Short Stories

[Anonymous No.11213229]

Anyone have any experience writing short stories? How many words long are the ones you write? Any specific collections or books on the craft I should read? I read Stephen King's On Writing and I didn't feel like I gained much knowledge afterwards.

[Anonymous No.11213261]

Stephen King is hackcore. Like he's not necessarily a hack himself but hacks love to read him because he has written a lot of hack shit. On Writing is really the perennial writer's cocktease with how often new writers grab it thinking it's going to open the gates to being a Serious Writer.

If you can, take a summer English class at your local community college or something. The best way to learn short stories is to sit in a classroom with a professor and read through one, honestly. Just the opportunity to take it a few lines at a time and hear other people's live and immediate reactions. 'Craft' trains us to think there is this correct way and that correct way but nothing compares to seeing live, real reactions as well as the chance to examine your own live, real reactions.

More than anything... read a lot of short stories. Baldwin, Chekhov, Lovecraft, dig through literary or genre journals.

[Anonymous No.11215251]

why the fuck did NAThAN BEIFUSS not use "six hundred and ten" instead of "seven hundred ten?"

does he not REALISE that "seven hundred ten" is grammatically improper? how the FUCK did this hack get famous in the first place?

[Anonymous No.11215282]

>>11215251
It's obviously a commentary on how AI has moved from rule based systems like encoding proper grammar to statistical methods. You ABSOLUTE pseud.

[Anonymous No.11215299]

>>11215251
>>11215282
This, tbqhfamalam

[Anonymous No.11215305]

>>11215282
I see the Beifusstards are out in full force tonight! Why can't you hacks admit that Nathan isn't the amazing literary legend you make him out to be, and that you only like him because he appeals to nerdy STEM chicks?

[Anonymous No.11215352]

>>11215251
he's a brainlet that's why

[Anonymous No.11215367]

>>11215305
The antinathanist in his pure form. Not even attempting to engage with literature, he assumes that others only ever base their beliefs and actions for reasons of image, just like himself.

[Anonymous No.11215387]

>>11213261

really good essay on barthelme by george saunders:

https://paulsaxton.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/saunders-barthelme-a.pdf

its in his braindead megaphone collection. i think analyses of short stories like these are really helpful

[Anonymous No.11215419]

I have been publishing short stories in some mid-level journals for a few years. Length is dependant on the story. Usually I write and then look for a magazine. Very rarely I write with a word limit in mind, unless for a competition or themed issue.

The best way to get better is to read a ton of stories. Find what makes the good ones good and the bad ones shit. Read stories that are prasied as being brilliant. Read stories from all eras. Visit journal’s sites and read all the available content you can.

Write, edit, edit, edit, edit. Then start submitting. The reality is that you will have to submit the same story to a huge amount of journals before one will accept it. Between the sheer number of submissions (I read for a smaller journal for a year and the amount they got was mind blowing... mostly useless shit but still) and the nightmare of trying to pull together a handfull of stories into a cohesive magazine, it is a huge amount of work. Keep at it and stay persistent and you will get in somewhere. Also, this is a personal thing of mine... if they say “no simultaneous submissions” fuck them. No journal should be so entitled to ask a writer to sit on a work for upwards of six months while waiting for them to, in all likelihood, reject it.

[Anonymous No.11215603]

>>11213229
thats a nice haiku