Pushing yourself as a short story writer

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gettingby

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How do you push yourself to grow as a writer when it comes to short stories? I want to get better, and I think that means trying new things. Lately, I have been trying to turn crazy-could-never-happen ideas in the plausible stories. I don't know if it always works, but it does push me.

I also have been reading every journal I can get my hands on, hoping that I will pick up something from the pros.

How do you guys push yourself to become better at short stories?
 

archerjoe

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Lately, I have been trying to turn crazy-could-never-happen ideas in the plausible stories.

Me, too. I saw the "Write It Wrong" contest and gave it a go: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241701

In the local writers group I'm in, we pick a new topic every month. That keeps it varied and I known I've gotten better based on feedback from that group as well as the excellent feedback you can get on this forum.
 

Silver-Midnight

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I'm guessing just trying something you think is difficult. For example, if you think writing historical fiction is difficult, then maybe you could write something taking place in time that a) weren't born in, b) weren't raised in, or c) know very little to nothing about, but still interests you.

The same idea can be applied to mysteries, romances, etc.

Just an idea.
 

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How do you push yourself to grow as a writer when it comes to short stories? I want to get better, and I think that means trying new things. Lately, I have been trying to turn crazy-could-never-happen ideas in the plausible stories. I don't know if it always works, but it does push me.

I also have been reading every journal I can get my hands on, hoping that I will pick up something from the pros.

How do you guys push yourself to become better at short stories?

You write them.

Seriously, that's the secret. You just continue to write them. Sit down at night with a one hour writing period and challenge yourself to write a story in that time. Go to a journal or site that offers prompts to get your topic. And then, just write.
 

alimay

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You write them.

That was pretty much what I was going to say. Write and complete as many stories as you can. Accept that some of them may be boring and total crap, learn from them and move on. Keep them in case an opportunity to cannibalise or rewrite comes up later.

Always be open to new ideas. Work on your prose and description. Oh, and keep a writing journal. Also worth working on is the ability to step back and look at a story to see what works, what doesn't and how it could be improved. Sometimes this is easier to do with other people's stories than your own.

Aim to write and aim to improve, and you should be moving in the right direction.

Ali
 

RobJ

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How do you push yourself to grow as a writer when it comes to short stories? I want to get better, and I think that means trying new things.
Not necessarily trying new things, though that is a possibility, but it could mean doing the same things better. Have you thought about what the weaknesses are with your writing, which areas offer the most potential for improvement, what techniques you might need to develop or strengthen? What are your goals? Where have you been published to date? Where are you aiming to get published in the future? Do you know who your target audience is? Are you familiar with writers in your target market whose success you'd like to emulate, and if so, what's current and how are their stories better than yours? Having a sense of what you're aiming for may help you to evaluate where and how your writing needs to develop, bringing you closer to writing the stories you want to write, and your potential readers want to read.
 

Katrina S. Forest

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You write them.

Seriously, that's the secret. You just continue to write them. Sit down at night with a one hour writing period and challenge yourself to write a story in that time. Go to a journal or site that offers prompts to get your topic. And then, just write.

A full short story in an hour? Dang, I couldn't do that even if it was flash fiction. I've become more of a planner than a pantser lately, though, so that probably has a lot to do with it.

Ditto what everyone else has said. You read good short stories and you practice writing them. If you have opportunity, you can look into attending a short story workshop. Also, if you can get a writing partner who's also trying to improve, you can push each other to keep up your writing quota.

Best of luck!
 

Silver-Midnight

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You write them.

Seriously, that's the secret. You just continue to write them. Sit down at night with a one hour writing period and challenge yourself to write a story in that time. Go to a journal or site that offers prompts to get your topic. And then, just write.

Do you have any suggestions for Writing Prompts because I found a few good sites but nothing that has a lot of I guess interesting prompts?
 

Dechef

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Yeah, it probably boils down to just continuing to write them. What might also help though is writing with someone else, can give you kind of a jump start on your own writing, or at least, last I did that it seemed to help a good bit.
 

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jaksen

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A full short story in an hour? Dang, I couldn't do that even if it was flash fiction. I've become more of a planner than a pantser lately, though, so that probably has a lot to do with it.

I just write, no planning, and I just wrote a story in the last hour, from 10:15 to 11:13 AM today. I had an idea for a short sci-fi and wrote 1,300 words in that time period. I write it as a mess first, then went back and culled the unnecessary words, added a phrase here and there and it was done.

Now, to sell the thing ...
 

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Write, write, write. Hello, boys. Didja' miss me?

Seriously, as others have said, the way to learn any form is to write that form. The more you do it, like anything else, the better you become at it (well, maybe excepting suicide or killing zombies - people always seem to get dumber the more zombies they kill).
 

WordCount

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Ditto on what everybody else is saying. There's no magical formula (I know, I wish there was, too) but as an English teacher of mine used to say--she was also a short story writer--if it was easy, everyone would do it.
 

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I say do half and half-because worrying about these prompts can drive you crazy!
 

jaksen

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I think planning kills a lot of ideas, honestly. A person is putting time, energy and brain power into planning. He or she is thinking with their analytical mind: plot, character, description, story arc (I have no idea what a story arc is, btw). How do I fit this in here, and how do I get my character from his house to the barn to the orchard to the whatever...

Planning is analytical; you are organizing things that you want to write about.

Writing is creative, free-flow, stream-of-consciousness; this happens and then that happens and it's like life. It happens.

Anyhow, this is just a suggestion - or a challenge to the planners among us. Try writing one story, or one page, with no notes, no outline, no plan.
 

WordCount

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I think planning kills a lot of ideas, honestly. A person is putting time, energy and brain power into planning. He or she is thinking with their analytical mind: plot, character, description, story arc (I have no idea what a story arc is, btw). How do I fit this in here, and how do I get my character from his house to the barn to the orchard to the whatever...

Planning is analytical; you are organizing things that you want to write about.

Writing is creative, free-flow, stream-of-consciousness; this happens and then that happens and it's like life. It happens.

Anyhow, this is just a suggestion - or a challenge to the planners among us. Try writing one story, or one page, with no notes, no outline, no plan.

It all depends on necessity. I started writing mystery about a month ago. What I got I was decently pleased with, but I noticed there were plot holes, and there were missing details. I think in some cases (like mystery) I need an outline. I also write sci-fi and fantasy. SF/F=no outline. I just roll with it.

But I'm also not a hardcore outliner anyway (mostly, it's just writing it down so I don't forget. It's easier to write the character names down, and keep it at your side than to have to keep scrolling up and down through the manuscript. Also, I write the murderer's motivation, the theme, and who gets murdered. I don't say where I start or where I stop. I just keep tiny things in order.)

Also, zombie stories=equal no outline. The MC's just going to get eaten anyway. :D
 

RobJ

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I think planning kills a lot of ideas, honestly. A person is putting time, energy and brain power into planning. He or she is thinking with their analytical mind: plot, character, description, story arc (I have no idea what a story arc is, btw). How do I fit this in here, and how do I get my character from his house to the barn to the orchard to the whatever...

Planning is analytical; you are organizing things that you want to write about.

Writing is creative, free-flow, stream-of-consciousness; this happens and then that happens and it's like life. It happens.

Anyhow, this is just a suggestion - or a challenge to the planners among us. Try writing one story, or one page, with no notes, no outline, no plan.
I would have to disagree. Planning is creative too and is where some people generate and capture ideas, not kill them.
 

Mad Rabbits

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This thread is enlightening to me, because it has made me realise, I don't like to push myself as a writer at all.

I guess I've got a really expedient attitude. Writing is one thing I fit into a week that also includes full time work and a bunch of other activities. So when I'm writing I like to feel I have a "sure bet" for an idea that I can successfully get to work as a story. I think this is why I do so much planning in my head. I don't start writing until I have that thing I feel is a "sure bet."

And I don't really like experimentation and prompts and exercises, because I feel like those lead to wasting time and generating writing that doesn't go anywhere and doesn't turn into a "sure thing." Although in many cases I bet that isn't true.

And I absolutely HATE spending time on a story that I couldn't get to work, in the end.

This is probably a crap attitude to have! Economising and creativity probably don't mix. But my whole attitude to my life and everything I do is just that, an economising one.

Might try some exercises eh lol
 

FOTSGreg

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My current (and hopefully long-enough lasting to be my last) day job is as a technical writer preparing documents detailing the step-by-step process of assembling a dizzying array of items. The work involves photographing the individual steps of Tge pricess, talking with the assemblers to learn how the process comes together, and then going back to my desk and attempting to lay all that information out in a manner such that anyone else could build the individual items. Pretty detailed and intricate work.

But that process frees up my subconscious to work on fiction, I think. It gets me thinking about things already in stories and things that could be added to them.

A writer never really stops spending time on a story that isn't finished (and sometimes even stories that are finished). You may not be consciously thinking about a story, but your subconscious is working on it in the back of your mind. This is one reason why writers need to play, to goof off, and to relax. It's why we're such a weird bunch on FB and Twitter and why our interests seem so broad and far-reaching. Our subconscious minds are working on our stories when we're doing anything other than writing fiction.
 

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My current (and hopefully long-enough lasting to be my last) day job is as a technical writer preparing documents detailing the step-by-step process of assembling a dizzying array of items. The work involves photographing the individual steps of Tge pricess, talking with the assemblers to learn how the process comes together, and then going back to my desk and attempting to lay all that information out in a manner such that anyone else could build the individual items. Pretty detailed and intricate work.

But that process frees up my subconscious to work on fiction, I think. It gets me thinking about things already in stories and things that could be added to them.

A writer never really stops spending time on a story that isn't finished (and sometimes even stories that are finished). You may not be consciously thinking about a story, but your subconscious is working on it in the back of your mind. This is one reason why writers need to play, to goof off, and to relax. It's why we're such a weird bunch on FB and Twitter and why our interests seem so broad and far-reaching. Our subconscious minds are working on our stories when we're doing anything other than writing fiction.


*pulls a novel out of the back of his head. "Ah! I knew I'd finish it one day!"

All jokes aside, this is something I can rally behind. An hour ago I was playing Monopoly, and I came up with a opening line for my newest story (the particular story has a beginning I've rewrote twice.)

I wrote it down when I got home, and realized that it was the best one yet. Yes, I was going through the strife of losing all my money in Monopoly, but it gave me my opening line. Which leads me to believe that your always *thinking* about your story--whether you know it or not.
 

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Well in my opinion the short story form is the start of the craft. Without it you can't get a novel done in the first try.
 

FOTSGreg

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Names, actually, I think that short story writing is its own craft. Short stories and novels are light years apart in form, but short stories can really help a writer figure out how to begin to craft a novel. However, novel writing is a much longer-term time investment and the form is vastly different. The novel is not, necessarily, simply a series if short stories pasted together (though it can be). Short stories dispense with world-building, deep characterization, and a host of other things seen in novels.
 

WordCount

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Names: What he said. It's a little hard to compare the two. They both have a unique form and several aspects about them are different. I personally prefer writing short stories because of a)time investment b)form and c)lack of sub-plots. Of the three, the real deal-breaker is the time element. As someone who has difficulty committing to a story all the way to the end, I find it much easier to write a 3.5K short than a 70K novel. It's all opinion, of course, and I understand why some prefer writing novels.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Well in my opinion the short story form is the start of the craft. Without it you can't get a novel done in the first try.

Just the opposite for most writers. If you really want to write a novel, it's best to forget short stories and just write the novel. Some writers can do both well, but most simply can't, and doing one can drastically harm trying to do the other.

The only reason to write short stories is because you love reading and writing short stories. Writing short stories hoping it will help you write a novel is a bad idea all the way around.
 
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