WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #12: “Charlie Jane Anders & Me”

In this feature, I’ll be looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”

I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story observations by Charlie Jane Anders – with a few from myself…

I first stumbled across Charlie Jane Ander’s writing advice about ten year ago. She’s one of the founders of the FABULOUS website, io9. It’s been folded into another online magazine now called Gizmodo (which has some fun stuff in it by itself!), but I read her because of her writing advice. She’s since moved on and is now writing full-time. BUT…

Her writing is, of course, still available. (The link below separates her work out of the pack of fantastic writing on Gizmodo and io9…) She also reviews all kinds of media from a fascinatingly unique perspective. Over the years, I’ve taken some of her advice, and I’ve read some and NOT taken it…because, well, she’s herself and I’m myself and not everything she writes is useful to my own writing! So then, onward!

For example, Anders uses fascinating examples. In “10 Vital Storytelling Lessons I Learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, she notes, “The best heroes wants something they can’t have.” Wow…I would add, though, that the hero has to come close fairly often in order to drive the story and keep me, as a reader (or watcher) coming back. In STAR TREK:VOYAGER, the whole point of the series is for the ship to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. The series can only end when they do – which happens of course, but not only are they changed by the journey (sounds like real life, eh?), but they lose people along the way. In my short story, “Road Veterinarian”, the main character, Doctor Scrabble, is falling in love with Sergeant Thatcher; but he feels he’s a freak and she feels she’s a freak, so how is it even possible?

Another idea Anders notes, “Big mysteries should always have a hard-hitting payoff”. This will be important for my current WIP. It is, literally, a mystery. Kidnapped children, a greedy politician, a marshal who was friends with the apparent perpetrator. The thing is that, I may have made it too obvious that his friend can’t POSSIBLY be the bad guy. In fact, while I know that there’s someone else in the background (though I introduced him almost immediately) who IS the bad guy, he hasn’t shown up much. I’m just realizing now that he HAS to pop in and out so that the reader will be suspicious and wonder why he’s there; but the marshal’s friend has to still look like a likely suspect – even to the marshal who wants to deny it but will do what’s RIGHT. I just haven’t spread that layer thick enough already.

Another interesting point she makes: “…old stories are where a lot of the most interesting ideas are, if you can just peel back all the dreck and rote expectations that have been stuck to them. Buffy the Vampire Slayer made one of the cornerstones of heroic storytelling fresh again [‘The Chosen’ going on a mission], and in the process showed how you can make any idea fresh—if you just ask the tough questions along the way.”

There’s a camp of writers who firmly believe that there is no such thing as a new story. Books have been written about it, too like, “10 Master Plots” (Writers Digest Books), “The Seven Plots” (New York Times), “Three, Six, or Thirty-six: How many basic plots are there in all the stories ever written?” (The Guardian), “The Seven Basic Plots” (Wikipedia).

Anders is one of the few who believes that while she agrees, she sees great hope in that – a writer can take a trope (there’s even a website called TV Tropes, where I get all of my ideas for Ideas On Tuesdays! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeculativeFiction) and twist it, combine it, or breathe new life in it even AFTER a story starts. The skill of a writer is in first realizing that there are layers of verdigris on the copper cathedral roof so it appears a rather dull green; but then to realize that with proper treatment, the roof can be transformed into shining, polished copper.

Even so, it also behooves a writer to remember that verdigris and rust can also PROTECT a metal from completely oxidizing into nothing.

Food for thought for me; hopefully some food for thought for you.

References: https://kinja.com/charliejane?_ga=2.117592897.993371918.1634957052-1755865972.1634957052
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg