The Seven Challenges I Love About Writing Short Stories by Jerome W. McFadden
May 13, 2024 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as Jerome W. McFadden, Short Stories, writing, Writing Advice
Multi-award winning Jerome W. McFadden’s has had forty short stories published over the past ten years in magazines, e-zines, and a dozen anthologies. His efforts have won him several national awards and writing contests, receiving a National Bullet Award for the Best Crime fiction on appear on the web in June 2011. His short stories have been read on stage by the Liar’s League in Hong Kong and the Liar’s League in London.
After receiving his B.A. from the University of Missouri, he spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Casablanca, Morocco. Following his MBA from the Thunderbird Graduate School of Global Management (Arizona State University). He continued his peripatetic ways with corporate assignments in Houston, Istanbul, Paris, San Francisco, and Singapore, spending his spare time writing free-lance articles for American and newspapers and magazines. He morphed from journalism to short fiction in 2009. He now resides in Bethlehem, Pa. and is an active member of the Bethlehem Writers Group. His collection of 26 short stories, Off The Rails, A Collection of Weird, Wicked, & Wacky Stories, appeared in November, 2019.
The Seven Challenges that I Love About Writing Short Stories
1) You need to get into the story from the very start:
Every word in a short story matters. Time and space are limited. You cannot afford to waste a page or two describing the weather, building the setting, or giving the genealogy of your hero/heroine. You need to get to the guts of the action quickly, pulling the reader in with the first paragraph. By the end of the first page, the reader should be aware of the famous 5 W’s of journalism: Who, where, when, what, with why possibly coming later.
2) You need to quickly define the core of the story:
Short stories follow only one trajectory — one arc—concerning one character (or a small group of characters) traveling through one primary crisis or concern. The crisis or concern is in fact one shattering moment in that person’s (or group’s) life that he/she must work through, successfully or unsuccessfully. Note: That shattering moment does not need to be violent. It could be emotional, psychological, mental, or spiritual, or other. But it needs to be challenging. *
3) You must develop your characters rapidly:
Characters must be constructed with complexity, credibility, and emotion—in as little as a sentence or two. The writer must show character development while actively moving through the story’s narrative. You do not have time or space for the big old info dump. Instead, the writer needs to use clever dialogue, interactions, short flashbacks, and sharp imagery to develop the story’s characters.
4) You are allowed only so many characters in the story:
You are limited to a small cast of characters. A full cast might consist of only one or two characters. Any character you decide to introduce must bring something crucial to the story – or be eliminated. Bringing in a character for “cuteness” or for “color” or just because you like the quirky character in your head, is wasting precious words and precious space in your story. A good rule: Any character that does not bring in two vital elements into the story needs to be eliminated forthwith.
5) Short stories require a strong pace and balance:
Recognize the descriptions and dialogues that slowing the story down, as well those that are those that are moving the story along. You must identify the best place to start, where to put the opening scene that hooks the reader, then maintain that hook to continue to pull the reader through the rest of the story.
6) Short stories teach you to trim the fat:
Short stories leave no time for easing into things (long descriptions, banal conversations, interesting but boring backstory, wild personal tangents). Short stories are just that—short—but they must always pack a punch. This may be the ultimate skill to be learned from short story writing: Trim the fat. My favorite writing “rule” comes from the legendary writer Elmore Lenonard, “Leave out the parts that the readers skip.”
7) A great short story must create an emotional impact:
The stronger, the better. And a great twist at the ending helps make the story memorable.
An added note: The tools and skill you pick up from writing short stories are assets that can and probably should be used in your novel writing.
*This “shattering moment” is described lovingly and in full detail in Chapter 3 – The Big Key in James Scott Bell’s wonderful book How to Write Short Stories And Use Them to Further Your Writing Career.
A Selection of Books with Short Stories by Jerome W. McFadden
An Uneasy Out
April 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as writing
The plane sat on the Philadelphia tarmac, waiting in line to take off. Steph blinked at the sunlight illuminating her face in the window seat; clear and sunny: a good omen for her trip to San Diego, to her former roommate’s wedding. Except, the journey was for the marital knot she’d hoped wouldn’t happen.
Then the person in the seat behind her threw up.
We haven’t even started rolling down the runway.
Steph’s fellow travelers in Row 23 shifted in their seats as the retching continued.
Several call lights switched on. The ill person murmured, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
When no flight attendant responded to the lights, a man across the aisle in Row 24 tried a verbal summons. “We’ve got a sick person back here,” he shouted. “She needs help.”
Steph calculated the time frames that would now shift. This flight had an hour layover in Denver, but if the plane returned to the terminal instead of heading aloft, she might miss the connecting flight. Which would make her late for the rehearsal. Which would push the rehearsal dinner later. Christi had urged her to fly out the day before, but Steph had limited vacay days. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could endure watching her friend marry the guy Steph had thought was hers.
A flight attendant finally walked back to Row 24. By this time, the woman behind Steph was moaning softly and was, from what Steph could see as she surreptitiously peeked over the seat back, slumped against the window.
After trying to rouse the passenger, the attendant hurried to the front of the plane.
Moments later, the overhead speakers crackled to life.
“Folks, we’re heading back to the terminal because of a medical emergency. We’ll do our best to get in the air as soon as possible after that’s resolved. Thank you for your understanding.”
The cabin burst into conversation, and Steph’s seatmates compared notes about their destinations and the delay. She pulled out her phone to text Christi the news but stopped. Was this her excuse to miss the ceremony? She could even float a tiny lie about exposure. After all, she was only a couple of feet away from an obviously ill person. Christi didn’t need to know that Steph’s “illness” was dread.
The jet snuggled against the skywalk, and a flight attendant announced, “Please remain in your seats while the medical crew helps the ill passenger. We are determining if we will need to move to a new plane.”
Two EMTs entered the plane with a stretcher between them. With quiet efficiency, they moved the unconscious woman onto the stretcher and quickly wheeled her away.
Another flight attendant cleaned and sterilized the area, and the two people who had been seated next to the ill passenger resumed their places. The window seat remained empty.
Steph weighed her message to Christi. The closer the time to the wedding, the less she wanted to go. Why had she ever agreed to be a bridesmaid?
Flight is delayed. I’ll be late.
Let Christi take her wrath out on those already there. When Steph finally showed up, she could plead a migraine, an aching back—anything that would allow her to skip the ceremony, or at least sit in the back row and pretend to watch.
OMG. I told you to take an earlier flight.
Steph smiled grimly at her friend’s response. Reeve just might deserve Christi. He’d ghosted Steph more than a year into their relationship, although the frequent unanswered texts and calls prior to that should have been clues. And when Christi shared the news of her engagement to Reeve—“I’m sorry, but crazy things like this happen”—Steph was surprised her friend wanted her in the wedding. Perhaps it was to gloat.
When the flight touched down in Denver, Steph’s connecting flight had already departed. The slight queasiness that started when they were still over Pennsylvania had grown in strength until she knew she would not be traveling westward from Colorado. She didn’t need a made-up excuse; she had the real thing. She just hoped it was short-lived.
Some of Dianna’s stories are in the following anthologies.
The Character Must Die
April 22, 2024 by Veronica Jorge in category Write From the Heart by Veronica Jorge tagged as characters, letting go, Veronica Jorge, writing
I killed one of the characters in my novel.
(It was more like two, but I have no qualms about the second one.)
I came up with a death scene I really liked and just had to use it, so someone had to “go.”
I’m still not sure if it was in the best interest of the story, or if I’m just stuck on having to use a particular description.
As I reflect on the sequence of events and the wording, and debate the character’s fate; to live or not to live? I think about language in general and the nuances contained therein.
The English “goodbye”, like the characters in a book, can be so finite. Here today, gone tomorrow.
In contrast, parting words in other languages encompass a world of possibilities of that which is yet to be experienced. Whether it’s, auf wiedersehen in German, arrivederci in Italian, or hasta luego in Spanish, each expresses the probability, and the hope, that we will meet again. Even the Japanese rarely use sayonara, unless it really is “the end.”
In life, as in writing and in reading, I prefer the meanings that other languages provide for that interim we call separation. And I would like to think that the characters we create in our imaginations, that eventually inhabit the pages of a book, continue on, not only in our own minds, but in the minds, and perhaps the hearts, of our readers.
So, if I must terminate one of my characters, I’ll think of them as an old soldier who has faithfully served, and comfort myself with the words of General Douglas MacArthur.
“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
And I realize that no matter how wonderful a story may be, as we grow and change, some of the characters we loved best as writers and readers do fade away and/or are replaced by others.
But, they never really die.
We meet them over and over again in the ways they have touched us and changed us, and have made us different and maybe, even better, for having met them.
See you next time on May 22nd.
Veronica Jorge
0 1 Read moreDrenched
March 30, 2024 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as blog fiction, short fiction, writing
A day of never-ending rain. Pounding on the roof, dripping off overflowing eaves, collecting in pools and puddles on the lawn. Hour after hour, by the quarter- and the half-inch, the water climbing the sides of the rain gauge in the small yard until it reached a full three inches.
The broad Delaware flowed brown with the mud it had picked up farther upstream. And like the water in the rain gauge, the river crept up its banks until it swirled only steps from Cara’s back porch.
Flood stage was sixteen feet, and according to the gauge at Frenchtown, the river stood at fourteen feet and rising.
It was the price she paid for living in a house perched on the riverbank. When it rained, she risked being flooded out.
And, unbelievably, the rain drove even harder against the roof. The plastic bucket she set under an intermittent leak in the living room splatted with a steady rhythm—Thunk-thunk, Thunk-thunk.
Jasper, her beagle, trotted back and forth across the kitchen tile, keyed up because of the downpour. He hated storms and only barely tolerated steady rain. Just like her ex, hating their stormy relationship and only barely putting up with their daily life. It was no surprise when Todd bailed three years into their marriage.
At two o’clock, Cara put on her rain jacket and boots, and drove slowly through the slosh of water that ran across her road, the new stream seeking the river, on the downslope. Her mother would be waiting at the door, ready for her doctor appointment.
Sitting in the waiting room, Cara felt her phone buzz. Kimm, her neighbor. They R evacuating us. Closing road. I’ll be at my sister’s.
But Jasper. She texted back: Can u take Jasper? I’ll get him from u later.
Several beats later Kimm responded. Water 2 high. Sorry.
“Mom, I can’t stay,” Cara said, as she dropped off her mother after the appointment. “My dog …”
“Oh, he’ll be fine.” Her mother shuffled slowly beneath Cara’s umbrella. “Todd is there, and it’s just a little rain.”
Her mother routinely forgot Cara was divorced, had been for a year and a half. He’d wanted them to move to higher ground, but she refused. The river was her life blood.
Zipping back to her neighborhood along the river, Cara splashed through standing water, her wipers on high, and cursed the car’s defrost, which couldn’t clear the fog from the front window.
A flashing Road Closed sign a quarter mile from her turnoff stopped her momentarily. But no one official was monitoring the road, and she maneuvered her car around the barrier to continue up the road.
She was about a thousand feet from her destination when she could go no farther in her car. The water stretched ahead of her, swirling and frothing. Pulling well off the shoulder, she parked and waded into the flood. The water reached her ankles and then her knees, but she could see her house, the brown roof, the thirty-foot pine near the south wall. The house itself was up a slight rise, so that by the time she reached it, the water had retreated to her ankles.
Jasper’s barking welcomed her onto the porch. She unlocked the door, and the dog pranced around her legs.
“Yes, I’m home.” She wrestled playfully with the beagle, but the rising water lapping at the porch steps caught her eye. It was a major torrent; this time the house might not survive.
She had to. To prove to Todd she was right.
With a calmness she didn’t feel, she found her backpack and a duffel bag, placing within them essentials she wanted to save. Jasper followed her from room to room, whining softly. She knew what he meant: Stop the rain.
“Wish I could, buddy,” she said, pausing briefly to give him a pat.
She checked the house one last time and locked the front door. The river churned in a muddy eddy, like a mug of pale chocolate. The water was now at the bottom porch step, knee deep—too deep for Jasper. But if she didn’t leave now, the combination of rising water and current might overwhelm her.
She hauled the stuffed pack onto her back, looped the duffel over her right shoulder, and picked up Jasper. He let her hold him, without a wiggle or squirm.
One foot into the water, then the other. The current tugged at her. Step by step, careful to position each foot solidly on the path, Cara traveled several hundred feet. Then a misstep let the current spin her and she started to fall. Releasing Jasper, she caught herself and gasped.
The dog. He’d disappeared beneath the surface.
“Help!” she called, although no one was there to hear. “Jasper!”
After she battled a moment of frozen panic, the dog’s head popped up. He was swimming beside her.
Pushing ahead, Cara reached the shallower water and then the gravel; Jasper now trotted on solid ground.
She bent and hugged him, his wet fur wiping the tears from her face. They’d made it.
These Anthologies Contain Some of Dianna’s Short Stories
Big, Cheesy News Update!
March 15, 2024 by Renae Wrich in category Writing tagged as Childrens Lit, Coming Soon, Mac and Cheese, writingI’m so excited to announce that my second children’s book, Mac and Cheese in Outer Space is coming soon!
I will be working again with Winda Mulyasari, who helped my mac and cheese world come to life back in 2020 when I published Mac and Cheese, Please, Please, Please.
Winda is super talented and I’m excited to watch her take my wild ideas and turn them into beautiful illustrations. My mac and cheese heart is bursting with excitement.
I’m also feeling very fortunate that I get to have my very first official author reading on Monday! Pictures to come!!
Hope everyone has a wonderful St. Paddy’s Day!
Peace, love, and Mac and Cheese,
Renae
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