Category Archives: Short Stories

“Stupid Questions”: Story Fallout

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Yep, I’m gonna turn this one into a book.

Last week I finished my last short story and overall I think the biggest complaint from my readers who have finished it is that there is a certain flatness to the characters. Obviously because I know the “whole” characters they don’t seem flat to me, but it absolutely indisputable that they are WRITTEN in a flat way. I know exactly why this is, too.

In novels, I am used to having a whole book’s worth of space to do my usual navel-gazing. I was under the impression that people were getting sick of my navel-gazing and characters doing their internal sulking, pondering, and fantasizing. It goes double that you can’t do this too much in a short story. As a result, I just kinda didn’t give any undercurrent to these characters’ mental lives, leaving them represented largely by their actions in the name of having a low word count.

Having “flat” characters is a bit of a surprise, ’cause after all, I’m supposed to be Ms. Kickass Characters. But maybe if I were to take this and let my story spread out and relax, I’ll get more well-rounded characters.

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Completed New Short Story: “Stupid Questions”

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Finished a new short story called “Stupid Questions.”  It’s actually not very short (surprise!)—more of a novella, I guess.  It weighed in at about 35,000 words.  Adult science fiction/romance.  Way too long to place anywhere, but too short to be a novel.

It’s about Nick, a cameraman and romantic at heart who gets a crush on an enigmatic girl named Summer who has superpowers.

The characters suffer from lack of well-roundedness, so maybe if I make it a novel instead it’ll be better.

I’ll do that one day.

New Short Story: Nicknamed “Summertime”

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I couldn’t “hold it” anymore, so to speak, so yesterday when I got home I took a nap, got up, and started typing my new short story.  (I nicknamed it “Summertime” because the protagonist’s love interest is named Summer, but that’s not going to be its title.)

So far, approximately 5,700 words. As expected, it’s going to be a bit long. Probably comparable to “Wind” in length. Actually, it reminds me of “Wind” quite a lot. Maybe like “Wind” meets the Ivy stories.

And I don’t know WHAT it is about male main characters lately, but the last FOUR times I’ve written a short story, my protagonist was a guy.

I envision either two or three more parts, depending on whether the middle two parts are brief enough to squeeze into one. A lot depends on the characters. Not all writers write like this, but for me, I don’t really know quite what directions things will go in when I start writing, especially when all I do is throw two characters together and let them start talking.

Yesterday I had all these swirling ideas about the story that were bludgeoning my brain trying to get out. Most of them were just conversations and reactions between Nick—my protagonist—and his opposite, a girl named Summer. Nick is very easy to write. Summer is harder. I’m not sure about her yet. Her way of talking is so measured. I don’t know all the reasons why yet, but her diction is usually almost forced-sounding. Almost like it’s not really her talking. It makes me curious. Good thing I have Nick there to ask the right questions. (Or the wrong ones, maybe.)

Even though the first scene was the one I had thought about the LEAST, with most of my ideas belonging to scenes further into the story, it seems to have really calmed down now. It’s like the story was a live thing that wanted to make sure it irritated me enough to get itself written, and now that I’ve committed to doing so it’s decided to relax.

I don’t really have time to write this thing so I do want to get it over with as soon as possible.

Never shut up, do you?

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I feel like sending a cease and desist order to my brain.

It wants me to write another short story. It’s a great idea. It keeps coming back even when I’m trying to think about other things. I don’t have time to write anything right now.

But I know that feeling too well—the importance of an idea that WILL be used, and what the world looks like when it has dawned on me that I will NOT escape writing it.

Things sort of get fuzzy, with weird soft corners, as the screen full of images and the soundtrack full of dialogue grows thick with piling creative detritus.

I’ll write it all right.

I just don’t know when, or how long I’m going to let it have its temper tantrum until I give in.

Gather Contest: Bad Fairy

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I entered a contest at Gather.com back on February 13.  It was called “First Chapters” and novelists with a completed manuscript were allowed to enter and possibly win a publishing contract.  I figured I had nothing to lose, but the experience was pretty terrible.  Because whoever came up with the rules for the contest must have been smoking something toxic.

Contestants were allowed to vote on each other’s entries.

The “points” everyone was getting were visible to everyone, with the site adjusting the top entries to always be at the beginning.  (This was not only unfair, but it encouraged people to vote down whoever was in the lead.)

The reviews were visible for every entry.  This was especially bad because Gather was bribing people to offer reviews by saying star reviewers would be chosen to receive $500 in store credit to Borders, and you were supposed to be able to win by being “insightful,” so having the previous reviews visible to readers obviously influences the opinion AND gives reviewers tips on what to say for their own review.

Can I just say again that contestants were allowed to vote on each other’s entries?  And that the rules specifically said they were allowed to do so as long as they did it “in the spirit of the competition”?

A vote-decided competition absolutely cannot have its participants voting on each other.  I was appalled.  Especially since every single entry in the contest had a 3 or 4 out of 10 by the time the voting closed because of all the really determined serial downvoters.

And yet, without addressing these issues whatsoever, Gather announced their 20 winners—one of whom was a guy whose profile page said he was a paid contributor for Gather—and opened the next round with all the same rules.  (I wasn’t picked, but that doesn’t surprise me.  My entry was regularly on the front page of highest-rated entries, and then it would get attacked with downvotes and disappear, and then it would appear again every time I got a good review.)

Anyway, I also got some grumpy guy telling me I was obviously ripping off Wicked—yeah, man, that’s likely, since I wrote the story before I’d heard of it, and after all Gregory Maguire invented the concept of a retelling, right?  And then some other snotty reviewer tried to tear me a new one claiming I’d contradicted myself because I suggested it’s possible to be original while still telling a technically derivative story (like a fairy tale retelling).  “Well if it’s derived from another story then it can’t really be original then CAN IT??”  Uh, I sure hope there’s a degree program in Missing the Point, because that guy’s got a Bachelor’s.  I’m pretty certain nobody who reads Bad Fairy is going to come out of it thinking what a copycat piece of crap it is.

So . . . yeah, good riddance to THAT contest.

Completed New Short Story: “Wind”

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Finished a new short story called “Wind.”  But it’s more of a novella than a short story, like most of my stuff seems to be.  It’s about 20,000 words.  Modern fantasy romance.  With a lot of sass.

Thomas, alone on Christmas Eve and missing his recently deceased mother (and her cookies!), is startled out of his funk by a knock at the door. Enter the mysterious Windy, a beautiful and apparently magical girl who claims to be Thomas’s personal fairy.

Windy enters Thomas’s life in a big way and becomes a special part of it even as he tries to figure out where she fits and whether she’s really what she says she is. But Thomas isn’t the only one struggling; Windy has some doubts and confusions regarding her existence as well. After realizing how they feel about each other, they have to figure out what to do to make being together possible. But can magic fit into Thomas’s life? And how real is she anyway? They might just have to pull away to find out how close they are.

I might eventually try to publish this, but it’s kinda long.

 

Completed New Short Story: “Just Like Stephen”

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Finished a new short story called “Just Like Stephen.” Genre: Modern fantasy.  Word count: About 7,000 words.

In the society in which the protagonist lives, magic is a rare but real part of life, cropping up somewhat randomly among the population. Unfortunately, admitting to having magic is a one-way ticket to a government-run institution where officials channel the magical people’s powers into controlled projects. The government basically considers having magic the same as having a sickness, and it’s true that it can cause insanity, so they claim to be helping the magical people by institutionalizing them and training them.

The protagonist’s older brother Stephen developed magic one day, and suddenly everything was different—he had to be taken away, and no one seemed to care but him. Before leaving, Stephen urges his brother to try to hide his magic if he develops it later, which they both suspect he will. And in the present, the protagonist, now nineteen, has taken his brother’s advice and has hidden his magic for four years. Unfortunately, magic has a way of deciding when it’s going to be used, and this is a story of how he answers that call without letting anyone else hear him.

I’ll be pursuing publication for this.  Eventually.

Wendy West Saves the World

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I thought I’d share this.  I found my first short story, written when I was eleven years old, in fifth grade: March 15, 1989. It was written in pencil in a preteen’s careful cursive. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation has been left untouched.  It’s called “Wendy West Saves the World.”

Wendy West was an explorer who had shiny black hair and light purple eyes. She could see farther than a million telescopes put together could see.

One day Wendy West was exploring a hole in Sudan, Africa. She heard some screeching inside the hole and a laser beam shot out of it, narrowly missing Wendy. It hit a tree and the tree evaporated into thin air.

Wendy was shocked at this. She looked into the deep hole. It seemed endless, so she used her special vision to peer deep into the hole. At the bottom, there was a huge group of tall, blue men! They shot lasers at her. They missed. She ran to a nearby police station.

The police were on coffee break. Wendy got a police man to come to the hole. He looked inside the hole. “Is this your idea of a joke? I don’t see anything,” Said the police man. “No,” said Wendy. She shined a flashlight down in the deep hole. Sure enough, nothing was there. She used her special vision to look around in Africa, then in Europe. When she got to China, there were the blue men, shooting huge buildings down.

The police sent helicopters to China, after Wendy West reported her story. They disposed of the aliens, and then they had a party for Wendy and proclaimed that day a holiday called “Alien day!”

Completed New Short Story: “The Curse”

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Finished a new short story called “The Curse.”  This one’s a very peculiar story and it’s on the long side—about 10,000 words.  Speculative fiction, coming of age.

Half of the story is dedicated to detailing the effects of “the Curse,” a change that suddenly and without warning or explanation was visited upon everyone on the planet. Suddenly everyone’s vision has shifted to include other input.

The progression of humanity’s acceptance of the Curse is one plot, and the activities of Balthazar—Zarry to his friends—make up the other plot, interspersed with the first in a switching pattern. Zarry’s mission is to remove the Curse from mankind, which ultimately involves his intellectual battle with the Keeper of the Sight.

It’s really more of a commentary on human nature than anything else, but I dunno who’s gonna get it.  I’ll see if any magazines want it.

Completed New Short Story: “Uncle Avery’s Garden”

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Finished a new short story called “Uncle Avery’s Garden.”  It’s actually on the short side, at about 1,400 words.  Sentimental fiction.

A college girl debates over whether to spend her hundred-dollar bill that was given to her as a child by her departed Uncle Avery. She wonders whether it will be disrespectful to do so, even though she really needs the money, because she promised not to and has managed to hold out so long. A dream she has helps her clarify the importance of the gift.

Probably will not try to publish this.  I think it’s kinda sappy. But maybe someone will think it’s also kinda sweet?