Excess Baggage: Turning Lurking Themes into Short Stories

I’d just finished writing the first draft of yet another novel that seemed to have wandered off in several directions when I made an important discovery. I was trying to work out (in retrospect) what my theme was, and so got out my old creative writing coursework books (this was pre-Google).

As I checked through my manuscript for any inkling of the theme, I realised what I’d done: I tried to fit every single thing I wanted to say about everything (except for the stuff I’d written about in a previous novel) into this one book. And because I hadn’t planned on this particular book being very long or meaty, it really suffered from the lack of focus.

I opened a sticky, peeling binder and found a yellowed sheet of paper with some old notes that jumped out at me:

Determine your theme for your story – one theme per story [double underlined]. New theme, new story. (Complementary subthemes are okay.)

Protagonist is “pro”-theme vs “anti” Antagonist.

Every additional (unrelated) theme you throw into the mix dilutes the power of that first theme - the one that made you want to write the story in the first place.

I listed all those extra themes I’d found in my novel and realised I was looking at a list of potential stories. Some of these themes that meant so much to me were strong enough to explore in future novels, but many of them were narrow and specific: ideal for short stories.

What about you? Have you considered writing a list of themes that speak to you and deliberately writing one story to a theme? Or do your themes tend to hijack your writing?


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Elsa Neal is currently on maternity leave, but is volunteering (mostly one-handed) behind the scenes at Blood-Red Pencil. Her three-year-old "edited" this post (thank goodness for back-ups). She writes fiction as Elle Carter Neal and is based in Melbourne, Australia. Browse through the resources for writers available at her website or follow her writing insights at her Fictional Life Blog.

Break Writer's Block with Flash Fiction

Flash fiction can be even better than journaling for working through writer’s block. Creativity and imagination require an open mind ready to receive new ideas and play with them. Many of our feelings and reactions to a situation (even a fictional one) can shut this valve off, often when we most need a creative response.

Sometimes the very reason we experience a block is due to an ingrained and conditioned aversion to digging too deeply into something we don’t understand. You may be writing well when suddenly a character confronts you with a behaviour you don’t want to write about. Perhaps it’s your own behaviour, but it may be that of someone close to you, or someone who has hurt you. Flash fiction is an ideal vehicle for exploring your feelings about behaviours that you were told were acceptable but are not, or vice versa.

Let your characters explore subjects for you. Prejudice, insecurity, fear, misconception and misunderstanding, rules and religious laws, jealousy, resentment, disappointment, frustration, boredom, disillusionment – any of these can cause paralysing block if we let them control us. Why not let a character control the situation instead? You can try different responses, personalities, and histories for the characters and see if it changes the scene in any way. It also gives you empathy for all of the people involved, instead of just a single reaction or a list of feelings.

The funny thing about creativity is that it responds to a challenge. Present it with a preconceived idea fully accepted as truth and it will nudge at you until you explore the idea further.

Another reason fiction-as-self-analysis works so well is that it distances you from your problem; your resentment or other negative emotions that can cloud your view of the situation are removed. Many people find it difficult to assess themselves fairly. We tend to either put a better spin on our actions, or make ourselves out to be worse than we really are.

What can your character do, or ask someone else to do, that will help to ease the situation? Is your character showing you that you need to change your attitude to a situation or to somebody you interact with regularly? Your characters might be stronger than you are, but when you see that strength portrayed on the page you can realise the steps you need to take to empower yourself.

Flash fiction is therapy in a paragraph. Spill your guts.

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Elsa Neal is currently on maternity leave, but is volunteering (mostly one-handed) behind the scenes at Blood-Red Pencil. She writes fiction as Elle Carter Neal and is based in Melbourne, Australia. Browse through the resources for writers available at her website or follow her writing insights at her Fictional Life Blog.

The Short Story - A Gift or a Chore?

Some people plan to write short stories. Some people also plan out their short stories, much like they plan out a novel, thinking about characters, plot, setting, etc, before they ever put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.

I am not one of those people.

With only a few exceptions, my short stories have been gifts from my muse that have come almost fully formed from word-one to The End. Some novelists are similarly gifted. Alas, I am not one of them. Novels take much more advance planning and thought.

The first short story I had published in a major magazine was titled A String of Pearls, and my muse woke me up one night with the story. I stayed up for several hours writing it all in longhand - have I mentioned my writing career started when dinosaurs roamed the earth? This was also when a bunch of little kids roamed my house, so it was several days before I could get back to the story and see if what I wrote in the middle of the night made any sense.

It did. So I typed it and sent it to Lady's Circle magazine. They published it, and I was thrilled. Now, these many years later, I reworked the story a bit - we do learn and mature as writers after all - and published it electronically. It has a new title, Making it Home, but the essence of the story remains the same.

The three stories in my collection, The Wisdom of Ages, published by Books We Love Publishing, were also gifts that came in one great creative surge - not at the same time, mind you - but they needed very little tweaking after that first effort. One of the stories, Maybe Someday, won the Page Edwards Short Story Award a few years ago, and that is one I am particularly proud of. That story came to me when I saw an old black man sitting under a mimosa tree watching traffic pass on a country highway in Texas. I wondered what he thought about as he watched the cars pass, and my muse provided the answer.

One of the few short stories I've written that did not come from my muse is The Visitor. As part of a writing class I was taking, we were asked to adapt a fairy tale or nursery rhyme into a new story. I decided to play around with "Goldilocks and The Three Bears" and came up with a story about a family who is camping in the Rockies and has an unusual visitor, and, no, it is not a bear.

By far, that story was the hardest to write and took a lot more time. It also took a lot of editing. Not that I didn't do a bit of editing here and there with the other stories, but none of them needed as much work as The Visitor.

My friend, Jory Sherman, a renowned novelist and poet, has said that we are all connected to a large creative spirit that feeds us all when we open ourselves up. That creative spirit feeds those writers who can write an entire book with very little editing needed, and I am sure it is where my short stories came from.

What about you? Have you had these magical moments of creative lava just flowing and flowing? Do you wait for those moments, or do you keep on writing every day whether it is lava or just a bit of ash?

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  Maryann Miller is a novelist, editor and sometimes a short story writer. To check out her editing rates visit her website.  When not working, Maryann likes to take her dog for a walk and work outside on her little ranch in East Texas.

The Long and Short of It – Stories, That Is

As a writer and editor of novels, I found May’s theme to be challenging. Even after completing a Writer’s Digest course in short-story writing twenty-five-plus years ago, I favored the longer, more complex content of the book-length tale—and I still do, both for reading and for writing. 

Recently, however, an author whose fantasy novel I had edited decided to write companion short stories to give her readers some background on the main characters in her published book. The shorts, which range from 30 to 40 pages in length, will be made available to readers who want to know a bit of the back story that led up to the moment where the book started. It was an interesting idea to me, and I found myself quite taken with the history and events that shaped her characters into the beings that populated her novel. 

The more I read, the more I saw the value in these peeks into a character’s past—particularly in the case of life forms from alien worlds. Having said that, I believe such pieces could also be great marketing tools for books in a variety of genres. Those who might never choose our work in an online or brick-and-mortar store might well be intrigued enough to buy it by reading a compelling short that hooked them into wanting to know what happened next. But is such an e-format-only deviation from our typical novel writing a shot in the dark? 

British author Lee Child, who is published by Delacorte Press (part of Random House), wrote such a short about the teenage years of his enduring Jack Reacher character. Now he is planning a second short in response to his publisher’s urging. To learn more about this and other marketing strategies being employed in the increasingly competitive book sales market, you can read a very informative New York Times article. See also Amazon.com for an example of what another writer did.

The world of book sales is changing dramatically. Old strategies no longer produce the desired results, and new ones challenge us to think outside that proverbial box. Creating short stories (which might cost 99¢) to captivate potential readers sufficiently to sell our more expensive long ones adds another element to book writing (as if we don’t have enough to do already). However, we’re not starting from scratch. We know our characters and plot very well, so the “development” process has been completed. Also, we typically will be focusing on one character and one point of view. In other words, a complex novel with multiple POVs can be promoted by a simple, single-POV prequel. 

Hmmm. It’s an intriguing idea, don’t you think?

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Linda Lane focuses on teaching writers to write well, a skill that will enhance a lifelong writing career. Read about her professional team and her work at www.denvereditor.com.

Corner Cafe Soon to Open

I'm excited to be part of a fun enterprise, called The Corner Café: A Tasty Collection of Short Stories, edited by Dani Greer and Helen Ginger, with special assistance by Bob Sanchez, and cover design by Sherry Wachter.

Featured are stories by the following authors: Marian Allen, Shonell Bacon, Karen Casey Fitzjerrell, W.S. Gager, Helen Ginger, Dani Greer, S..B. Lerner, Audrey Lintner, Morgan Mandel, Maryann Miller, Bodie Parkhurst, Bob Sanchez, Mary Montague Sikes, Red Tash, and Christine Verstraete.



Dani Greer

Dani Greer, fearless leader of the BBTCafé e-group and The Blood-Red Pencil blog, is the instigator. She's the inventive one, who always comes up with great suggestions to expand our blogging and marketing horizons. This time she asked for volunteers from her BBTCafé e-group to compose short stories for a free collection to offer our readers. Not just any stories. Each must contain the words "Corner Café" somewhere in each story.

Though I was accustomed to writing full-length novels, I accepted the challenge. Much to my surprise, I found short story writing a refreshing change of pace. After finishing the first, called The Closing of the Corner Café, I was inspired to write another, which I called What Nice Blessings.

You'll learn more about my contributions during my visit with Helen Ginger on June 14 at http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/

My stop is but one in a massive Blog Book Tour by the authors of the collection, as well as fellow members of the BBTCafé. Stay tuned for more details about the tour.
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Morgan Mandel is a past President of Chicago-North RWA, was the Library Liason for Midwest MWA, belongs to EPIC and Sisters in Crime.

Find Excerpts and Buy Links to her four full length novels at

http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com/

Connect with Morgan on Facebook at http://facebook.com/morgan.mandel 

Twitter: http://twitter.com/morganmandel

Why Novelists Should Write Flash

If asked to list the top three literary activities that have aided my growth as a novelist, they would be:

1. an intense study of story structure 
2. my written evaluation of stories, both published and unpublished 
3. writing flash fiction 

Did #3 surprise you? It may seem counter-intuitive. By definition, a novel is long (60,000 to 120,000+ words) and flash fiction is short (usually 100 to 1,000 words). What could the long-winded novelist have to learn from writing flash?

The answer: everything.

You will learn to get to the point. Flash fiction must have a beginning, middle, and end, with a character arc involving a turning point, often using only four times as many words as I crammed into this sentence.

You will choose words wisely. Flash fiction is, in essence, a prose writer’s exercise in poetry. The yellow flowers scattered across the lawn will become buttercups or daffodils or dandelions—whichever contributes best. Instead of cranking out word count, you’ll spend your time deepening meaning with just the right words.

You’ll become more architect than bricklayer. The blathering novelist can unwittingly build a wall of words that discourages the reader from entering her story. Flash fiction tolerates no word dumps. A severely limited word count encourages you to prop up designed spaces in your story. You’ll learn to write between the lines, and invite the reader to fill in the rest. You’ll choose wide-shouldered words capable of carrying denotation and connotation and resonance, and carve away excess.

You'll gain an unrivaled education in story structure. Do you have an inciting incident that creates a character goal? Do you complicate that goal? Does the story have a climax that indicates indelible character change? You won’t lose track of these elements within hundreds of pages of drifting verbiage. There they’ll be, before you, all on one page. And when you return to the long form to apply your new skills, and all the right words come together so that each 100-word chunk contributes to the integrity of your story, you’ll have a fine novel.

Flash fiction can earn you publication credits. Check out Duotrope (in the search engine, under length, select “flash fiction”) for hundreds of markets that publish flash fiction!

As my favorite flash teacher, Randall Brown (founder and managing editor of Matter Press), says: “Flash is for the fearless.” Of course he also says, “Hear that POP! That’s the sizzle of your prose, your veins like wires.”

Are you man or woman enough to try? A 100-word story would fit neatly into a comment box. I’ll get us started. This story weighs in at 99 words. An expanded, almost leisurely 750-word version was previously published in Flash Me magazine.

Belated Promise 

by Kathryn Craft 

They’ve been together twenty years now. Raised two great kids, but never married. I’m old-fashioned and think it’s high time.

George’s family lived next door. I’ve bandaged his knees, written job referrals, fielded despair over affairs of the heart. He wipes sweaty palms against his suit.

“Nervous, son?”

“Silly at my age.”

“Love’ll do that to you.”

A molasses smile spills across his face. “Oh, yes.”

Steven enters my chambers and trips on the rug. We all laugh.

“Ready?”

Taking Thomas’s hand, he nods, eyes wet.

I'd better begin the ceremony. A teen and his pregnant girlfriend wait outside.

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Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Her women's fiction and memoir are represented by Katie Shea at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, was published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.

How to Win a Writing Competition

Please welcome Dr. John Yeoman to the Blood Red Pencil today. John is here to share some tips on improving your chances to win an online writing competition. 

After a disappointing experience with an online contest, John decided to use his expertise as a university tutor in creative writing to offer contest entrants feedback on the stories they submit to his Writer's Village contest. He says, "Just for fun I decided to run a contest where every entrant was awarded marks out of 45, across six publishing criteria, and given a brief practical critique on how their story might be improved. That’s how students are treated on MA (MFA) programs. Why not contestants?"

The criteria John uses in judging the stories entered in his contest is as follows. "I award the highest marks for ‘emotional engagement with the reader’ (a maximum of 10) and ‘originality of concept’ (10), followed by ‘the power of the first paragraph’ (8) and ‘structure, including conflict and closure’ (8). ‘Apt language’ gets 6 and ‘professionalism of presentation’ is 3. The cash prize winners usually achieve 42-43 marks out of 45."

And now, as promised, here are John's tips for increasing your odds to win a contest:

First, rate your own story against the criteria above. Better still, have someone else do it. Judges of other contests probably use a similar system. (And if they don’t reveal their system, how can you trust their qualifications?)

Second, be aware of the three main reasons why stories - which might otherwise have promise - fail to win a prize or get published. I can’t answer for other contests but here are my own big no-no’s:

a. Poor structure. A tale starts slowly or doesn’t start at all. It has too much background. It digresses into pointless incidents and irrelevant dialogue. The close is weak. Readers are left asking “What was all that about?”

A story should be a “globed, compacted thing”, as Virginia Woolf put it. Clear structure is vital.

b. Plot clichés. Stephen King once said that he never again wanted to read a story about a cute pet or precocious child that read minds and/or saved the family heroically when the house burnt down.

My own list of clichés includes a visit to a dying relative who reveals a terrible truth, the scandalous funeral (five mistresses turn up, each claiming to be the dead man’s wife), the magic cottage (now you see it, now you don’t), aliens in the bus queue, and my personal bête noire - the writer who’s struggling against Writer’s Block to write the very story you’re reading now!

c. Dull language. Some stories are a Yorkshire pudding. (This is a traditional English dish that, no matter how you cook it, ends up as a soggy mess.) Over-long sentences, unbroken paragraphs, tedious descriptions that could be replaced by one crisp phrase...

A story doesn’t have to dance with metaphors - the most emotive tales are often told in the simplest language - but it should persuade us that the writer knows their craft.

Entering short story contests is a way of earning while you learn enough of the craft to complete your first novel. Regard every story as a five-finger exercise. You might practise body language in one, gain experience with characterisation in another, and try different approaches to dialogue in a third. After you’ve won a dozen top prizes, you’ll have acquired every craft skill necessary to write novels. All you need then is stamina.

As for the Writers' Village short story contest, I plan to keep raising the prize values. Every time I’ve done that, the quality of the entries improves, and I have a more interesting challenge. How can I distinguish between twenty shades of excellence? The job gets harder each quarter but having a rigorous set of criteria makes it possible.

I wish that more contest judges used formal criteria and clearly published them. Above all, I wish that more contests told entrants why they didn’t win, rather than leaving them in darkness and frustration.

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 Dr John Yeoman, who holds a PhD in Creative Writing, judges the Writers’ Village story competition and is a tutor in creative writing at a UK university. Prior to getting his doctorate degree, he spent 40 years as a commercial author and chairman of a major PR company. He now runs the Writers’ Village short story contest which draws 1500 on-line entries each year from all over the world. His free book How to Win Story Contests for Profit and 14-part course in story writing for the commercial market can be found at:

Writers-Village.org/Contest-Success Currently, it’s $16 to enter a story but that includes a critique and the chance to win a $660 cash prize.

Posted by Maryann Miller, who has also judged a contest or two.