Short Story Writing

Latest Blog Posts - Short Story Writing

• The Basics of Short Story Plots
  on Oct 6, 2012 in Plot
  The plot is the nucleus of the story, the bare thought or incident upon which the narrative is to be built. When a child says, "Grandma, tell me the story of how the whale swallowed Jonah," he gives the plot of the story that he desires; and the gran...
• The "Dramatic" Short Story
  on Sep 18, 2012 in Types of Short Story
  The Dramatic Story is the highest type of the short story. It requires a definite but simple plot, which enables the characters to act out their parts. In its perfect form it is the "bit of real life" which it is the aim of the short story to present...
• The Humorous Short Story
  on Feb 17, 2010 in Types of Short Story
  This almost belongs in the category of The Ingenuity Short Story, so largely does it depend upon the element of the unusual; but for that fact it should have been listed earlier, because it has little care for plot. Indeed, these stories are the free...
• The "Ingenuity" Short Story
  on Nov 9, 2009 in Types of Short Story
  The "Ingenuity" story is one of the most modern forms of the short story, and, if I may be pardoned the prolixity, one of the most ingenious. It might be called the "fairy tale of the grown-up," for its interest depends entirely upon its appeal to th...
• The Length of a Short Story
  on Sep 7, 2009 in Basic Elements
  The question of length is but relative; in general a short story should not exceed 10,000 words, and it could hardly contain less than 1,000; while from 3,000 to 5,000 is the most usual length.Yet Hawthorne's "The Gentle Boy" contains 12,000 words; P...
• The Offbeat Short Story
  on Jul 27, 2009 in Types of Short Story
  This type of short story owes its interest to the innate love of the supernatural or unexplainable which is a part of our complex human nature—the same feeling which prompts a group of children to beg for "just one more" ghost story, while they are...
• The "Moral" Story
  on Jun 24, 2009 in Types of Short Story
  The Moral Story, in spite of the beautiful examples left us by Hawthorne, is usually too baldly didactic to attain or hold a high place in literature. Its avowed purpose is to preach, and, as ordinarily written, preach it does in the most determined...
• Short Story Writing: The Subjective and Objective
  on Mar 25, 2009 in Point of View
  Writers, in their methods of presentation, may be broadly divided into two classes, those who write subjectively and those who write objectively. A subjective writer is one whose own personality, point of view, feeling, is insistent in what he writes...
• Methods of Characterization
  on Feb 21, 2009 in Characters
  In our everyday life we are continually drawing inferences in regard to the characters of those about us, and we do the same thing in a story. Some writers tell us as clearly as they can the natures of the men and women they are revealing to us, whil...
• The Two Things Requisite in Writing
  on Feb 10, 2009 in Basic Elements
  Gardiner in his "Forms of Prose Literature" says very truly that the "essential elements, not only of literature, but of all the fine arts, are: first, an organic unity of conception; and second, the pervasive personality of the artist." It is true t...

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