Susan's Archives From January 2020
Short Story: Weavering's Path of Whispering Pleas
This is the short story I wrote for NYC Midnight's First Round of the 2020 Short Story Challenge. Writers from all over the world are given 8 days to write to an assigned genre, subject, and character. The maximum word count is 2,500 words. There were about 4,000 writers all around the world participating in groups of 40. The top 5 of each group will progress to the next round. The winners will be announced at the end of March/ early April.
My genre was suspense, my subject a path, and my character a beekeeper.
5 Ways Short Fiction Helps my Novel Writing
I am going to discuss short fiction referring to both reading and writing it. In the past, I felt like writing short stories and flash fiction was a detour from my novel, almost like procrastinating with it until I got to the real writing that is novels. A piece of this probably has to do with the sales of short story collections being much lower. In general, I think they get a bum rap, short stories and flash fiction are an art form unto themselves. Literary magazines of all shapes and sizes are a great stepping stone for writers into the publishing world.
So, here are the five reasons why short fiction helps my novel writing:
5 Reasons to do a Short Story Contest
NYC Midnight holds contests for short stories, flash fiction, and screenplays. This year's contest has four rounds. All of the participants are broken into groups with an assigned genre, subject, and character. The top five stories are chosen by judges for each group and then the winners get to participate in the next round. The first round runs from Jan. 17-25, 2020. The story needs to be 2,500 words. I did this contest about four years ago and this will be my second time participating in the event.
So why do I want to do it?
5 Ways to Improve Sentence Variety
As I line edit my novel, I am writing blog posts to focus on aspects of writing I need to work on. For example, this filter word article : https://susanshiney.com/fumbling-around-with-filter-words/ .
In my last feedback session with critique partners, they mentioned my repetitive sentence structures. So true. My go to is complex sentences that start with a pronoun, in first person pov it tends to be I went...I walked...for every sentence, for 85,000 words, and that is a problem.
