writing Everyone!