Stories That Create The Desire to Write

As you may have noticed on the sidebar of my blog, I have now committed to start posting every Monday. I wanted to do this so I won't procrastinate on writing blog posts, and also maybe it'll force me to write blog posts that I normally wouldn't write, stuff that turns out to be blatherings squeezed out on short notice. I also wanted to have a goal this year of talking more about my personal writing, which is something I normally shy away from on the blog most of the time. I thought that probably if I was scrambling for things to post about, it'd be more likely I'd fall back on talking about my writing (because that's basically what people do on writing blogs).

The other day I saw Les Miserables for the first time. It was amazing, and I'm fairly certain I was on the verge of tears for almost the entire movie. I love things like that, whether it be books or movies or any form of art, that evoke such emotion from you, and make such an impact on your emotions or your mind. I love how much story, no matter what form it's presented in, can affect a person.

When I feel affected by a story (like Les Mis), it inspires to affect other people with the stories I have to tell. @CostelloShields summed it up perfectly on twitter:

"I want to write things that matter. I want to write things that people will love."

That's exactly what I want to do with my writing, and brilliant stories like Les Mis, or The Fault in Our Stars, or Okay for Now, or Life of Pi, or even the Lizzie Bennet Diaries make me want to do create stories that matter even more. I want to write something that will affect others in the way all these other stories have affected me.

I love it when I come home from a movie or when I finish reading a book, and the first thing I want to do is write.

What kinds of things create a desire to write in you?

How to Write A Short Story

I haven't written a ton of short stories, but I've written more than a few. One of my short stories was published in a teen writers' magazine (What If? Magazine) and another short story of mine won 3rd place in a local short story contest.

Short stories are very, very useful. They are perfect for entering contests or submitting to magazines, or posting on sites like Figment.com or TeenInk. They also help you with your writing. I think it's always good to write stuff that might be more of a challenge. It helps you grow in your writing. Also, if you win a contest or get into a magazine, you build up your "writing resume" if you will. So, if you don't think so already, I'll just tell you: get on with writing those short stories!

However... short stories are also a huge pain. I'm sure most writers like sticking to writing their novels, where they have all the time in the world to work on characters, plot, etc. I think that's one big reason why short stories are such a pain to write: you have limited time.

Over the years, through writing and reading some good short stories, I've learned a bit about writing them and I'm here to help you, with my limited expertise!!

Step #1: Read short stories.

There are some really excellent short stories out there. Actually, this one teen writers magazine I know of, The Claremont Review  has some really awesome short stories. (Anyone 13-19 can submit stories, and I found out recently that it does accept international submissions... the website is here). I'm sure if you search around in your area you can find a Writer's Guild or organization that makes short story collections. Please, please look for good short stories though. You'll know them when you read them.

Step #2: The idea.

I think one of the most difficult parts about writing a short story is the idea. How can you think of an idea that's so contained, that's so limited? Well, I've found there's a few good ways to do it.

1. Use whims of ideas

You know how when you get an idea just randomly like... I don't know... "it would be cool to write a story about the relationship between a brother and a sister". Then you think of how you could make that idea into an entire book. Well, while you're coming up with all these whims of ideas, sift through them and ask yourself: could I make this into a short story instead?

2. Use a scene from your novel

Some scenes in novels can work well just on their own as a short story, with a bit of tweaking. Go through your novel and try to think what scenes might work well as a short story.

3. Think of a topic or message you want to focus on

For our lame provincial English exam, we have to do a "writing task" for the final part. Usually I do a short story. But the exam always has a theme, and we have to do our writing task on that theme. The theme for one of my exams was "Choices" another, "Responsibility". I find sometimes it's easier to think of an idea when you have to stick to a certain topic.



Step #3: The story

I watched some video once on short story-writing advice. One thing they said I didn't agree with, and that was that it's OK to use "telling" in short stories. I would say don't do that, because you could end up writing a really terrible short story if you don't do it right. Also, I think it shows you're a better writer when you avoid "telling".

I think some people (uh, okay, I think I) have trouble writing short stories because you don't have much time or space to tell your story. If you keep in mind a few simple things, it's much easier to write your story.

You don't have to have more than one problem

You know how in a story, you're supposed to have Hurdle #1 for your characters, then Hurdle #2, #3, to infinity? Well, in a short story you can't have that. There is one hurdle. However, this doesn't mean your short story has to be lame and boring because the character only tries once and the hurdle has been jumped.

In a short story you can focus a lot more on that single hurdle

Sure, you only have one problem. But go in depth with it. You don't have to spend a lot of time on plot development or a whole lot of character or relationship development like you do in novels, so you can focus more on one problem. Get your short story characters down and dirty with that one problem. Show how the problem affects different characters, maybe. There's a lot more that you can do with only one hurdle than you think. But don't just do a sort of fable thing (like that story, uh, Tortoise and the Hare or something?) where it's Problem-Character Overcomes Problem-Character Learns Lesson. Go deeper.

Step #4: The end



And when you're done, you can dance!
oh wait... there's editing too...



Um... so I don't think I'm really qualified to talk about endings. I'm really quite terrible at them. I guess I would say... don't finish the story too late. Sometimes I think writers tend to go on with their story when it isn't necessary because everything is already been resolved. Oh, that's another thing...

You don't have to resolve everything

Just like a normal novel, not everything has to be resolved. I would say especially in short stories. When you're focusing on one problem or one message, you just have to choose what exactly you want to be resolved about that problem.

Like I said, I'm not really an expert on short stories but I thought I'd share what I've learned... feel free to share your own advice/opinions!

In your experience, what have you learned about writing short stories?

The Dilemma of Naming Documents When Your WIP Lacks A Title

I really, really suck at coming up with titles for my stories. Which is a problem when it comes to naming documents. I usually end up being too lazy to come up with good document names, so they're left with names that aren't helpful in the least in telling me what the document actually contains.

Let's take a look at the statistics, shall we? (Oh and just a  note, I don't actually have that many completed drafts of stuff... most of the documents are filled with a few paragraphs or sentences of half-baked ideas).

Number of documents that are named with a really terrible summary of the story e.g. "Cranberry Story": 18

Number of documents named with the first line of story e.g. "I wake up to tent fabric": 9

Number of documents named after a random character (or main character) in the story e.g. "Dudley": 18

Number of documents named with a summary that actually effectively summarizes: 1

Number of documents named with names that give no information whatsoever e.g. "Life" or "rename later" (and "rename later"s document name still hasn't changed since 2009): 6

Number of documents named with something that resembles an actual title: 12

And that's just one folder. I haven't even gotten to my Short Stories folder yet...



My wonderfully named documents in my short story file...


I am so good at naming documents, aren't I? I mean, obviously I know exactly what the documents "short story" and "random short piece" are. I also evidently get kind of crazy after naming multiple drafts of something...

How do you go about naming your documents when you don't have a title yet? How do you come up with titles for your WIPs?

In other news... I finished the first draft of my current WIP yesterday!!

How People Think

This afternoon, as I was getting my haircut a chair over from me a woman was getting her hair dyed and cut. And, as happens so often, she was talking (to her hairdresser; not to me) and I was listening. (Listening! Not eavesdropping *ahem*, well.) I listened to her talk about various things like buying a house, or going out for dinner tonight and just by listening to a few random snippets of conversation I learned quite about this woman. For one, that she does or has lived in a condo in Toronto and is now looking for a house in Winnipeg. I also learned that she is a widow, and has kids that are grown and have kids of their own.

I was thinking about this -the interesting things you can learn about a stranger just by listening, and people's stories - when all of a sudden....

Flashback!

To... last night, me, my brother, my sister, my mom and my dad all standing (or lying down or sitting) around my parent's room and chatting at 10:30 PM about various things. Well, at first my mother and father were arguing, basically about who was right or who was wrong and it was all very amusing. Then it became even more amusing when my dad started reminiscing about the days when they were first married and they (my mom and dad) were working out their relationship, and how to deal with things, and Dad said that it helped him extremely to think of their relationship in terms of graphs.

Just by that, you can probably get a fairly decent picture of my dad in all his glorious nerdiness (today he and my cousin spent the day testing their cameras through various nerdy setups). Then he went on to say how he often thinks of things in terms of math, or science, and it helps him understand things.

This, I thought, was a very interesting concept: That different people think in terms of different things, favouring their interests.

I also wondered: what do I think in terms of?

And, in a lot of instances, I think in terms of... stories. :) Yup. Or really, what if questions that turn into stories. For example, once when I took the recycling out to the curb on a cold day in winter I noted that cold air really clears your head.

All of a sudden my brain was saying: what if someone really loved that feeling of being clear-headed? And they knew they could get it from the cold? And they were slightly crazy? And so they loved that feeling so much that they froze themselves to death....

My family thought I was, um, crazy.

What do you think in terms of? Math? Science? Stories?