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 Bruce Bethke – with a few from myself…
In case you didn’t notice, for the FIRST TIME, I’ve dropped the quote marks around “& Me”. That’s because Bruce and I have been friends for a few decades now…
We live in the same metropolitan area and we both write science fiction. We met and hit it off at a “local” science fiction convention called MiniCon (since 1968, at which time I was 11…so I didn’t go…). He invited me to a writer’s group along with a couple o f other writers; one of who withdrew because we were too critical of their writing; the other who had several tings published, but from whom I haven’t heard since…
The biggest difference is that he’s “famous” and well-known for inventing the word “cyberpunk”. But what’s MOST important is that instead of sitting around in his fancy Author’s Office on the Fifty-seventh Floor of the IDS Building (the tallest skyscraper in the state of Minnesota!), he’s long been engaged in building something bigger than his reputation/ego: he’s been building the skills of new writers (myself included!)
I’ve long contended (after teaching science in middle schools, high schools, private schools, charter schools, and summer schools for 41 years) that teachers are BORN and not made. I have met and worked with a dozen teachers who came into either my classroom as student teachers or into the building I was working in who started with a great deal of energy, gurgling with ideas, and certain they were going to make a HUGE DIFFERENCE in the world…and then quickly discovered that their students didn’t care what they were supposed to be learning -- they just wanted to have “have a good time!”
I watched those teachers burn out quick and a short time later start a new career in something sedate and calm and under control: like riot police…
Teaching is not only never-ending and extremely difficult; and not only don’t STUDENTS seem to care; their parents don’t seem to care, either. Oh, and society doesn’t particularly care about what goes on in its schools until something is going WRONG, and then it’s the teacher’s/district’s/society’s fault that their kids are failures…
My GUESS is that Bruce has done his job, nurtured new writers and then sent those successful writers into careers of acclaim and success…only to be forgotten in their Big Award Acceptance Speech, replaced by the importance of the support and investment of agents, family, friends, their current publisher, and pet iguanas.
Bruce spent many hours (days, months, years) teaching dozens of writers who now have garnered awards and fame – some of them have appeared in the pages of STUPEFYING STORIES, many are writers in their own right. While I’m not one of “those famous writers”, I DO have several novels, lots of short stories, and even an accolade or two! I’ve also thrown my efforts into supporting Bruce’s continued efforts by writing for the website (go here: https://stupefyingstories.com/; then search Guy Stewart). The articles I wrote gratis; he’s also published a few of my regular short stories for pay (I’ve been submitting there for the past 16 years. OH! A note as well, our friendship has NOT included “free publishing” – Bruce has rejected more than a few stories I’ve submitted. I guarantee you that I’ve been subjected to the same treatment as any “regular hopeful writer”!)
A VERY few of the writers Bruce nurtured and published: Vox Day, Anatoly Belilovsky, Caileigh Marshall, Daniel Eness, Jamie Lackey, Beth Cato, Evan Dicken, Anya Ow, and lots and lots of other people…(including me), went on to “fame and glory”. I even have a bit of that, though my fame and glory comes from having been a middle school and high school science teacher and the four handfuls of (once) young people who went on to become doctors, researchers, soldiers, therapists, (a couple writers, even!), as well as better students, and moms, dads, and (nowadays) even a few really great grandparents!
I continue to write and be published, I FINALLY wrote a 750 page novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY, which is not ONLY my magnum opus, but also (a new pair of words I stumbled across recently) Subcreational Evangelism (defined as: “a concept that merges J.R.R. Tolkien’s theology of sub-creation with the Christian practice of evangelism to use creative arts, storytelling, and world-building (secondary worlds) to reflect the truth of the Gospel and point people toward God.”
I HAVE DEFINED Martian Holiday as a hard science story – the data on Mars that I used was as up-to-date as I could find. I integrated it into the story. And it IS a story – it has crazies who believe that aliens visited Mars in the millennial past and will return soon to give power to true believers to take over Mars and make it their own…the Soldiers of the Face believe that the oddity “face on Mars” was built for them and holds untold technological secrets with which they can make Mars over in their image.
The fact that there ARE aliens who visited Mars once, some of whom died there, doesn’t matter to the Soldiers. They are the Alien’s Chosen Ones. But there’s something ELSE going on on Mars – it’s a spiritual awakening as Christians begin to affect how the government and regular people view Artificial Humans; paralleled by Christians who fought to free slaves and make owning another Human on Earth illegal. All of THAT is mixed together with Biblical figures: the apostle Paul; Daniel (of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fame); Queen Esther; and Steven.
ALL of this to say, “Dear Bruce, Thank you.” (I’d sign my name to it, but then I’d have to find all the OTHER people who’d be able to say the same thing to him…and that would make for a REALLY long article!)
References: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/5/142; https://www.facebook.com/StupefyingStories/
https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7J3y_W7WwpuCppG-N974bBQHSO0xhtedPagCK6UtAabIBpkjJ8JqOaFJHFD2mu40mJSoX2wVRqbKG3dZidFI1gU32-aSeaKVjGYq56aUyQYhmdCu8cyfX9QSdI390Z5j_biSaYwLvIe_yzevEk_8LSjTGR0gVSyBFr3RQlhDDn27fkWA5lqGrTFlg=s600
I watched those teachers burn out quick and a short time later start a new career in something sedate and calm and under control: like riot police…
Teaching is not only never-ending and extremely difficult; and not only don’t STUDENTS seem to care; their parents don’t seem to care, either. Oh, and society doesn’t particularly care about what goes on in its schools until something is going WRONG, and then it’s the teacher’s/district’s/society’s fault that their kids are failures…
My GUESS is that Bruce has done his job, nurtured new writers and then sent those successful writers into careers of acclaim and success…only to be forgotten in their Big Award Acceptance Speech, replaced by the importance of the support and investment of agents, family, friends, their current publisher, and pet iguanas.
Bruce spent many hours (days, months, years) teaching dozens of writers who now have garnered awards and fame – some of them have appeared in the pages of STUPEFYING STORIES, many are writers in their own right. While I’m not one of “those famous writers”, I DO have several novels, lots of short stories, and even an accolade or two! I’ve also thrown my efforts into supporting Bruce’s continued efforts by writing for the website (go here: https://stupefyingstories.com/; then search Guy Stewart). The articles I wrote gratis; he’s also published a few of my regular short stories for pay (I’ve been submitting there for the past 16 years. OH! A note as well, our friendship has NOT included “free publishing” – Bruce has rejected more than a few stories I’ve submitted. I guarantee you that I’ve been subjected to the same treatment as any “regular hopeful writer”!)
A VERY few of the writers Bruce nurtured and published: Vox Day, Anatoly Belilovsky, Caileigh Marshall, Daniel Eness, Jamie Lackey, Beth Cato, Evan Dicken, Anya Ow, and lots and lots of other people…(including me), went on to “fame and glory”. I even have a bit of that, though my fame and glory comes from having been a middle school and high school science teacher and the four handfuls of (once) young people who went on to become doctors, researchers, soldiers, therapists, (a couple writers, even!), as well as better students, and moms, dads, and (nowadays) even a few really great grandparents!
I continue to write and be published, I FINALLY wrote a 750 page novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY, which is not ONLY my magnum opus, but also (a new pair of words I stumbled across recently) Subcreational Evangelism (defined as: “a concept that merges J.R.R. Tolkien’s theology of sub-creation with the Christian practice of evangelism to use creative arts, storytelling, and world-building (secondary worlds) to reflect the truth of the Gospel and point people toward God.”
I HAVE DEFINED Martian Holiday as a hard science story – the data on Mars that I used was as up-to-date as I could find. I integrated it into the story. And it IS a story – it has crazies who believe that aliens visited Mars in the millennial past and will return soon to give power to true believers to take over Mars and make it their own…the Soldiers of the Face believe that the oddity “face on Mars” was built for them and holds untold technological secrets with which they can make Mars over in their image.
The fact that there ARE aliens who visited Mars once, some of whom died there, doesn’t matter to the Soldiers. They are the Alien’s Chosen Ones. But there’s something ELSE going on on Mars – it’s a spiritual awakening as Christians begin to affect how the government and regular people view Artificial Humans; paralleled by Christians who fought to free slaves and make owning another Human on Earth illegal. All of THAT is mixed together with Biblical figures: the apostle Paul; Daniel (of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fame); Queen Esther; and Steven.
ALL of this to say, “Dear Bruce, Thank you.” (I’d sign my name to it, but then I’d have to find all the OTHER people who’d be able to say the same thing to him…and that would make for a REALLY long article!)
References: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/5/142; https://www.facebook.com/StupefyingStories/
https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7J3y_W7WwpuCppG-N974bBQHSO0xhtedPagCK6UtAabIBpkjJ8JqOaFJHFD2mu40mJSoX2wVRqbKG3dZidFI1gU32-aSeaKVjGYq56aUyQYhmdCu8cyfX9QSdI390Z5j_biSaYwLvIe_yzevEk_8LSjTGR0gVSyBFr3RQlhDDn27fkWA5lqGrTFlg=s600
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