Writing Short Fiction: It's a Hoot!

Fiction at its simplest, but also its hardest...

Writing short fiction is like capturing the call of a wild animal.

An owl hoots for its mate. A coyote calls its pack for the hunt. A rabbit screams as it dies. My rooster alerts because I shined a light at the coop after I heard that scream.

More than once I have stood very still and hit record to try to capture that owl hoot, or a bird call I can't identify. Luckily, writing short stories requires action, not blind luck.

I joined a flash fiction workshop with an editor I like. And while workshops end, recordings and blogs are forever. You can listen to our editor explain plotting and scene beats. You can join his discord server where he runs weekly critique sessions where he critiques your work.

Last step of my self-edit, following the editor’s advice

Short stories are my first love and I've had a few published over the decades. I've also always loved helping other writers. Most of those writers are writing novels, but could they still benefit from writing short fiction? Anyone who’s ever written a drabble can tell you that a 100 words is harder than it looks.

Short fiction teaches you economy of words and how to layer ideas. I've read short stories that were more touching and beautiful than some of the novels I've read. You can also learn faster from short stories because you don't spend four years drafting before you realize that 10 POVs is too many. So I would say that short stories are easier to learn from. Another way to accelerate your learning is to work with and read from editors and those more experienced than you.

Thankfully, our assignment was 1500 words, not 100. At first I thought this was too short. The last two short stories I wrote were novelettes at 10-13k. My first draft was 2.2k. But our editor had a great list of what to work through on a self edit, and you know what cut the most from my first draft?

BMCE. Beginning, middle, climax, and end. It sounds basic but that's because it's inescapable. I had chosen my plot well but needed to dial my beginning forward by just a few minutes, cutting out one of my darlings (bright ideas). Between that and the rest of the editor’s list, I soon had a 1500 word story.

There’s something lovely about that short burst of an owl’s call. Animals know how to get to the point, so I’ll leave you with a 100 word drabble I feel does precisely that.

Want to join a writing group that does several events like this every year, plus more casual, chatty activities for writers of all levels?

Or maybe you want to jump right to the editor of our workshop! Yes, he, and our discord server, work with novelists, too.

If the invite link has expired, feel free to message me.

To read the next in the series, go to Word Count and Writing Short