Short Training for Your Long Game: How Writing Short Stories Can Help You Hone Your Novel-Writing Skills
Even if you’re focused on writing a novel, writing short stories can be a wonderful creativity tool to help you strengthen elements of your fiction, experiment with characters and simply stay loose.
How to Create a Protagonist Who is Very Different From You
How does a writer create a character unlike themselves and give it a living, breathing personality? I’ll walk through these six steps that worked for me--and perhaps they’ll work for you.
Submitting Your Short Fiction and Poetry: 5 FAQs from a Magazine Editor
For writers of short form literature, submitting your work can mean a variety of positive things. Here are important questions (and answers) you need to know about the process.
4 Short Lessons on the Subject of Short Stories
What do short fiction editors really look for? What's the secret to great flash fiction? Are anthologies the most overlooked markets around? The answers may just jump-start your career.
How to Write From the Opposite Gender’s Point Of View
Every fiction writer has to write across gender lines. I should know. I’m a fantasy / science fiction writer, and though my stories are populated with vampires, robots, and space squids, there tend to be more than a few humans in the mix. Many of those humans end up being women....
10 Ways To Hook Your Reader (and Reel Them in for Good)
When I wanted to write an essay about my difficult relationship with my brother I had to figure out a way to make it interesting to other people so I turned to these 10 elements to keep the story rolling.
The 5 Biggest Fiction Writing Mistakes (& How to Fix Them)
Start your revision by addressing these, and you'll immediately change your story for the better.
What Every Writer Needs to Know about Keeping a Personal Diary
Put aside any thought of a little pink diary with Hello Kitty on the cover, secured by a lock that can be jimmied with a toothpick. I’m here to talk about why keeping diary may hold the key to achieving a meaningful adult life. It’s a realization I came to not...
5 Reasons You Should Pitch Your Writing to Smaller Markets
Small-circulation publications are often overlooked, but they offer big perks to writers who are willing to reach out.
How to Write a Reader-Friendly Essay
Powerful, surprising, and fascinating personal essays are also “reader-friendly essays” that keep the reader squarely in focus. So how do you go about writing one? In this excerpt from Crafting the Personal Essay, author Dinty W. Moore shares a variety of methods for crafting an essay that keeps the reader’s desires...
How (& Where) to Get a Short Story Published
Fiction publishing creds are a great way to build your bio and propel your career. Here’s how—and where—to get them.
How to Submit Short Stories
The most important thing when when understanding how to publish short stories is to follow the publisher's writing guidelines carefully. Here are some general rules.
How to Resurrect a Stalled Manuscript
Is your manuscript stuck? Take a break from completing your fiction project and diagnose it. Here's how to take your manuscript into its next phase: completion.
Crafting Novels & Short Stories Exclusive
Download a free PDF with interviews with novelists like Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and more. Find out more ways to make your fiction stand out with Crafting Novels & Stories by the Editors of Writer’s Digest. You might also like:No Related PostsYou might also like:No Related Posts
Crafting Novels & Short Stories
Crafting Novels & Short Stories by The Editors of Writer’s Digest Books Writer’s Digest Books, 2011 ISBN-13: 978-1-59963-571-2 ISBN-10: 1-59963-571-2 $19.99 paperback, 368 pages Buy the Book at WritersDigestShop.com! Online Exclusive Download interviews with fiction masters like Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and more. About the Book Learn...
3 Tips for Consistent Tone
If you find yourself having a difficult time sustaining one tone over a long work, try these three tricks.
How to Bring Your Voice to Life in Personal Essays
It’s not what happens to us in our lives that makes us into writers; it’s what we make out of what happens to us. It’s our distinctive point of view.
Literary Journal Submissions 101
To submit your latest short story, essay or poem, you’ll need a cover letter—which is much different from a query. Use these tips from inside a creative writing program to help your letter make the grade.
How to Take Your Short Stories to the Next Level
Are you writing a short story? The first short story I ever wrote was in the 6th grade. It was about a fictitious solar system of salad toppings. No joke. I remember pacing around the house, dictating ideas, plot and dialogue into my mom's hand-held tape recorder and, eventually, piecing it...
How to Broaden Your Short Story’s Scope
Most short stories illumine a single dark corner, narrowly circumscribed. They follow the time-revered rule: Limit your short story to a specific time, place, event, interaction or character’s evolution. But the short story can be a more versatile genre than your high school English teacher sermonized. If we stick to too...
Selling Short Story Short: An Interview with ZZ Packer
ZZ Packer is the author of the short-story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a PEN/Faulkner finalist that was selected for the “Today” show book club by John Updike. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Story, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story and The Best American Short Stories, and have been read on...
How to Craft Compelling Characters
To make characters seem real, you need to tap into what drives them. Use this foolproof method to bring the emotion of your story to life.
by David Corbett
by David Corbett
10 Ways to Start Your Story Better
A good opening line is a powerful thing: It can grab an editor’s attention, set the tone for the rest of the piece, and make sure readers stay through The End. Here are 10 ways to steer your story toward success.
3 Secrets to Great Storytelling
If you think you’ve heard all you need to know about what drives a plot, think again. Here’s the real stuff the best stories are made of.
by Steven James
by Steven James