August 2015
Let’s talk a bit about...
Writing Short Stories
For those who write them often, give us some advice!
For those who are new to the technique, what was the hardest thing to learn?
As I am neither, I'm not sure what to write about here. I'm not a big 'short story' person. By this, I mean that I don't write them and generally avoid reading them unless they are a part of an ongoing series, usually extra backstory that the author could not work into the overall tale but decided to publish later as a collection.
If I were going to attempt a short story, the first thing I would focus on would be nailing down the main purpose of what I was writing. With so much less space on my virtual page to work with, I would want to make every bit of it count. Am I just trying to write the back round to a particular character I've already worked with in another piece? What instances am I going to cover, what shaped him or her into the person they became? Who did they interact with? What did they hate?
I would like to have an entire time line and know where I was going to end the story before I started, unlike my usual writing style.
Bonus: Who is your favorite short story writer? If you don’t have one, tell us about one you’re going to try and hunt down.
J.R.R. Tolkien- no surprises there. I especially enjoyed "Leaf, by Niggle" and Roverandom.
