15 Days
15 Days to Write and Submit a Short Story A Let’s Write a Short Story! Workbook By Joe Bunting
Copyright © 2012 by The Write Practice TheWritePractice.com
Contents About this Workbook
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Part One: Read! Day One: Read Widely
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Day Two: Dissect
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Part Two: Write! Day Three: Delve into a Character
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Day Four: Set the Mood
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Day Five: Create a Catastrophe
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Day Six: SHOW!
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Day Seven: Deal With Writer's Block
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Day Eight: Fill In the Blanks
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Part Three: Edit! Day Nine: Rewrite
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Day Ten: Edit and Outsource
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Day Eleven: Receive and Read
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Day Twelve: Rewrite
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Part Four: Submit! Day Thirteen: Rewrite. Get Ready to Submit.
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Day Fourteen: Read Aloud
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Day Fifteen: Submit!
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After You Submit
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“A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.” —David Sedaris
“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” —Lorrie Moore
About This Workbook The purpose of this workbook is, of course, to help you write and submit a short story in fifteen days. However, I think it will be helpful to talk about what exactly I mean by “write a short story.” There are many kinds of short stories, just as there are many kinds of novels, and the kind you want to write may not be the same as the kind I want to write. If you want to write a literary short story, you should aim for 3,000 to 5,000 words, which is the length most literary magazine editors say they prefer. If you'd like to write speculative fiction, though—sci-fi, fantasy, or horror—the length can vary wildly. However, I notice quite a few of the top speculative magazines requesting very short fiction of 1,500 words or less. Because length is such an inexact science, our first order of business in this workbook will be to read and study several different magazines to get a sense of what's being published.
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15 Days This workbook requires about an hour a day, and the goal is that if you follow it for the next fifteen days, you will have completed and submitted a short story. It may even be pretty good! I'm asking for fifteen hours of your life, but I'm also asking for fifteen days. I don't want you to write this short story all at once. Yes, if want to keep writing for longer than an hour one day, that's great. However, don’t take the next day off, thinking you can rest on your accomplishment. One of your best tools as a writer is your subconscious. While you brush your teeth, drive to work, or exercise, your subconscious will be in the writing studio, fiddling away at your story without your knowledge. Give your subconscious the space it needs to work. Over the next two weeks, your subconscious may whisper an idea, a phrase, or an image, often at the most innoportune times—while you’re driving or taking a shower, for example. I recommend carrying a notebook or a tape recorder for these moments. Your subconscious is much smarter than you. You’ll want to capture its wisdom.. As Saul Bellow said, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
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15 Days Please note that you will write more words than you use in the final draft of you story. You might even write twice as many. This is normal and necessary. Only half of your job is to write. The other half is to pick the best words out of the ones you've already written. And as always, keep in mind the words of G.K. Chesterton, “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice and going away and doing the exact opposite.” This workbook won’t write your story. It might help walk you through a process, but you will do the writing. Trust your instincts. If your instincts tell you to write about something I haven't suggested, go ahead and do it. My goal is not to make you follow a formula. I just want to help you write a short story. Use this resource as you will. Jump around, take more time than I suggest. Skip a section altogether. You can even crumple it into a ball and swallow it. If it helps you write your short story, I don’t care. Now, let’s go write a short story.
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Supplies and Resources Before you begin, I suggest purchasing a few items and bookmarking a few websites. These will help along the way.
Supplies • A notebook and a pen (duh.) • A copy of Let's Write a Short Story! (duh again.) • A printer (if you don't have one) and paper • Letter size envelopes (#10) • 9x12 size envelopes • Stamps
Resources • e.ggtimer.com - An online egg timer* • letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines - A list of 44 literary magazines to research and submit to. *Most of the exercises in this workbook will be timed. I find that when people write fast, focused, distraction-free, they almost always write better. If you prefer, you can always use a clock, a watch, or a real egg timer.
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Part One: Read!
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Day One: Read Widely “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” —Stephen King
Exercise One: Put Pen to Paper. The hardest part is getting started. For many, this is when writer's block sets in strongest, when the page is completely blank and you have no strings of story to grasp at. So don't worry about what you write, don't worry about the end result, just put your pen (or your fingers) to paper (or the keyboard) and write something. Anything. You could write gibberish, like, “Eedle whop too soul cut shoe.” You could write what's around you, like, “He leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, and as he lifted his arms to stretch, he spilled his coffee everywhere.”
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15 Days Or you could begin in the middle of an action scene, like, “Richard’s face was pummelled repeatedly until he was conscious only of the sound of fists against his cheekbones.” It doesn't matter. Just begin.
Short Story Prompt Free write for fifteen minutes. If it turns into a story, go with it. If not, just let it be.
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Exercise Two: Read Stories. From Let's Write a Short Story: You can't write short stories if you don't read short stories.
Short Story Prompt Read three to five short stories from three to five literary magazines, one story per magazine. To find a list of literary magazines, many of which have stories free, online, go to letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines. Alternatively, you can get this all done at once by reading a yearly anthology of the best stories. Here are the three major literary yearly anthologies: The Best American Short Stories The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses The Pen / O. Henry Prize 11
15 Days And the major science fiction and fantasy yearly anthologies: The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year The Year's Best SF
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Day Two: Dissect “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” —T.S. Eliot
Exercise One: Study a Story. You could read a hundred short stories and not know how to write one. The difference between a reader and a writer is that a reader studies the work of those who have gone before her. She reads slowly and carefully until she understands the purpose of every sentence, how each sentence works as part of the whole. She asks, “Why this sentence here? Why did you choose this word? How will you transition from this scene to the next? How did you make me feel so hopeful/sad/alone/alive?” Whenever I start writing in a new format, whether it's a newspaper article or a blog post or a short story, I read a few excellent examples of writing and dissect them. For a short story, I might ask some of the following questions:
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15 Days Opening: How did the author open the story? Why did the author start there? Why did he or she choose these words and sentences? Character: How does the author introduce the main character? How does he or she introduce other characters? Does the character transform? How? What event caused the character to transform? Mood: What is the mood of the story? Central event: What is the central event? Does it have one? Structure: How is it structured? Is there a hole in the story? Do you see bookends? Ending: How does the author end the story? Read the last page painstakingly slowly. Why did the author end there? Why did he or she use those words and sentences? Tense: What tense (past, present, first person, third person) is the story? How does that affect the way the story is told? 14
15 Days Voice: Which elements of a story does the author rely on (see chapter three of Let's Write a Short Story)? Skim a few other stories from that magazine. Do they have a similar tone?
Short Story Prompt Choose a short story from those you read on Day One. Read, dissect, and analyze it for for forty-five minutes.
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Exercise Two: Steal. What elements of this story can you repurpose in your own story? Remember, the best writers steal liberally. Shakespeare himself stole the plot of Romeo and Juliet from a book published only thirty years prior called, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. If you do steal, though, make sure to try to follow these three rules:
1. “Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.” John Milton. If you are going to imitate, don't imitate just one author. Imitate several. The odd combination of them all will give your style its own flare. However, be sure to choose who you imitate carefully. For example, you may not want to imitate Stephenie Meyer or E.L. James.
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2. Be influenced “in a way that no one recognizes,” said Billy Collins. Take your influencers' style and tweak it just enough to give it an air of originality. In other words, make their style your own. Maybe no one will ever know you were copying!
3. Transcend your influences. Your job is to go farther than those you're imitating, to push the boundaries of the language and bring something new to the world. I believe this happens naturally. If you imitate long enough, eventually, you'll find your own voice. It will be some crazy combination of everyone you've imitated plus something that is wholly you.
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Short Story Prompt Write for fifteen minutes. Incorporate at least one thing from the short story you dissected, and at least one thing from the stories you read on Day One.
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Part Two: Write!
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Day Three: Delve into a Character “The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character.” —Flannery O'Connor
“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” —William Faulkner
Exercise One: Action and Motivation Good characters are the heart of fiction. Who is your character? What does she want? How can you make her believable? According to Orson Scott Card, the strongest three forms of characterization are:
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15 Days Action: “Bill punched the bald man.” Past Action: “A month ago, Bill waited in his car outside PCE Investments, where his wife worked. When she left the office and drove away, he drove fifty yards behind her, ducking under the steering wheel so she wouldn't see him.” Motivation: “She parked the car at a hotel on the other side of town. When she got out, he saw a bald man approach her. They embraced, and he drove away.”
Short Story Prompt Give it a try. Write for thirty minutes. Write about some mundane, normal thing your character might do. As you write, ask your character, “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
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Exercise Two: A Conversation According to Orson Scott Card, the next best way to characterize your main character is through dialogue.
Short Story Prompt Write for thirty minutes describing a conversation your character has with another character or a group of characters.
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Day Four: Set the Mood “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.” —Edgar Allen Poe Exercise: What is the mood of the pages you've written so far? • Sad • Ironic • Effervescent • Triumphant • Depressed • Blocked • Humorous • Chatty • Critical • Hopeful What mood do you want to create with the rest of your short story? How can you create that mood? 23
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Short Story Prompt Write for thirty minutes. Then, take a break. Stretch. Pace around for a few minutes. Write for thirty minutes more.
If you're stuck... “What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks, 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.' And it might just be the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'” —Maya Angelou
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Day Five: Create a Catastrophe Exercise One: Kill Your Character According to author PJ Reece, in every story the main character must die. Reece doesn’t mean he has to experience a physical death but rather the death of his identity. He must come to the end of himself and his capabilites. The old person he used to be must to be destroyed, and a new person must replace him. This moment of transformation is usually the central event in a story, and Reece calls it the “hole” everything else flows into. What is your central event? What is your hole in the middle of the story?
Short Story Prompt What does your main character value? What does he put invest identity in? Write about your character “dying” for thirty minutes. 25
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Exercise Two: Create Conflict Good stories have powerful bad guys, whether the bad guy is external (a person, a group of people, or nature) or internal (a belief or side of the protagonist's personality).
Short Story Prompt Write about one or all of the following: • Your main character has to do something that terrifies him or her. • Your main character gets into an argument with a friend or family member. • Your main character wants something he or she can't have. • Someone dies.
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Day Six: SHOW! “For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.” —John Cheever
“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.” —Anton Chekhov
Exercise One: Show, Don't Tell You've heard the writing advice, “Show, don't tell.” It’s actually wrong. Telling can be extremely useful, especially in a short story where you have to cover a lot of story in a small amount of space.
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15 Days However, you don't want to tell too much or your story will be flat and unemotional and will fail to draw the reader into the world or your story. Often, we fall into telling when we focus on inner monologue and exposition (see chapter three of Let’s Write a Short Story for definitions). Instead, focus on action, dialogue, and description. Add specificity and depth to the scene. Think of your writing as a movie, showing all the details of every moment.
Short Story Prompt Today, glance over what you've written so far. Do you see examples where you told your readers instead of showing them? Rewrite those scenes by showing instead of telling.
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Exercise Two: Description One of the best ways to pace your story—so that it feels neither too abrupt nor too slow—is by sprinkling one to three sentences of description between sections of action, dialogue, inner monologue, and exposition. Description is what your character sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells. Here’s an example from chapter three of Let’s Write a Short Story:
Tommy woke to the feel of a warm breeze on his cheeks and bare arms. The oak leaves struck into each other in the wind and sounded like an audience of elves applauding. He smelled the grass and the breeze tasted like lemon and iron. Got it? Now, give it a try!
Short Story Prompt Go back through your story, adding careful observations on the setting and what characters look like.
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Day Seven: Deal with Writer’s Block “When you can't create. You can work.” —Henry Miller
Excercise One: The Worst Sentence At some point in this process, you might get writer's block. It's normal. It happens to nearly every writer, especially the most ambitious. In Let's Write a Short Story, I told the story about Barry Michels, a psychologist who counseled one blocked screenwriter to kneel before his computer every morning for one minute, praying to heaven to write the worst sentence in the world. The screenwriter thought it was silly, but he did it, and a few months later he had written a screenplay that would win him an Academy Award. Now it's your turn. 30
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Short Story Prompt Attempt to write the worst sentence in the world. Write for thirty minutes.
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Exercise Two: Nearing the End You should have a good amount of material by now. Whether you're close to the end of your story, or you feel like it's just a big mess that will never be finished, keep writing. If you're stuck, feel free to pound your head against the table a few times, but keep writing. Your breakthrough is coming. If you're finished, keep adding content anyway. When you edit and rewrite your story, you might find your later work is better than what you wrote earlier.
Short Story Prompt Keep writing. Almost there. Write for thirty minutes.
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Day Eight: Fill in the Blanks Exercise One: Re-Read Your Story Slowly It's time to start wrapping your story up, but if you're not finished, don't worry, there's still time. Before you begin to write today, though, spend some time analyzing your story. • Are there any gaps in the narrative? • Does the timing make sense? • Are your characters believable? • Is there conflict on every page? • Does your main character have a transformation?
Short Story Prompt Read your story and work on the parts that need work. Write for one hour.
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Part Three Edit!
Day Nine: Rewrite “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” —Elmore Leonard
Exercise One: Bookends Does your story have a book jacket structure? See Chapter Two in Let's Write a Short Story for a refresher on the book jacket structure. The book jacket structure is one of the best ways I've found to add harmony and a sense of purpose to your story. How can you implement it? Do you need to rewrite your ending? Can you add a new beginning instead?
Short Story Prompt Rewrite the beginning or end of your story to incorporate the book jacket structure. If you have to, rewrite both.
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15 Days Write for thirty minutes.
Exercise Two: The Hardest Part Today is the day you dive into the snags and blemishes of your story and finish it. The hardest part of writing is rewriting. We don't want to dive into the uncomfortable knowledge that our story is imperfect. Finishing your story is like pulling teeth out of your own mouth. It can really hurt! Here's a trick I use to motivate myself to finish my stories when I don't want to: first, print it out. Then, take your story and your pen, and go for a walk. As you walk, read your story and make corrections or suggestions to yourself. Then, if you get stuck, just look up at the sky, take a deep breath and keep walking. At the very least, it's more pleasant than hunching over your computer!
Short Story Prompt
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15 Days Reread your story and rewrite any section that feels off to you. Put the finishing touches on your story. Rewrite for thirty minutes.
Day Ten: Edit and Outsource Exercise One: Edit Today, we’re going to put a little polish on your short story and go through our first round of “publishing.” One of the central ideas of Let's Write a Short Story is you need to get your work out into the hands of real peopleas soon as you can. Why? Because you are a really bad judge of your own work. Before you can write something worth reading, you need feedback from others to know if what you've written is good or not. The goal is not to get it perfect. In fact, even if your story isn't done, I want you to stop writing and rewriting. Instead we're going to put on a little polish. Turn to Chapter Five of Let's Write a Short Story and brush up on your editing skills. 37
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Short Story Prompt Polish your short story by spell checking, and searching and deleting weak verbs, weak words, adverbs, and the word “some.” Edit for about thirty minutes.
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Exercise Two: Honest Critique Writers always ask me, “When will I know if my story is finished? How do you know if my work is any good?” The answer is, I'm not really sure. Most of the time, we know a good short story when we see it. That's why getting feedback from a group of people is so important. When I send my stories out, I don't discriminate. I send it to writers, readers, TV watchers, and even kids. Other writers are often the worst critics, so the best thing to do is get as broad a group as you can. Often, I will even post on Facebook or Twitter to ask for readers. You'd be surprised at how many people will say yes.
Short Story Prompt Email or hand-deliver your story to at least five people as your makeshift critique group.
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15 Days Most writing teachers and writing books will tell you to ask them to be brutally honest with you. However, I think it's okay if you ask your critique group to soften their criticism. Sometimes, feedback can become so harsh you become immobilized by shame and rejection. If you can find people who will give you tough feedback in an encouraging way, you're much more likely to improve, in my opinion.
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Day Eleven: Receive and Read “Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” —Neil Gaiman
Exercise One: Say Thank You Over the next two or three days, you should start receiving feedback from your makeshift critique group. In the last chapter, I said you aren't a very good judge of your own work. However, over the next few days, you will start to doubt that. In fact, you will probably start thinking your “friends” are just about the worst judges ever. Despite how frustrated, annoyed or dismissive you are toward the feedback of your critique group, your job is not to show them how they're wrong. They did you a favor, after all. Instead, look for 41
15 Days patterns in their feedback. If one person doesn’t like a phrase, an event, or a character you’re in love with, you might not have to change anything. If two or three people say the same thing, you almost certainly should.
Short Story Prompt As you receive feedback on your short story, say thank you, and incorporate as much of their feedback as you can into your manuscript.
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Exercise Two: Read Widely (Again) At the start of this workbook, you read three to five magazines to get a sense of the form of the short story. Now, do the same but with a different purpose. This time, read to see if your story would be a good fit for their magazine. When analyzing magazines as potential publishers of my work, I try to look at the following criteria: Genre: Do they publish my genre? You don't want submit a horror story to a magazine that publishes literary fiction. Tone/Mood: Do the stories in their magazine sound like mine? Is their magazine too intellectual or not intellectual enough? Is their magazine too strange? Too funny? Too action-oriented? Too gushy and romantic? Subject: Do they publish stories about similar subjects? For example, if your story is about children, religion, or horses, make sure you find magazines that publish stories involving those subjects.
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15 Days Try to find three to five literary magazines that would be a good fit for your work.
Short Story Prompt Skim two to three stories in five to ten different magazines. You don't need to read the whole story, just a few paragraphs. Would your story fit? If so, check out the magazine's submission guidelines to see if there is anything that would bar your story from being a good match.
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Day Twelve: Rewrite “I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” —Vladimir Nabokov
Exercise: Finish Your Story Today, try to finish your story. By now you have hopefully gotten most of the feedback from your critique group. Put their feedback to use. Try to make every sentence sing and every detail jump out. Cut unnecessary words, sentences, and scenes. Put those commas in the right places. Question every line of dialogue to see if it's true to the character. Are your characters believable? Is your ending satisfying?
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15 Days Is your pacing brisk enough to entertain but slow enough to take everything in? Does your character transform? Is your central event vivid and powerful enough? Is the mood uniform throughout? If not, how can you fix your story as fast as possible?
Short Story Prompt Reread and rewrite for an hour (or as long as you have to).
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Part Four Submit!
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Day Thirteen: Reformat You've come a long way, and it's almost time to submit your baby. However, there are still a few things to do before sending your story out into the world. Nearly every literary magazine expects you to submit your short story in standard manuscript formatting. You don't want an editor rejecting your story just because you used the wrong font or didn't include the word count on the first page. Before beginning to reformat your manuscript, brush up on standard manuscript formatting in Chapter Six of Let's Write a Short Story. As a reference, I've included a summary below: q Include your name, address, phone number, email in top left corner. q Put the word count in top right corner, rounded to the nearest hundred words. q Use 12 point, courier font. q Double-space your lines. q Use 1-inch margins.
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15 Days q Center title and author name, and include it halfway down first page. q Use indents to show paragraphs, not line breaks. q At the top right corner of your page, use a header with your last name, the abbreviated story title, and the page number, beginning on page two. Also, if you've been able to target a few magazines to submit to, now is a good time to go to their submission guidelines to see if they require anything special.
Short Story Prompt Format your manuscript according to standard formatting.
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Day Fourteen: Read Aloud “Read aloud, and think about, every sentence and paragraph. Is it clearly written? Does it make sense? Do all the words serve the story?” —Linda Swanson-Davies, editor of Glimmer Train
Exercise: Mistake-Free Before you send your story off, you'll want sure it's free of typos and grammar errors. Reading aloud forces you to read slowly and carefully, meaning you catch more mistakes than you would otherwise. Also, by hearing the words out loud, you'll be able to edit for readability, phonoaesthetics, and pacing.
Short Story Prompt Read your short story out loud. Fix any spelling errors, grammar mistakes, or ugly-sounding sentences. Then, read your story through again.
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Day Fifteen: Submit! Exercise One: Write a cover letter. As we discussed in Chapter Six of Let's Write a Short Story, the best cover letter in the world isn’t going to get you published. Still, they’re recommended. Here are the components of a standard cover letter: The Address. “Dear Fiction Editor,” will suffice, but see if you can find their name on the magazine's website. The Title of Your Manuscript. The first line mainly shares the title of your manuscript. It's traditional to include a word count, but that isn't terribly important since the word-count should be included on the first page of your manuscript. Bio. Your bio shouldn't be more than thirty words long, and should contain your writing credits, if you have any.
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15 Days Simultaneous Submission? If you're submitting your story simultaneously to other magazines as well, mention that. However you don't have to say where you're submitting to. Signoff. Thank them again, write your name, and that's all!
Short Story Prompt Spend no more than seven minutes writing your cover letter.
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Exercise Two: Submit! The time has come. FINALLY! After two long weeks of reading, writing, and editing, it's time to submit your manuscript. By this time, you should have scoped out three to five literary magazines to submit to, but if you haven't, take a look at our list of literary magazines at letswriteashortstory.com/literarymagazines, or find your own at duotrope.com. Also, make sure to read every magazine's guidelines in detail before submitting so as not to get rejected just for formatting mistakes.
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After You Submit Congratulations! You just wrote and submitted a short story! If you completed the challenge, share your success on Twitter, using the hashtag #letswrite, and on our Facebook page. Also, you can track all your submissions through duotrope.com. It’s an essential resource. Regardless of whether or not your story is accepted, be proud of the fact that you have pushed your writing skills one step further. If you’re story is rejected, remember that rejection is a red badge of honor. It means you’re serious, you’re disciplined, and you won’t give up. If you haven’t been rejected, it probably means you’re not passionate enough. Give yourself a few days to celebrate your accomplishment. Then get to work on your next story!
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Copyright © 2012 by The Write Practice TheWritePractice.com
Contents About this Workbook
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Part One: Read! Day One: Read Widely
10
Day Two: Dissect
14
Part Two: Write! Day Three: Delve into a Character
21
Day Four: Set the Mood
24
Day Five: Create a Catastrophe
26
Day Six: SHOW!
29
Day Seven: Deal With Writer's Block
32
Day Eight: Fill In the Blanks
35
Part Three: Edit! Day Nine: Rewrite
37
Day Ten: Edit and Outsource
39
Day Eleven: Receive and Read
43
Day Twelve: Rewrite
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Part Four: Submit! Day Thirteen: Rewrite. Get Ready to Submit.
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Day Fourteen: Read Aloud
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Day Fifteen: Submit!
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After You Submit
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“A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.” —David Sedaris
“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” —Lorrie Moore
About This Workbook The purpose of this workbook is, of course, to help you write and submit a short story in fifteen days. However, I think it will be helpful to talk about what exactly I mean by “write a short story.” There are many kinds of short stories, just as there are many kinds of novels, and the kind you want to write may not be the same as the kind I want to write. If you want to write a literary short story, you should aim for 3,000 to 5,000 words, which is the length most literary magazine editors say they prefer. If you'd like to write speculative fiction, though—sci-fi, fantasy, or horror—the length can vary wildly. However, I notice quite a few of the top speculative magazines requesting very short fiction of 1,500 words or less. Because length is such an inexact science, our first order of business in this workbook will be to read and study several different magazines to get a sense of what's being published.
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15 Days This workbook requires about an hour a day, and the goal is that if you follow it for the next fifteen days, you will have completed and submitted a short story. It may even be pretty good! I'm asking for fifteen hours of your life, but I'm also asking for fifteen days. I don't want you to write this short story all at once. Yes, if want to keep writing for longer than an hour one day, that's great. However, don’t take the next day off, thinking you can rest on your accomplishment. One of your best tools as a writer is your subconscious. While you brush your teeth, drive to work, or exercise, your subconscious will be in the writing studio, fiddling away at your story without your knowledge. Give your subconscious the space it needs to work. Over the next two weeks, your subconscious may whisper an idea, a phrase, or an image, often at the most innoportune times—while you’re driving or taking a shower, for example. I recommend carrying a notebook or a tape recorder for these moments. Your subconscious is much smarter than you. You’ll want to capture its wisdom.. As Saul Bellow said, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
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15 Days Please note that you will write more words than you use in the final draft of you story. You might even write twice as many. This is normal and necessary. Only half of your job is to write. The other half is to pick the best words out of the ones you've already written. And as always, keep in mind the words of G.K. Chesterton, “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice and going away and doing the exact opposite.” This workbook won’t write your story. It might help walk you through a process, but you will do the writing. Trust your instincts. If your instincts tell you to write about something I haven't suggested, go ahead and do it. My goal is not to make you follow a formula. I just want to help you write a short story. Use this resource as you will. Jump around, take more time than I suggest. Skip a section altogether. You can even crumple it into a ball and swallow it. If it helps you write your short story, I don’t care. Now, let’s go write a short story.
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Supplies and Resources Before you begin, I suggest purchasing a few items and bookmarking a few websites. These will help along the way.
Supplies • A notebook and a pen (duh.) • A copy of Let's Write a Short Story! (duh again.) • A printer (if you don't have one) and paper • Letter size envelopes (#10) • 9x12 size envelopes • Stamps
Resources • e.ggtimer.com - An online egg timer* • letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines - A list of 44 literary magazines to research and submit to. *Most of the exercises in this workbook will be timed. I find that when people write fast, focused, distraction-free, they almost always write better. If you prefer, you can always use a clock, a watch, or a real egg timer.
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Part One: Read!
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Day One: Read Widely “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” —Stephen King
Exercise One: Put Pen to Paper. The hardest part is getting started. For many, this is when writer's block sets in strongest, when the page is completely blank and you have no strings of story to grasp at. So don't worry about what you write, don't worry about the end result, just put your pen (or your fingers) to paper (or the keyboard) and write something. Anything. You could write gibberish, like, “Eedle whop too soul cut shoe.” You could write what's around you, like, “He leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, and as he lifted his arms to stretch, he spilled his coffee everywhere.”
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15 Days Or you could begin in the middle of an action scene, like, “Richard’s face was pummelled repeatedly until he was conscious only of the sound of fists against his cheekbones.” It doesn't matter. Just begin.
Short Story Prompt Free write for fifteen minutes. If it turns into a story, go with it. If not, just let it be.
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Exercise Two: Read Stories. From Let's Write a Short Story: You can't write short stories if you don't read short stories.
Short Story Prompt Read three to five short stories from three to five literary magazines, one story per magazine. To find a list of literary magazines, many of which have stories free, online, go to letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines. Alternatively, you can get this all done at once by reading a yearly anthology of the best stories. Here are the three major literary yearly anthologies: The Best American Short Stories The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses The Pen / O. Henry Prize 11
15 Days And the major science fiction and fantasy yearly anthologies: The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year The Year's Best SF
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Day Two: Dissect “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” —T.S. Eliot
Exercise One: Study a Story. You could read a hundred short stories and not know how to write one. The difference between a reader and a writer is that a reader studies the work of those who have gone before her. She reads slowly and carefully until she understands the purpose of every sentence, how each sentence works as part of the whole. She asks, “Why this sentence here? Why did you choose this word? How will you transition from this scene to the next? How did you make me feel so hopeful/sad/alone/alive?” Whenever I start writing in a new format, whether it's a newspaper article or a blog post or a short story, I read a few excellent examples of writing and dissect them. For a short story, I might ask some of the following questions:
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15 Days Opening: How did the author open the story? Why did the author start there? Why did he or she choose these words and sentences? Character: How does the author introduce the main character? How does he or she introduce other characters? Does the character transform? How? What event caused the character to transform? Mood: What is the mood of the story? Central event: What is the central event? Does it have one? Structure: How is it structured? Is there a hole in the story? Do you see bookends? Ending: How does the author end the story? Read the last page painstakingly slowly. Why did the author end there? Why did he or she use those words and sentences? Tense: What tense (past, present, first person, third person) is the story? How does that affect the way the story is told? 14
15 Days Voice: Which elements of a story does the author rely on (see chapter three of Let's Write a Short Story)? Skim a few other stories from that magazine. Do they have a similar tone?
Short Story Prompt Choose a short story from those you read on Day One. Read, dissect, and analyze it for for forty-five minutes.
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Exercise Two: Steal. What elements of this story can you repurpose in your own story? Remember, the best writers steal liberally. Shakespeare himself stole the plot of Romeo and Juliet from a book published only thirty years prior called, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. If you do steal, though, make sure to try to follow these three rules:
1. “Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.” John Milton. If you are going to imitate, don't imitate just one author. Imitate several. The odd combination of them all will give your style its own flare. However, be sure to choose who you imitate carefully. For example, you may not want to imitate Stephenie Meyer or E.L. James.
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2. Be influenced “in a way that no one recognizes,” said Billy Collins. Take your influencers' style and tweak it just enough to give it an air of originality. In other words, make their style your own. Maybe no one will ever know you were copying!
3. Transcend your influences. Your job is to go farther than those you're imitating, to push the boundaries of the language and bring something new to the world. I believe this happens naturally. If you imitate long enough, eventually, you'll find your own voice. It will be some crazy combination of everyone you've imitated plus something that is wholly you.
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Short Story Prompt Write for fifteen minutes. Incorporate at least one thing from the short story you dissected, and at least one thing from the stories you read on Day One.
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Part Two: Write!
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Day Three: Delve into a Character “The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character.” —Flannery O'Connor
“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” —William Faulkner
Exercise One: Action and Motivation Good characters are the heart of fiction. Who is your character? What does she want? How can you make her believable? According to Orson Scott Card, the strongest three forms of characterization are:
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15 Days Action: “Bill punched the bald man.” Past Action: “A month ago, Bill waited in his car outside PCE Investments, where his wife worked. When she left the office and drove away, he drove fifty yards behind her, ducking under the steering wheel so she wouldn't see him.” Motivation: “She parked the car at a hotel on the other side of town. When she got out, he saw a bald man approach her. They embraced, and he drove away.”
Short Story Prompt Give it a try. Write for thirty minutes. Write about some mundane, normal thing your character might do. As you write, ask your character, “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
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Exercise Two: A Conversation According to Orson Scott Card, the next best way to characterize your main character is through dialogue.
Short Story Prompt Write for thirty minutes describing a conversation your character has with another character or a group of characters.
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Day Four: Set the Mood “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.” —Edgar Allen Poe Exercise: What is the mood of the pages you've written so far? • Sad • Ironic • Effervescent • Triumphant • Depressed • Blocked • Humorous • Chatty • Critical • Hopeful What mood do you want to create with the rest of your short story? How can you create that mood? 23
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Short Story Prompt Write for thirty minutes. Then, take a break. Stretch. Pace around for a few minutes. Write for thirty minutes more.
If you're stuck... “What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks, 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.' And it might just be the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'” —Maya Angelou
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Day Five: Create a Catastrophe Exercise One: Kill Your Character According to author PJ Reece, in every story the main character must die. Reece doesn’t mean he has to experience a physical death but rather the death of his identity. He must come to the end of himself and his capabilites. The old person he used to be must to be destroyed, and a new person must replace him. This moment of transformation is usually the central event in a story, and Reece calls it the “hole” everything else flows into. What is your central event? What is your hole in the middle of the story?
Short Story Prompt What does your main character value? What does he put invest identity in? Write about your character “dying” for thirty minutes. 25
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Exercise Two: Create Conflict Good stories have powerful bad guys, whether the bad guy is external (a person, a group of people, or nature) or internal (a belief or side of the protagonist's personality).
Short Story Prompt Write about one or all of the following: • Your main character has to do something that terrifies him or her. • Your main character gets into an argument with a friend or family member. • Your main character wants something he or she can't have. • Someone dies.
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Day Six: SHOW! “For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.” —John Cheever
“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.” —Anton Chekhov
Exercise One: Show, Don't Tell You've heard the writing advice, “Show, don't tell.” It’s actually wrong. Telling can be extremely useful, especially in a short story where you have to cover a lot of story in a small amount of space.
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15 Days However, you don't want to tell too much or your story will be flat and unemotional and will fail to draw the reader into the world or your story. Often, we fall into telling when we focus on inner monologue and exposition (see chapter three of Let’s Write a Short Story for definitions). Instead, focus on action, dialogue, and description. Add specificity and depth to the scene. Think of your writing as a movie, showing all the details of every moment.
Short Story Prompt Today, glance over what you've written so far. Do you see examples where you told your readers instead of showing them? Rewrite those scenes by showing instead of telling.
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Exercise Two: Description One of the best ways to pace your story—so that it feels neither too abrupt nor too slow—is by sprinkling one to three sentences of description between sections of action, dialogue, inner monologue, and exposition. Description is what your character sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells. Here’s an example from chapter three of Let’s Write a Short Story:
Tommy woke to the feel of a warm breeze on his cheeks and bare arms. The oak leaves struck into each other in the wind and sounded like an audience of elves applauding. He smelled the grass and the breeze tasted like lemon and iron. Got it? Now, give it a try!
Short Story Prompt Go back through your story, adding careful observations on the setting and what characters look like.
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Day Seven: Deal with Writer’s Block “When you can't create. You can work.” —Henry Miller
Excercise One: The Worst Sentence At some point in this process, you might get writer's block. It's normal. It happens to nearly every writer, especially the most ambitious. In Let's Write a Short Story, I told the story about Barry Michels, a psychologist who counseled one blocked screenwriter to kneel before his computer every morning for one minute, praying to heaven to write the worst sentence in the world. The screenwriter thought it was silly, but he did it, and a few months later he had written a screenplay that would win him an Academy Award. Now it's your turn. 30
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Short Story Prompt Attempt to write the worst sentence in the world. Write for thirty minutes.
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Exercise Two: Nearing the End You should have a good amount of material by now. Whether you're close to the end of your story, or you feel like it's just a big mess that will never be finished, keep writing. If you're stuck, feel free to pound your head against the table a few times, but keep writing. Your breakthrough is coming. If you're finished, keep adding content anyway. When you edit and rewrite your story, you might find your later work is better than what you wrote earlier.
Short Story Prompt Keep writing. Almost there. Write for thirty minutes.
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Day Eight: Fill in the Blanks Exercise One: Re-Read Your Story Slowly It's time to start wrapping your story up, but if you're not finished, don't worry, there's still time. Before you begin to write today, though, spend some time analyzing your story. • Are there any gaps in the narrative? • Does the timing make sense? • Are your characters believable? • Is there conflict on every page? • Does your main character have a transformation?
Short Story Prompt Read your story and work on the parts that need work. Write for one hour.
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Part Three Edit!
Day Nine: Rewrite “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” —Elmore Leonard
Exercise One: Bookends Does your story have a book jacket structure? See Chapter Two in Let's Write a Short Story for a refresher on the book jacket structure. The book jacket structure is one of the best ways I've found to add harmony and a sense of purpose to your story. How can you implement it? Do you need to rewrite your ending? Can you add a new beginning instead?
Short Story Prompt Rewrite the beginning or end of your story to incorporate the book jacket structure. If you have to, rewrite both.
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Exercise Two: The Hardest Part Today is the day you dive into the snags and blemishes of your story and finish it. The hardest part of writing is rewriting. We don't want to dive into the uncomfortable knowledge that our story is imperfect. Finishing your story is like pulling teeth out of your own mouth. It can really hurt! Here's a trick I use to motivate myself to finish my stories when I don't want to: first, print it out. Then, take your story and your pen, and go for a walk. As you walk, read your story and make corrections or suggestions to yourself. Then, if you get stuck, just look up at the sky, take a deep breath and keep walking. At the very least, it's more pleasant than hunching over your computer!
Short Story Prompt
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15 Days Reread your story and rewrite any section that feels off to you. Put the finishing touches on your story. Rewrite for thirty minutes.
Day Ten: Edit and Outsource Exercise One: Edit Today, we’re going to put a little polish on your short story and go through our first round of “publishing.” One of the central ideas of Let's Write a Short Story is you need to get your work out into the hands of real peopleas soon as you can. Why? Because you are a really bad judge of your own work. Before you can write something worth reading, you need feedback from others to know if what you've written is good or not. The goal is not to get it perfect. In fact, even if your story isn't done, I want you to stop writing and rewriting. Instead we're going to put on a little polish. Turn to Chapter Five of Let's Write a Short Story and brush up on your editing skills. 37
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Short Story Prompt Polish your short story by spell checking, and searching and deleting weak verbs, weak words, adverbs, and the word “some.” Edit for about thirty minutes.
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Exercise Two: Honest Critique Writers always ask me, “When will I know if my story is finished? How do you know if my work is any good?” The answer is, I'm not really sure. Most of the time, we know a good short story when we see it. That's why getting feedback from a group of people is so important. When I send my stories out, I don't discriminate. I send it to writers, readers, TV watchers, and even kids. Other writers are often the worst critics, so the best thing to do is get as broad a group as you can. Often, I will even post on Facebook or Twitter to ask for readers. You'd be surprised at how many people will say yes.
Short Story Prompt Email or hand-deliver your story to at least five people as your makeshift critique group.
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15 Days Most writing teachers and writing books will tell you to ask them to be brutally honest with you. However, I think it's okay if you ask your critique group to soften their criticism. Sometimes, feedback can become so harsh you become immobilized by shame and rejection. If you can find people who will give you tough feedback in an encouraging way, you're much more likely to improve, in my opinion.
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Day Eleven: Receive and Read “Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” —Neil Gaiman
Exercise One: Say Thank You Over the next two or three days, you should start receiving feedback from your makeshift critique group. In the last chapter, I said you aren't a very good judge of your own work. However, over the next few days, you will start to doubt that. In fact, you will probably start thinking your “friends” are just about the worst judges ever. Despite how frustrated, annoyed or dismissive you are toward the feedback of your critique group, your job is not to show them how they're wrong. They did you a favor, after all. Instead, look for 41
15 Days patterns in their feedback. If one person doesn’t like a phrase, an event, or a character you’re in love with, you might not have to change anything. If two or three people say the same thing, you almost certainly should.
Short Story Prompt As you receive feedback on your short story, say thank you, and incorporate as much of their feedback as you can into your manuscript.
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Exercise Two: Read Widely (Again) At the start of this workbook, you read three to five magazines to get a sense of the form of the short story. Now, do the same but with a different purpose. This time, read to see if your story would be a good fit for their magazine. When analyzing magazines as potential publishers of my work, I try to look at the following criteria: Genre: Do they publish my genre? You don't want submit a horror story to a magazine that publishes literary fiction. Tone/Mood: Do the stories in their magazine sound like mine? Is their magazine too intellectual or not intellectual enough? Is their magazine too strange? Too funny? Too action-oriented? Too gushy and romantic? Subject: Do they publish stories about similar subjects? For example, if your story is about children, religion, or horses, make sure you find magazines that publish stories involving those subjects.
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15 Days Try to find three to five literary magazines that would be a good fit for your work.
Short Story Prompt Skim two to three stories in five to ten different magazines. You don't need to read the whole story, just a few paragraphs. Would your story fit? If so, check out the magazine's submission guidelines to see if there is anything that would bar your story from being a good match.
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Day Twelve: Rewrite “I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” —Vladimir Nabokov
Exercise: Finish Your Story Today, try to finish your story. By now you have hopefully gotten most of the feedback from your critique group. Put their feedback to use. Try to make every sentence sing and every detail jump out. Cut unnecessary words, sentences, and scenes. Put those commas in the right places. Question every line of dialogue to see if it's true to the character. Are your characters believable? Is your ending satisfying?
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Short Story Prompt Reread and rewrite for an hour (or as long as you have to).
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Part Four Submit!
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Day Thirteen: Reformat You've come a long way, and it's almost time to submit your baby. However, there are still a few things to do before sending your story out into the world. Nearly every literary magazine expects you to submit your short story in standard manuscript formatting. You don't want an editor rejecting your story just because you used the wrong font or didn't include the word count on the first page. Before beginning to reformat your manuscript, brush up on standard manuscript formatting in Chapter Six of Let's Write a Short Story. As a reference, I've included a summary below: q Include your name, address, phone number, email in top left corner. q Put the word count in top right corner, rounded to the nearest hundred words. q Use 12 point, courier font. q Double-space your lines. q Use 1-inch margins.
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15 Days q Center title and author name, and include it halfway down first page. q Use indents to show paragraphs, not line breaks. q At the top right corner of your page, use a header with your last name, the abbreviated story title, and the page number, beginning on page two. Also, if you've been able to target a few magazines to submit to, now is a good time to go to their submission guidelines to see if they require anything special.
Short Story Prompt Format your manuscript according to standard formatting.
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Day Fourteen: Read Aloud “Read aloud, and think about, every sentence and paragraph. Is it clearly written? Does it make sense? Do all the words serve the story?” —Linda Swanson-Davies, editor of Glimmer Train
Exercise: Mistake-Free Before you send your story off, you'll want sure it's free of typos and grammar errors. Reading aloud forces you to read slowly and carefully, meaning you catch more mistakes than you would otherwise. Also, by hearing the words out loud, you'll be able to edit for readability, phonoaesthetics, and pacing.
Short Story Prompt Read your short story out loud. Fix any spelling errors, grammar mistakes, or ugly-sounding sentences. Then, read your story through again.
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Day Fifteen: Submit! Exercise One: Write a cover letter. As we discussed in Chapter Six of Let's Write a Short Story, the best cover letter in the world isn’t going to get you published. Still, they’re recommended. Here are the components of a standard cover letter: The Address. “Dear Fiction Editor,” will suffice, but see if you can find their name on the magazine's website. The Title of Your Manuscript. The first line mainly shares the title of your manuscript. It's traditional to include a word count, but that isn't terribly important since the word-count should be included on the first page of your manuscript. Bio. Your bio shouldn't be more than thirty words long, and should contain your writing credits, if you have any.
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15 Days Simultaneous Submission? If you're submitting your story simultaneously to other magazines as well, mention that. However you don't have to say where you're submitting to. Signoff. Thank them again, write your name, and that's all!
Short Story Prompt Spend no more than seven minutes writing your cover letter.
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Exercise Two: Submit! The time has come. FINALLY! After two long weeks of reading, writing, and editing, it's time to submit your manuscript. By this time, you should have scoped out three to five literary magazines to submit to, but if you haven't, take a look at our list of literary magazines at letswriteashortstory.com/literarymagazines, or find your own at duotrope.com. Also, make sure to read every magazine's guidelines in detail before submitting so as not to get rejected just for formatting mistakes.
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After You Submit Congratulations! You just wrote and submitted a short story! If you completed the challenge, share your success on Twitter, using the hashtag #letswrite, and on our Facebook page. Also, you can track all your submissions through duotrope.com. It’s an essential resource. Regardless of whether or not your story is accepted, be proud of the fact that you have pushed your writing skills one step further. If you’re story is rejected, remember that rejection is a red badge of honor. It means you’re serious, you’re disciplined, and you won’t give up. If you haven’t been rejected, it probably means you’re not passionate enough. Give yourself a few days to celebrate your accomplishment. Then get to work on your next story!
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