Writing short stories, fiction and essays isn’t easy – in fact, the relative brevity of these pieces can make them even more challenging to create. Inside you’ll learn the best techniques for doing it well, and using those pieces as a springboard for lengthier works.
In this episode of the Writer’s Digest Podcast, Gabriela Pereira talks with Windy Lynn Harris about writing and publishing short stories, personal essays and nonfiction articles.
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 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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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 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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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.