The Writers in Residence

by Maggie King

In my July post, I discussed short stories from the point of view of readers. You can read it here. But what about the writers? Why do they write short stories? Why do some not write them?

If you exclusively write short stories, or want to, there are several good reasons why you’re making a good choice:

• There’s a tremendous satisfaction in completing a story in days, a few weeks at the most.
• Short stories can be sold over and over, as long as the market accepts reprints. Reprints don’t pay as much as an original story (I can attest to that!)—still, it’s another publishing credit, and the work’s already done. I understand that reprints often pay well if included in an annual best-of anthology.
• Writing short stories trains you to write with tightness and economy of words. This is great preparation for other kinds of writing, fiction and nonfiction alike.
• For short stories, you don’t need an agent.
• That muddy (aka sagging) middle of a story, so challenging to novelists, may still  challenge short story writers–but the middles are, well, short.

But be aware of the pitfalls. John Floyd, author of over a thousand short stories, has this to say: “Now, what’s the downside of writing only short stories? I can think of only one: as a short-story writer you will probably not become famous or make a zillion bucks from your writing. But here’s another newsflash: neither will most novelists.”

Another pitfall short story writers may encounter is the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome: “I don’t get no respect.” There are any number of short story writers who are respected for their work: the aforementioned John Floyd, Barb Goffman, Art Taylor, Eve Fisher, and Michael Bracken are just a few. But short story writing in general is frequently discounted. Anything from “So when’s she going to write a novel?” to “I don’t read short stories” are comments authors often hear. I know a gifted writer of short stories who won’t create a website until she publishes a novel.

Art Taylor, winner of many awards for his short stories, says, “I’ve had people hear me say I’m a short story writer and then tell me straight out that oh, they don’t read those. (I try not to be insulted.)”

My former agent scowled when I mentioned  writing short stories. “Write the real stuff,” he advised.

If you primarily write novels, writing short stories can offer a different experience:

• After struggling with your novel, writing short can give you a feeling of accomplishment.
• It helps you to hone your writing skills.
• Writing short is a challenge like any good writing (you need to develop a compelling plot and characters); but as you’re dealing with a minimum of scenes and characters, the process is simpler.
• It gives you fresh material to promote while you’re working on your novel, keeping your readers engaged.
• In a short piece, you can resurrect scenes and characters that were edited out of your novel.
• You can further develop a minor character from your novel in a short piece.
• You can experiment with new genres.
• And you will have respect!

I’m a big fan of writing short stories. To date, I’ve published seven and have several others in various stages of completion. This fall I’m writing two for anthology submissions.

You may be a pro at writing short stories, or you may be getting started (or at least thinking about it), but we can always learn about craft. Read and study the works of the greats, like Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Ruth Rendell, and many others. Note that these are crime writers, but the basic principles apply to all genres.

On a final note, consider this advice from the late, great Ray Bradbury: “The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just wonderful.”

For more information on writing short stories, check these resources:

What is a Mystery Short Story? And How Do You Write One? by John Floyd

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story. Some fascinating and surprising insights here 

Short Mystery Fiction Society(SMFS). Join and maybe you’ll win a Derringer!

Our own Gayle Bartos-Pool wrote an excellent guide, THE ANATOMY OF A SHORT STORY WORKBOOK

Do you write short stories? If so, tell us about your experience.

    by Gayle Bartos-Pool

We’ve all done it… Time Travel, in a book. Or maybe in a flight of fancy or even in a dream. But it’s that journey we get from a novel that interests me as a writer. I wouldn’t have thought about it had I not been reading a book by a favorite author. It was published in 1992. The title of the book and the author aren’t necessary to mention because I like him too much and obviously the publisher and booksellers and fans at the time weren’t thinking about how the book would be received in the future more than thirty years later. But I’m thinking about it now after I had finished some eight chapters of the best seller.

On almost every page there was a reference to a political figure of the time, a current joke going around, or a character in a popular television show or movie. I knew what the author was talking about, but I can bet quite a few of the people in the generation right behind mine wouldn’t understand half of the comments and people in Gens X, Y, Z or whatever young people are calling their particular era now wouldn’t have a clue to what was being said.

I personally can testify that 90% of the current actors, movies, on-line places one would go to be “entertained” or God forbid, enlightened, don’t mean anything to me today. I haven’t read a book written by the younger generations, at least those in their 30s or 40s, if they have ever written a book. Since many high school and even college graduates aren’t exactly proficient in writing our language or maybe even their contemporary slang, maybe there is nothing to read from their generation anyway.

Am I cynical? Yes. Should I be? Yes… and No. I have to be cynical when I see news stories that show some areas of the country have entire school systems with zero kids graduating who can read or do math. And No, it’s not cynical to want the country to do a better job educating our kids so they can write a book, much less read one and to know that 2 and 2 equals four, not five. (There’s a reference there if you care to look it up.)

But there have been books written by older contemporary authors who do a great job writing about bygone eras. How do they do it? They give the reader a nice history lesson along with the story. Their research lets us see what Jolly Old England looked like over two hundred years ago or other places in history. If they do a good job, the reader can “figuratively” walk down a street in London during Sherlock Holmes’ time or Berlin during World War II and see how people lived back then. The scenes are as much of the story as the plot and the characters and the reader gets to learn a little something along the way. Even in science fiction novels we can see the “future” through the writer’s eyes. That’s always fun.

But in a contemporary novel, what if every humorous or “ripped from the headlines” comment mentioned is so obscure the reader thirty-forty years hence won’t understand any of it? When I wrote my three spy novels covering the time from the Second World War up until the early Nineties, I understood the eras, but I had seen a lot of movies made during the war, read quite a few history books on the topics I was covering, and lived through the fifty-plus years after the war. I have to hope they still show some of those great movies made during that time period so future readers have a chance of understanding parts of that history in my books.

But what does a writer do now? Continue dropping current events into their stories just for current readers? How did Arthur Conan Doyle manage to write a story that has lasted through the ages? Even if you never saw the dozens of movies and television series based on his Sherlock Holmes character, the stories are still totally understandable. One thing I can say, he didn’t drop tons of humorous quips into the mix.

When I write a story told in the First Person, the character, if it’s a male, doesn’t have the opportunity to wax eloquently about the surroundings other than a casual mention. Perhaps a woman would comment about the furniture or wallpaper in a room or the fabric in a dress someone wore, but guys usually don’t do that if the story is in First Person. The book I was reading by that famous author wrote in Third Person and did drop in lots of references about everything: clothes, gadgets, politics, movie stars and other current events. My characters, whether it’s a guy or a gal, will often drop a clever remark about something reminding them of a television show or movie, but after reading the book that opened this article, I might not do it as much unless I give a few more details about the show I’m referencing.

I have actually watched reruns of a few television shows done maybe ten years earlier from this current time, but ones I had not watched when they were new, and even in those shows there were one or two references that I didn’t understand. Maybe that’s because I stopped watching television about twenty years ago and haven’t been to a movie in about thirty years. I can’t say it’s my loss, because when I have tried watching a few TV series that I missed when they were new, but was watching them in reruns, they weren’t very good and I stopped watching. To be honest, there have been a few movies and TV series I have watched on television done over these past 20-30 years that weren’t bad. Mostly science fiction or adventure: Galaxy Quest, Star Wars, The Mummy.

But if I want my books readable for a younger audience even when they get into their forties, what do I need to do? Watch contemporary stuff and try to mimic it? I don’t think that’s going to happen. But I will cut down the clever references to favorite television shows and old movies because a whole lot of those particular shows might never be shown again. The future’s loss. Or, perhaps, I will try to explain the reference to the show so even a space alien would understand it. That might work.

As often happens when I’m writing an article or even a book, I will have watched a movie that is pertinent. In this case it was Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. The movie was made in 1993, but the opening scene is supposed to be in 1996, when two guys, a rogue cop and a psychopath, lock horns, cause chaos, and as punishment are frozen for over thirty years for their deeds, but when Snipes is thawed out in 2032, he escapes and starts causing mayhem, but since the “new world” is supposedly crime free, they need to thaw out Stallone so he can catch the bad guy since nobody in this “future” knows how to deal with a criminal.

It’s a fun plot. But in the future, 2032, which is only ten years from the time of this writing, 2023, things are different from the world back in 1993 when the movie was made. But even though the writers of this movie were making up what the future would look like, they hit a few nails on the head. Nobody used cash anymore. Everything was credit card so your every move was watched by “Big Brother.” Another thing that hit me was a word one of the characters used: TikTok. That app didn’t raise its head until 2021. The new society around Los Angeles where the movie takes place had been devastated by an earthquake and this new, non-violent society, emerged where they banned everything and controlled everybody except for the underground rebels who try to get the world back to reality.

Even though the plot was eerily reminiscent of books like 1984 and Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, most all of the references were familiar to me, but I wonder if younger folks will get the joke about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library or even the underlying theme of Big Brother.

So what words or themes or references do writers use that will make it into the future? Should we care? As for caring, of course we should care. Books are what people use to learn things and understand what happened in the past. Movies are those same words in picture form. Are you familiar with the phrase: A picture is worth a thousand words?

But maybe when we write those words we should make sure we don’t overdo it. The book I read by that very famous author had way too many references to current events of his time and they got to be problematic after a while because I was wondering if folks in the future would understand any of them. But since we do have the Internet that allows readers to look up a name or TV show from the past or a fun quote from somewhere in history, maybe the readers in the future will look up a few of them if they want to be enlightened. Maybe they won’t call it the Internet in the future, but if there is a way to learn things, writers might use a few fun facts. Now we just have to make sure people in the future can read…

WRITE ON!

(This article and several others from The Writers-in-Residence blog written by G.B. Pool are in her latest book, Words, Words, Words – The Art of Writing, available on Amazon.)

By Rosemary Lord

My apartment smells of burnt candle wick. That’s because the power keeps going out and I’ve been lighting candles everywhere on and off for the past few days. And the power always seems to go out again just as it’s getting dark… Most inconsiderate.

How is that whenever there’s a bit of rain, L.A. comes to a standstill? Drivers go crazy. The local media gets very dramatic. Noah, get out your Ark! They should try living in England, where downpours are the norm, sometimes for days on end, and snatched golden sunny days are relished and worshipped.

So, I’ve been scribbling like mad – with my trusted pencil and yellow pad, in the candlelight, to finish this blog. Research was challenging, as I couldn’t recharge my laptop or phone to get online. But I can still use my dog-eared Oxford English Dictionary given to me by a late and very dear friend, writer Gerry Davis – of Dr. Who, (he created the Cybermen) Doomwatch, Final Countdown fame. I was then a working journalist, so I didn’t consider myself a ‘proper’ writer. He often offered to help me with a novel I was writing at the time. But this foolish, pigheaded girl was too embarrassed to show Gerry her amateur attempts at writing. Boy, do I regret that now!

But I digress.

Writing is, of course, my ‘go to’ thing when things get tough. I write down my thoughts – and solutions.  I cheer myself up by writing down affirmations. Of things I want and how I want my life to be. It really does feel good to do this. And I always write, ‘thank you,’ at the end. Because I was brought up to say please and thank you!   I write the same wish repeatedly. Pages and pages of the same sentence over and over. (A bit like the schoolteacher telling you write one hundred time, “I must not talk in class”! But more fun!)

In one of my recent decluttering binges I came across a large notebook from several years ago, when I was still pursuing an acting career. Rick and I were struggling financially, so I wrote I Now Have Tons of money. I Now Have Tons of Money.  (I tend to capitalize a lot!)  Pages and pages of I Now Have Tons of Money.

I had obviously put it aside and moved on to something new. Probably I am now a published author. I am now a published author…

But all these years later, when I discovered those handwritten affirmations, I stopped. And grinned. And remembered. About a year after I’d written those particular repeated affirmations over and over and over, (then forgotten all about them – until their recent discovery) I was cast in one of the leads in a revival of a 1920’s comedy at the local Richmond Shepherd Theatre in Hollywood. Guess what the play was called?

Tons of Money!  I kid you not! We had a great run, got terrific reviews, and it led to other bigger roles.

So, I am a firm believer of writing my affirmations each morning. I am just more careful with the wording of my affirmations because I know they worked!

Okay – the power has just come back on again. Now, where was I….

“I write because I want to have more than one life,” Novelist Anne Tyler was quoted as saying. “Writing is our opportunity to peek into other people’s lives,” – or create other lives.

I’ve just started reading “How To Write a Mystery,’ a handbook from the Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Childs. Anne Tyler and several of our fellow writers contributed articles.

Our local writer, Naomi Hirahara, has had her first successful novel, The Summer of the Big Bachi published in 2003. It was the first in a series of mysteries about an ageing Japanese-American Gardener, Mas Arai, who became an amateur sleuth. She’s had over 20 more published novels since then and gave a terrific workshop at a recent Writers’ Conference on how her road to publishing success – and the failures along the way.

In this book, she writes about the accidental detective, the amateur sleuth. She says that no other genre reveals more about the writers’ inner life – or their personal life. Especially, new writers create amateur sleuths with a background familiar to the writer- similar to themselves or someone in their lives.

Beth Amos likens the suspense buildup in mystery writing to a roller-coaster: first the build-up, then the exciting plunge, then another build up.

Louise Penny, Charlaine Harris, T. Jefferson Parker, Laurie King, write in this book about “turning your first, raw draft into a clear, compelling story.” Jeffrey Deaver says, ‘Always Outline!’ Catriona McPherson writes about adding the humor.

I’m still thumbing through this thoughtfully produced book, inspired to read the inner workings of such an assortment of writers.

And I still find myself Yak Shaving from time to time. What, you might ask, is ‘Yak Shaving’?  It’s from a long-ago blog. Where do I start…? It’s when you find yourself setting out to accomplish one thing, but going off at tangents, taking a circuitous route in order to accomplish your original goal – much later than you had intended.  It’s doing something as irrelevant as shaving a yak (don’t ask!), instead of the goal you set out to accomplish.

I think we all find ourselves yak-shaving from time to time – except for those super-human, prolific novelists who churn out novel after novel, without stopping and who never, ever get distracted from their goals! Hmmm. Just how do they do that?

But the rest of us, we may have to do a bit of pencil-sharpening, fridge-defrosting or ironing before we sit back down to write the next page. Ironing is a good distraction because you can watch television while you’re ironing and tell yourself your doing research, watching re-runs of Murder She Wrote. I’ve thought this through, as you can see.

Now – back to writing page 173 – before the power goes out again.

……………………………..

The last couple of years have been slow going for me on the writing front. But now I’m mentally back and raring to go—very much wanting to get back into the “writing swing of things.” And I believe—inline with my blog tendency—sharing my meandering thoughts with you might be helpful in case I’m not alone as I make my way along this winding writing path!

I’m also thinking now is a good time to be jumping back in full throttle(mixed metaphor I know—but I like it,) because my earlier series of books aren’t selling well. So, my plan is to jump out and do some “writing things” differently; ie., POV, physicality and attributes of characters, and my approach to revealing the killer. Mysteries are what I love and wouldn’t consider anything else, but there are different styles of telling the story. And my writing heros vary in their approach to getting the story out there. Agatha of course has done it all!

Here are some of the ideas and approaches floating around in my head:

• Still third person POV, but from the two story tellers, not just one. (THANK you Gayle for the very good input you’ve given me in that area!!)
• Two men working together, or
• A man and a woman working together (with or without a love interest?)
• In both cases, telling the story while living the story, not just as detectives or sleuths

My writing tenants of scenery and characters are still the number one defining forces, but I’ll be approaching differently? Especially when it comes to story member participation vs narration participation. Tricky divides I think—first person versus third person combined with their story participation. Hmmm…

Now that I’ve written it out here, I guess I’m changing my own personal third-person “voice.” Not a concept or idea I’ve thought about before exactly in those terms…hmmm again. Maybe this winding road has turned in a sharp right or left turn angle—or a complete U-Turn? (just took my CA written renewal test and signs are still jostling around in my brain.) Also, now that I’ve written this all out (not sure if this chattering will help anyone else reading pursue their writing goals)—but for me, I’ve thought and written myself into being excited about writing anew. Starting this wonderful and adventurous trip anew!

Which leads me to the underlining writing concept — no matter what literary thoughts you’re having…if you’re static in your writing thoughts and protocols then you’ve made it! BUT, If you want to go in a different direction, genre, POV, location, etc.—go for it! Scary, but part of the joy of writing.

All thoughts are welcome!

Happy writing Trails