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 as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome! Without further ado, short story observations by Beatrix Potter – with a few from myself…
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.”
THAT’S for certain! In May of 1990, I had an idea: “Robot In A Mass Driver” in which an AI robot at a remote lunar mining operation must carry a message of rebellion. If they walk, the message will be too late; if they are fired through a mass driver, they will “die”, programming and memory scrambled by intense magnetism. What do they do?”
On Thanksgiving Day, 1995, my seven year old son asked, "Can robots die?"
The story that grew from that seed started, that day with this:
“What were you before you became self-aware?”
“A very fast, very efficient machine.”
“Are you still a machine?”
Arnine thirty-seven looked at him. “Yes.”
Terry looked away.
“At least, technically. But I am more than the sum of my parts.”
The story ends with Arnine sacrificing themselves to save the Humans.
After that, the story sat in a file. Recently, I started wondering how I could write this with considerable more skill today. The story NOW begins:
“Can we adapt to a future where machines aren’t tools anymore, but
people who can make their own choices? Is that even possible?”
Huwei, Wise, SAP, Toyota, Google, Samsung, Swisscom. Apple
Robot9374 had experienced death seven-hundred and thirty-eight times over the past hundred Martian Years.
Not their own…
“The shorter and the plainer the better.”
When I look back at the stories I’ve written that have been PUBLISHED, I can easily see that they are simple stories. The first book even has the word in the title: SIMPLE SCIENCE SERMONS FOR BIG AND LITTLE KIDS.
If you look to the right, you can see a list of my professionally published stories (ones I actually got PAID for.) Most of them are pretty straightforward stories. If you look to the right and scroll down to LINKS TO MY ONLINE STORIES, you can click on whichever one intrigues you and have a read! Let me know what you think; also tell me if you thought the message was “plainer and better”!
“Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.”
Interesting thought. I wonder if that’s happened to my writing? When I look at the stories I first got published, I notice a couple things:
- They’re all very short
- Four of the ten are children’s stories (or activities)
- ONE is my collection of children’s sermons, a science experiment paired with a short homily. I sold that (as a neophyte in the hands of CSS Publishing, “christian” shysters who still publish the book, selling it for $9 since they published it in 1998 (after pointing out that they’d be paying me $100 for all rights because it wouldn’t sell very well and they were “a ministry” after all.) So let’s say the price started at $5, so we’ll average it out at $7 over the past 27 years, let’s say they sell 10 books a year for 27 years, that’s 270 books, so, they’d have made just shy of $2000; minus the $100 paid to me, and ignoring the fact that they can do POD pretty easily…and they’ve continued to put it in their catalogue ever since…
Three of the kids’ stories were also purchased outright – but for WAYYYYY more than CSS paid. As a stunning aside, I discovered that one of THOSE stories had been sold to the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (Check page 20 and page 52 for details). “Penguin Whisperer”, published in CRICKET in 2013) to be used in an the 2022-2023 English Language exam…
Anyway, the contracts I signed because even though they were “crappy”, I really didn’t expect it would MATTER if the publishers did whatever they wanted to with work that I imagined into reality…
“I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever.”
My novel, EMERALD OF EARTH: HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES, was published last year. I started WRITING it…a long, long time ago. Most likely twenty some years ago. I loved the story then, and I STILL love it!
I wrote my FIRST story when I was a sixth grader. I still have it, and I know it’s a blatant rip-off of one of Andre Norton’s novels like CATSEYE, STAR’KAAT (series), THE MARK OF THE CAT AND THE YEAR OF THE RAT, and BREED TO COME. Such was my addiction to not only reading science fiction, but my determination to write it! I’ve had several short stories published (though none recently) and while I’m still writing new stories, none of those seem to be selling. I very much understand the desire write more “like” my old work…
“We cannot stay home all our lives, we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.”
I love this and totally embrace it. My wife and I are retired now, comfortably able to do pretty much anything we want to, and I now have basically as much time as I want to to write. While we don’t travel as much as we used to, I’ve come back to the old realization that in the written word, I can go wherever I want to – and if I can’t find a REAL place to go, I can create a place in my imagination and populate it with marvelous characters and dive into that place as deeply as I want to. Then, once there and having completed ONE story in that new space, I can share it with others, and we can ALL be there, together as total strangers!
That’s why I write. And that’s why everyone I KNOW reads!
References: https://www.writerswrite.co.za/5-things-beatrix-potter-can-teach-you-about-writing/?fbclid=IwY2xjawL4XUJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHu7VJ6iAwwYSxXdunScDYPVD3uXnG63anceZzLkU558AxK49umGXRzKLXr4Z_aem_iY01_dy7d9aMx9gsf_IzFA
HBO FILM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Potter
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320
