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Writing Exercises from John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" - Jenalle's EvCC Journal

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Writing Exercises from John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" - Jenalle's EvCC Journal

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Writing Exercises from John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction"

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I couldn't find this list anywhere online, and I have to return my library copy of the book soon... so I typed up all the writing exercises. These are great for jump starting your writing and getting...

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How to Introduce Setting | Read to Write Stories

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How to Introduce Setting | Read to Write Stories

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A basic element of all fiction is showing the reader where the story takes place. But how? Do you use a wide-angle lens or focus on details? If you zoom from one angle to another, when do you narrow or broaden the focus and how quickly or slowly?

Answers to these questions can be found in one of the most beautiful and well-crafted story openings I've read recently. "Two Midnights in a Jug" by Marc Watkins won the 2008 Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers, and you can read the story here.
How the Story Works
Let's focus on the opening paragraph:

"Follow any hollow in the Ozarks and it'll come to river or stream where soft clay the color of rust covers jagged limestone along the banks. Mountains cut by water dot the horizon, their peaks smoothed over millennia into knolls and greened with trees. In Eminence, MO, folks call trailer courts neighborhoods and hundred year old farm houses with acreage equal to a football field are mansions. There's one high school, and you'll get sidelong looks if you finish. People will talk, call you learnt, expect you to work at the mega hog farm as manager with an education. You'll need a wife, finding her's easy cause every household's got at least one daughter ready for marriage, and you won't meet her at a bar, there's only a few in town. More likely it'll be at a church, there's twenty inside city limits.

Here is where you're born and here is what you are."

The passage begins with a wide frame (any hollow in the Ozarks) and gradually zooms in on a particular town (Eminence, MO) and then parts of town (trailer parks, farmhouses, the high school, the mega hog farm). So far, the passage follows the basics of Describing Setting 101. But notice what happens next. The passage moves from physical setting to philosophical setting, i.e. what the people who live in the place think and how they talk. This transition is crucial to the story's development because it allows the narrative to begin. There's almost never any story inherent in place. Concrete is merely concrete, and trees don't care what happens around them. It's the people who walk on the concrete and sit beneath the trees that give those things meaning.

This transition from place to people happens all of the time in fiction. Look for it in the next story or novel you read. I bet you'll find it.
The Writing Exercise
Let's practice writing a description of setting that transitions from place to people.

1. Choose the place.

2. Write down the basics of the place's geography, landscape, and physical features. If you're describing an interior space, the same ideas still apply except that you're describing floor plans and architecture rather than landscape. (It's important to sketch these details out before actually writing the paragraph. Your brain doesn't always give you details in the best order for prose.)

3. Now, write about the sense that you have of the place: cultured/backward, beautiful/ugly, freeing/oppressive, spiritual/dead, exciting/dull, etc. Try to explain why you have this sense.

4. Finally, describe the people who occupy this place: smart/dumb, happy/sad, cosmopolitan/provincial, motivated/depressed, etc. When you think of these people, what actions, habits, or things first come to mind?

5. At last, let's write the paragraph.

6. Start with a wide frame: show us the largest view of the place that makes sense (i.e. the region/city/neighborhood and not the blue speck of planet Earth in the black universe.)

7. Zoom into the specific place where the story is set. Do this in no more than four sentences.

8. Transition to the people. Notice how Marc Watkins does this with the phrase "folks call trailer parks..." In the next sentence, he writes, "You'll need a wife..." And then he moves directly to the people: "People will talk..." He's transitioning from the Godlike objective view of a satellite looking down on Missouri to the subjective view of the people on the ground.

9. Drive home the sense that you have of this place with the people's actions or habits. Marc Watkins does this with details about finding a wife. When you finish this paragraph, you may be ready to write a story. Or at least you'll have a few good sentences about setting.

Good luck and have fun.

Tags: Boulevard Magazine, creative writing prompts, describing setting, descriptive language, how to write a short story, Marc Watkins, Ozarks stories, point of view, Southern Writers, writing exercise, writing setting

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A basic element of all fiction is showing the reader where the story takes place. But how? Do you use a wide-angle lens or focus on details? If you zoom from one angle to another, when do you narrow or broaden the focus and how quickly or slowly?

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How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish

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How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish

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I'm working on a new short story. However, it's been a while, and I'm feeling out of practice, like I have to figure out how to write a short story all over again.

To some extent, the process for writing a story is different each time. In the introduction to American Gods, Neil Gaiman quotes Gene Wolfe, who told him, "You never learn how to write a novel. You only learn to write the novel you're on."

This is true for short stories as well.

And yet, there are certain patterns to writing a short story, patterns I think everyone follows in their own haphazard way. I'll call them steps, but they're more like general paths that may or may not apply to your story. Still, it's these patterns that I want to present to you in hopes it will make your own short story writing easier.

At the same time, I've been presenting these rough steps to myself as I work on my own story. Good news: It's coming along!

Requirements to Writing a Short Story

But before we begin, let's quickly discuss three things you'll need to write your short story. If you don't have these, you should think twice before you begin:

Approximately ten to twenty hours of time. We all write at different paces, and depending on the length of your story (e.g. 200 word flash fiction vs. 5,000 word traditional short story) it might take five hours or fifty. But I've found that most short stories in the 3,000 to 5,000 word range take ten to twenty hours. Let me know how long yours take in the comments.

An idea. This guide assumes you already have an idea for a story, even if it's just a basic sliver of an idea. If you're still looking for an idea though, check out our top 100 story ideas.

Writing devices or utensils. Okay, it's obvious you need something to write with to finish a short story, but I needed a third point! (By the way, I recommend Scrivener for writing short stories. Here's my review.)

7 Steps to Write a Short Story

Ready to get writing? Here are seven steps on how to write a short story:

1. First, Write the Basic Story in One Sitting

It may seem silly to begin a list of steps on how to write a short story with a tip to "write the story," but let me explain.

There are really two different kinds of stories. There is the art form, "short stories," which comes complete with characters, plot, description, and style.

Then there's the story, the funny, amusing, crazy story you'd tell a friend over a meal.

The story and the short story are not the same thing. The former is just a story, we tell them all the time. The latter is an art.

The first step to writing a short story is to write the former, the story, that version of the story that you would tell a friend.

And when you write it, be sure to write it in one sitting. Just tell the story. Don't think about it too much, don't go off to do more research, don't take a break. Just get the story written down. Whenever I break this rule it takes me FOREVER to finish writing the story.

2. Next, Find Your Protagonist

After you've written the basic story, take a step back. You may feel extremely proud of your story or completely embarrassed. Ignore these feelings, as they bear no relation to how good or bad your story actually is or, more importantly, how good it will be.

The next step is to read through your story to find the protagonist.

"The protagonist is the character whose fate matters most to the story." Stephen Koch

- Joe Bunting (@joebunting) July 17, 2015

Now, you may think you already know who your protagonist is, but depending on your story, this can actually be more tricky than you might think.

Your protagonist isn't necessarily the narrator, nor is she necessarily the "good guy" in the story. Instead, the protagonist is the person who makes the decisions that drive the story forward.

Your protagonist centers the story, drives the plot, and his or her fate gives the story its meaning. As you move forward in the writing process, it's important to choose the right protagonist.
Learn more about how to create a protagonist in a story.
3. Then, Write the Perfect First Line

Great first lines have the power to entice your reader enough that it would be unthinkable to set your story down. If you want to hook your reader, it starts with writing the perfect first line.

We've written a full post about how to write the perfect first line, but here are five quick tips:

Like the opening of a film, invite us into the scene.

Surprise us.

Establish a voice.

Be clear.

See if you can tell the entirety of your story in a single sentence.

4. Break the Story Into a Scene List

Every story is composed of a set of scenes which take place in a specific place and time. A scene list keeps track of your scenes, helping you organize your story and add detail and life at each step.

Scene lists do two main things:

Provide structure to your story

Show you which parts need more work

You don't have to follow your scene list exactly, but they definitely help you work through your story, especially if you're writing over multiple sittings.
For more about how to create a scene list, check out our guide here.
5. Only Now Should You Research

If you're like me, you want to start researching as soon as you get an idea so that you can pack as much detail into the story as possible. The problem is that if you research too soon, what you find will distort your story, causing it to potentially break under the weight of what you've learned.

Other writers never research, which can leave their story feeling fuzzy and underdeveloped.

By waiting until your story is well on its way, you can keep it from getting derailed by the research process, and by this point you'll also be able to ask very specific questions about your story rather than following tangents wherever they take you.

So go fill in that scene list with some hard, cold facts!

6. Write/Edit/Write/Edit/Write/Edit

It's time to get some serious writing done.

Now that you know who your protagonist is, have the perfect first line, have created your scene list, and have done your research, it's time to finally get this story written.

We all write differently. Some write fast in multiple drafts, others write slow and edit as they go. I'm not going to tell you how you should be writing. Whatever works for you, just get it done.
For a thorough process on editing your story, check out my guest post on Positive Writer.
7. Publish!

I firmly believe publishing is the most important step to becoming a writer. That's why I'll tell you that once your story is finally written, it's not finished until it's published.

Now, you don't necessarily need to get published by Glimmer Train or Narrative. Instead, what if you got feedback from a writing friend or even by our Becoming Writer community?

If you want your short story to be as good as it can be, get feedback-first from a small group of friends or other writers, and then from a larger community of readers.

The worst thing you can do for your story is to hide it away out of fear or even feigned indifference.

Now, go get your story out into the world.

The Only Short Story They'll Ever Read

As you write your short story, I want you to ask yourself a question:

Annie Dillard said:

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.

Don't hold back. Don't save ideas. Don't write something you feel you should write.

Instead, write something that is wholly you, a story so bound to your soul that it would be impossible to mistake it for the work of another writer.

In other words, don't write the best story. Write your best story.

And above all, have fun. 🙂

Do you like to write short stories? What is your favorite part? Let me know in the comments!

PRACTICE

For today's practice, let's just take on step #1, write the basic story, the gist of the idea, the story as you'd tell it to a friend. Don't think about it too much, and don't worry about going into detail. You have six other steps to do that. Just write.

Write for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, please be sure to give feedback to your fellow writers.

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How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish

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I'm working on a new short story. However, it's been a while, and I'm feeling out of practice, like I have to figure out how to write a short story all over again. To some extent, the process for writing a story is different each time.

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Short Story Tips: 10 Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing | Jerz's Literacy Weblog

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Short Story Tips: 10 Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing | Jerz's Literacy Weblog

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Jerz > Writing > General Creative Writing Tips [ Poetry | Fiction ]

Writing short stories means beginning as close to the climax as possible - everything else is a distraction. A novel can take a more meandering path, but should still start with a scene that sets the tone for the whole book.

A short story conserves characters and scenes, typically by focusing on just one conflict, and drives towards a sudden, unexpected revelation. Go easy on the exposition and talky backstory - your reader doesn't need to know everything that you know about your characters.

1. Get Started: Emergency Tips

Do you have a short story assignment due tomorrow morning? The rest of this document covers longer-term strategies, but if you are in a pinch, these emergency tips may help. Good luck!

What does your protagonist want?
(The athlete who wants her team to win the big game and the car crash victim who wants to survive are not unique or interesting enough.)

When the story begins, what morally significant action has your protagonist taken towards that goal?
(Your protagonist should already have made a conscious choice, good or bad, that drives the rest of the story.)

What unexpected consequences - directly related to the protagonist's goal-oriented actions - ramp up the emotional energy of the story?
(Will the unexpected consequences force your protagonist to make yet another choice, leading to still more consequences?)

What details from the setting, dialog, and tone help you tell the story? Things to cut:

Travel scenes. (Save words. "Later, at the office, I...")

Character A telling character B about something we just saw happening to character A. (Cut the redundancy.)

Facial expressions of a first-person narrator. (We can't see what our own faces look like, so don't write "A smile lit my face from ear to ear.") See Writing Dialogue.

What morally significant choice does your protagonist make at the climax of the story?
(Your reader should care about the protagonist's decision. Ideally, the reader shouldn't see it coming.)

An effective short story (or poem) does not simply record or express the author's feelings; rather, it generates feelings in the reader. (See " Show, Don't (Just) Tell.")

Drawing on your own real-life experiences, such as winning the big game, bouncing back after an illness or injury, or dealing with the death of a loved one, are attractive choices for students who are looking for a "personal essay" topic. But simply listing the emotions you experienced ("It was exciting" "I've never been so scared in all my life" "I miss her so much") is not the same thing as generating emotions for your readers to experience.

Keep a notebook. To R. V. Cassill, notebooks are "incubators," a place to begin with overheard conversation, expressive phrases, images, ideas, and interpretations on the world around you.

Write on a regular, daily basis. Sit down and compose sentences for a couple of hours every day - even if you don't feel like it.

Collect stories from everyone you meet. Keep the amazing, the unusual, the strange, the irrational stories you hear and use them for your own purposes. Study them for the underlying meaning and apply them to your understanding of the human condition.

For those of you who are looking for more long-term writing strategies, here are some additional ideas.

Read, Read, Read

Read a LOT of Chekhov. Then re-read it. Read Raymond Carver, Earnest Hemingway, Alice Munro, and Tobias Wolff. If you don't have time to read all of these authors, stick to Chekhov. He will teach you more than any writing teacher or workshop ever could.-Allyson Goldin, UWEC Asst. Professor of Creative Writing

2. Write a Catchy First Paragraph

In today's fast-moving world, the first sentence of your narrative should catch your reader's attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a . Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.

Dry. Nothing sparks the reader's imagination.

The second sentence catches the reader's attention. Who is this guy who goes in his shower every day and screams? Why does he do that? What, exactly, is "scream therapy"? Let's keep reading...

The rest of the paragraph introduces I and an internal conflict as the protagonist debates a course of action and introduces an intriguing contrast of past and present setting.

"It is important to understand the basic elements of fiction writing before you consider how to put everything together. This process is comparable to producing something delectable in the kitchen-any ingredient that you put into your bowl of dough impacts your finished loaf of bread. To create a perfect loaf, you must balance ingredients baked for the correct amount of time and enhanced with the right polishing glaze." -Laurel Yourke

3. Developing Characters

Your job, as a writer of short fiction-whatever your beliefs-is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value-that will, in Chekhov's words, "make [man] see what he is like." - Rick Demarnus

In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story. Here is a partial list of character details to help you get started.

Appearance. Gives your reader a visual understanding of the character.

Action. Show the reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives.

Speech. Develop the character as a person - don't merely have your character announce important plot details.

Thought. Bring the reader into your character's mind, to show them your character's unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

Imagining all these details will help you get to know your character, but your reader probably won't need to know much more than the most important things in four areas:

For example, let's say I want to develop a college student persona for a short story that I am writing. What do I know about her?

Her name is Jen, short for Jennifer Mary Johnson. She is 21 years old. She is a fair-skinned Norwegian with blue eyes, long, curly red hair, and is 5 feet 6 inches tall. Contrary to the stereotype about redheads, she is actually easygoing and rather shy. She loves cats and has two of them named Bailey and Allie. She is a technical writing major with a minor in biology. Jen plays the piano and is an amateur photographer. She lives in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She eats pizza every day for lunch and loves Red Rose tea. She cracks her knuckles when she is nervous. Her mother just committed suicide.

4. Choose a Point of View

First Person. The story is told from the view of "I." The narrator is either the protagonist (main character) and directly affected by unfolding events, or the narrator is a secondary character telling the story revolving around the protagonist.

I saw a tear roll down his cheek. I had never seen my father cry before. I looked away while he brushed the offending cheek with his hand.

This is a good choice for beginning writers because it is the easiest to write. (But if your viewpoint character is too much like you, a first-person story might end up being a too-transparent exercise in wish-fulfillment, or score-settling.)

Second Person. The story is told directly to "you", with the reader as a participant in the action.

You laughed loudly at the antics of the clown. You clapped your hands with joy.

(See also Jerz on interactive fiction.)

Third Person. The story tells what "he", "she," or "it" does. The third-person narrator's perspective can be limited (telling the story from one character's viewpoint) or omniscient (where the narrator knows everything about all of the characters).

He ran to the big yellow loader sitting on the other side of the gravel pit shack.

Your narrator might take sides in the conflict you present, might be as transparent as possible, or might advocate a position that you want your reader to challenge (this is the "unreliable narrator" strategy).

First Person. "Unites narrator and reader through a series of secrets" when they enter one character's perceptions. However, it can "lead to telling" and limits readers connections to other characters in the short story.

Second Person. "Puts readers within the actual scene so that readers confront possibilities directly." However, it is important to place your characters "in a tangible environment" so you don't "omit the details readers need for clarity."

Third Person Omniscient. Allows you to explore all of the characters' thoughts and motivations. Transitions are extremely important as you move from character to character.

Third Person Limited. "Offers the intimacy of one character's perceptions." However, the writer must "deal with character absence from particular scenes."

Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the action objectively.

Yourke on point of view:

5. Write Meaningful Dialogue

Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. - Jerome Stern

Dialogue is what your characters say to each other (or to themselves).
Write Meaningful Dialogue Labels
Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is doing when speaking. (See: " Quotation Marks: Using Them in Dialogue ".)

The above paragraph is confusing, because it is not clear when one speech stops and the other starts.

"Where are you going?" John asked nervously.
"To the racetrack," Mary said, trying to figure out whether John was too upset to let her get away with it this time.
"Not again," said John, wondering how they would make that month's rent. "We are already maxed out on our credit cards."

The second example is mechanically correct, since it uses a separate paragraph to present each speaker's turn advancing the conversation. But the narrative material between the direct quotes is mostly useless.

"John asked nervously" is an example of "telling." The author could write "John asked very nervously" or "John asked so nervously that his voice was shaking," and it still wouldn't make the story any more effective.

How can the author convey John's state of mind, without coming right out and telling the reader about it? By inference. That is, mention a detail that conjures up in the reader's mind the image of a nervous person.

Beware - a little detail goes a long way. Why would your reader bother to engage with the story, if the author carefully explains what each and every line means?

6. Use Setting and Context

Remember to combine setting with characterization and plot.

Include enough detail to let your readers picture the scene but only details that actually add something to the story. (For example, do not describe Mary locking the front door, walking across the yard, opening the garage door, putting air in her bicycle tires, getting on her bicycle-none of these details matter except that she rode out of the driveway without looking down the street.)

Use two or more senses in your descriptions of setting.

Rather than feed your readers information about the weather, population statistics, or how far it is to the grocery store, substitute descriptive details so your reader can experience the location the way your characters do.

Our sojourn in the desert was an educational contrast with its parched heat, dust storms, and cloudless blue sky filled with the blinding hot sun. The rare thunderstorm was a cause for celebration as the dry cement tunnels of the aqueducts filled rapidly with rushing water. Great rivers of sand flowed around and through the metropolitan inroads of man's progress in the greater Phoenix area, forcefully moved aside for concrete and steel structures. Palm trees hovered over our heads and saguaro cactuses saluted us with their thorny arms.

Setting moves readers most when it contributes to an organic whole. So close your eyes and picture your characters within desert, jungle, or suburb-whichever setting shaped them. Imagining this helps balance location and characterization. Right from the start, view your characters inhabiting a distinct place. - - Laurel Yourke

Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.

7. Set Up the Plot

Plot is what happens, the storyline, the action. Jerome Stern says it is how you set up the situation, where the turning points of the story are, and what the characters do at the end of the story.

Explosion or "Hook." A thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that grabs the reader's attention right away.

A character versus the internal self or an external something or someone.

Exposition. Background information required for seeing the characters in context.

Complication. One or more problems that keep a character from their intended goal.

Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue, that joins paragraphs and scenes together.

Flashback. Remembering something that happened before the short story takes place.

Climax. When the rising action of the story reaches the peak.

Falling Action. Releasing the action of the story after the climax.

Resolution. When the internal or external conflict is resolve.

A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. - Janet Burroway

1. She becomes a workaholic.

2. Their children are unhappy.

3. Their children want to live with their dad.

4. She moves to another city.

5. She gets a new job.

6. They sell the house.

7. She meets a psychiatrist and falls in love.

8. He comes back and she accepts him.

9. He comes back and she doesn't accept him.

10. She commits suicide.

11. He commits suicide.

12. She moves in with her parents.

Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.

Brainstorming. If you are having trouble deciding on a plot, try brainstorming. Suppose you have a protagonist whose husband comes home one day and says he doesn't love her any more and he is leaving. What are actions that can result from this situation?

The next step is to select one action from the list and brainstorm another list from that particular action.

8. Create Conflict and Tension

Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting. It takes trouble to turn the great themes of life into a story: birth, love, sex, work, and death. - Janet Burroway

The protagonist against another individual

The protagonist against nature (or technology)

The protagonist against society

The protagonist against God

The protagonist against himself or herself.

Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end.

Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.

Empowerment. Give both sides options.

Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.

Causality. Hold fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks often reap rewards.

Surprise. Provide sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in advance.

Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).

Insight. Reveal something about human nature.

Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.

High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction.

Possible Conflicts Include:

Yourke's Conflict Checklist

9. Build to a Crisis or Climax

This is the turning point of the story -the most exciting or dramatic moment.

The crisis may be a recognition, a decision, or a resolution. The character understands what hasn't been seen before, or realizes what must be done, or finally decides to do it. It's when the worm turns. Timing is crucial. If the crisis occurs too early, readers will expect still another turning point. If it occurs too late, readers will get impatient-the character will seem rather thick.- Jerome Stern

Jane Burroway says that the crisis "must always be presented as a scene. It is "the moment" the reader has been waiting for. In Cinderella's case, "the payoff is when the slipper fits."

While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a sudden illness is simply an emergency -unless it somehow involves a conflict that makes the reader care about the characters (see: " Crisis vs. Conflict ").

10. Find a Resolution

Open. Readers determine the meaning.
Brendan's eyes looked away from the priest and up to the mountains.

Resolved. Clear-cut outcome.
While John watched in despair, Helen loaded up the car with her belongings and drove away.

Parallel to Beginning. Similar to beginning situation or image.

They were driving their 1964 Chevrolet Impala down the highway while the wind blew through their hair.

Her father drove up in a new 1964 Chevrolet Impala, a replacement for the one that burned up.

Monologue. Character comments.
I wish Tom could have known Sister Dalbec's prickly guidance before the dust devils of Sin City battered his soul.

Dialogue. Characters converse.

Literal Image. Setting or aspect of setting resolves the plot.
The aqueducts were empty now and the sun was shining once more.

Symbolic Image. Details represent a meaning beyond the literal one.
Looking up at the sky, I saw a cloud cross the shimmering blue sky above us as we stood in the morning heat of Sin City.

The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.

Got Writer's Block?

The Writer's Block
Comprehensive Web site that offers solutions to beating writer's block such as various exercises (not necessarily physical), advice from prolific writers, and how to know if you really have writer's block.

Regular access to an instructor who is a published author, and a peer group that is motivated to read your drafts, might just be the extra motivation you need to develop your own skills.

If you are counting on the credits transferring to help you complete an academic program, check with your university registrar.

Overcoming Writer's Block
Precise, short list of ways to start writing again.

Learn through Schooling
Some online colleges and universities offer creative writing courses. Look for ones that offer creative writing courses that cover the plot and structure of short stories.

Show, Don't (Just) Tell
Don't just tell me your brother is funny... show me what he says and does, and let me decide whether I want to laugh. To convince your readers, show, don't just tell them what you want them to know. There. I've just told you something. Pretty boring, huh? Now, let me show you...

Short Stories: Developing Ideas for Short Fiction
A short story is tight - there is no room for long exposition, there are no subplots to explore, and by the end of the story there should be no loose ends to tie up. End right at the climax, so that the reader has to imagine how a life-changing event will affect the protagonist.

Creative Writing Forum
Have a story you'd like to share? Looking for feedback? Feel free to post in this creative writing forum.

MLA Style: Step-By-Step Instructions for Formatting MLA Papers
Need to write a paper in MLA format? This step-by-step includes images showing how to use MS-Word to create the title block, page layout, and works cited list.

Archived discussion of "Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers"
Dec. 2002 - submitted by Kathy Kennedy, UWEC Senior
(for Jerz's Advanced Technical Writing class)
Jan 2003 - edited by Jamie Dalbesio, UWEC Senior
(for an independent study project with Jerz)
May 2003 - edited by Jerz and posted at Seton Hill University
Jan 2007 - ongoing edits by Jerz
May 2008 - reformatted
Sep 2010 - tweaked Writer's Block section
Mar 2011 - reformatted and further tweaked
Jun 2017 - minor editing. Are "Keds" still a recognizable brand of kids shoes?

Related Pages

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Short Story Tips: 10 Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing

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Jerz > Writing > General Creative Writing Tips [ Poetry | Fiction ] Writing short stories means beginning as close to the climax as possible -- everything else is a distraction.

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Break through writing blocks with free creative writing exercises and prompts.

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This site provides (completely free) writing prompts and exercises to help you get started with creative writing and break through writing blocks - and some fun anagram vocabulary games.

Generate random story ideas, plots, subjects, scenarios, characters, first lines for stories and more. Did I mention it's all free? Have fun :-)

- Update March 2022: the Anagram Game now includes a choice of dictionaries
- The site now includes an Anagram Solver
- The Scrabble Trainer now includes practice in J, K, Q, X and Z words

Generate a random first line for a story.

Prompts to encourage freewriting.

Generate a plot-line at the click of a button.

Generate two characters, a setting, a situation and a theme. Change the elements until you are happy with your plot.

Another freewriting exercise. Make connections between random nouns.

Writing prompts to help with dialogue writing.

Create a 'What If?' scenario to write about.

Browse my collection of writing exercises.

For poets and songwriters. Enter a word to find rhyming and similar-sounding words.

Generate a selection of words and use the suggestions to kick-start your writing.

Create your own story title.

Create a character outline.

There's now a section dedicated to writing prompts for children of primary/elementary school age.

Generate a fictitious,'English-sounding' town name.

Get plot ideas for your own story-writing by looking at the plots of over 100 popular films.

Use images to help you write.

Generate random traits for your characters.

Generate an occupation for your character.

Choose first and last names for characters.

Develop your character into a well-rounded person, quirky habits and all.

Exercise your brain and keep your vocabulary in good shape with this free anagram game.

Another anagram game - each word must contain the middle letter.

Enter a list of letters and discover all the words you can make with them.

Have fun improving your Scrabble vocabulary.

Because every aspiring author needs a back-up plan...

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This site provides (completely free) writing prompts and exercises to help you get started with creative writing and break through writing blocks - and some fun anagram vocabulary games. Generate random story ideas, plots, subjects, scenarios, characters, first lines for stories and more. Did I mention it's all free?

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100 Short Story (or Novel) Writing Prompts | LetterPile

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100 Short Story (or Novel) Writing Prompts | LetterPile

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I love to write creative writing prompts. For over seven years, I have been coming up with new ideas every week for The Write Prompts.

Here, I do the same, only these are all starter or "continue on" writing prompts. They are a great way to get the juices flowing when you do not know where to start. They are what I would call the first line or in some cases, the first paragraph of a potential story or novel. You, the writer, simply write or type the prompt at the top of your page and continue writing with your own words until you finish the story.

If you finish the thoughts listed below, you will have written 100 short stories (or novels, if you are so inspired). Rather than picking and choosing, I recommend you give yourself the challenge of working through each one. Have fun!

One of my favorite authors is Stephen King. The funny thing about this is that the first book I ever read of his was On Writing, a blend of autobiography and writing advice. This book turned me on to The Stand, a very large book I managed to read in four days (normally, I am a very slow reader). From then on, I have been hooked. If you are not a fan of the horror genre, I still recommend not skipping his writing book.

PLEASE NOTE: You are free to use these writing prompts within your creative writing, but please do not post them on your website or elsewhere- provide a link to this page instead. Many thanks.

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100 Short Story (or Novel) Writing Prompts

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I love to write creative writing prompts. For over seven years, I have been coming up with new ideas every week for The Write Prompts. Here, I do the same, only these are all starter or "continue on" writing prompts. They are a great way to get the juices flowing when you do not know where to start.

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Creative Writing Exercises for New Short Story Ideas

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Creative Writing Exercises for New Short Story Ideas

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Sometimes the hardest part of writing is figuring out what to do with that blank page. Coming up with a new short story idea doesn't have to be painful, however. These exercises are designed to get you writing -- and hopefully on your way to a new short story.

At the very least, free writing forces you to put words on the page (a good start toward curing writer's block). Ideally, however, you'll find yourself writing about ideas and situations worth greater exploration.

Set your timer for 5 minutes and write without taking your pencil off the paper. Whatever comes to mind should be written. Once you are done, take a breath and see what you have written! Even a sentence fragment can be used to start a new short story!

Secrets

This popular writing exercise for groups or pairs uses secrets to suggest plots and themes you might not write about normally. Your little secret could give someone big ideas.

Photographs or other images often suggest a narrative. Working alone, in pairs, or in groups, discover a story you wouldn't have thought of on your own. Check out the literary magazine and podcast People Holding, which assigns photos to authors to write about!

Sometimes simply using new words can inspire your writing to take a new direction. In this exercise, a few words chosen at random will provide a new focus for today's writing.

Idea Box

Start collecting words, phrases, images, and objects that inspire you so that when writer's block strikes, you have a place to turn.

Memories

Write down a list of memories. Try to be as specific as possible. Then go back and try to figure out why each memory is important. What did the moment mean, and why did it stay with you?

Is there a secondary memory that goes along with it? Is there a way to see the situation differently now than when you experienced it?

Try writing the memory from another character's Point-of-View. How do the two perspectives clash? What is the reasoning behind each of the actions? Is there a misunderstanding? Now write that story!

Eavesdrop

Get out of your office (or bed) and go to a local coffee shop. Get a coffee and just listen. People talk loud enough for you to hear, and their words, out of context, can go anywhere you want them to. Collect random sentences from strangers and start a story with each one.

Recycle

Often you will be inspired by just reading your old work, and can finish the original story you started, but if that doesn't work, go back to an old story you never finished, and randomly pick a line from it. Start a new story about something completely different, simply using that first line. Remember: save all your work! You never know when you will be inspired by a story you previously felt you could not finish.

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Creative Writing Exercises to Inspire You

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Sometimes the hardest part of writing is figuring out what to do with that blank page. Coming up with a new short story idea doesn't have to be painful, however. These exercises are designed to get you writing -- and hopefully on your way to a new short story.

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Creative Writing Prompts | WritersDigest.com

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Creative Writing Prompts | WritersDigest.com

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Need an idea to help you get started writing? You'll find hundreds of fun writing prompts here - perfect for beginning a new novel or short story, or simply giving your writing muscle a workout.

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Writing Forward | Creative Writing Tips and Ideas

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Writing Forward | Creative Writing Tips and Ideas