Flash fiction is usually 50-500 words but there are markets for 50, 55, 60 or 100-word stories which as you can imagine, can be tricky to get spot-on. One way of writing a short story of specific wordage is to write a story of any word length and then remove odd words that don’t alter the story until you get the required exactly length. Be careful if you write a story that is too short, not to simply add padding to make the numbers right…try adding another scene or perhaps if you have a ‘tell’ (I covered ‘show and tell’ in episode 1) for example ‘Izzy told him about her day’ which is just six words, so you could convert it to the dialogue between the two characters. It’s unlikely that whoever was listening to Izzy would have remained silent and that would be a perfect solution.
The ideas section of the hints & tips podcast is all about getting story ideas then I give you seven sentence starts picked at random from my
http://twitter.com/sentencestarts
page; each one, if you’d like to use them, for a daily writing project – feel free.
- I mentioned twist in the tail stories earlier and the market is huge for them. If you’ve never tried one before, take a story you’ve already written or a story you know well and imagine how the ending could be different. You can either drop in some clues along the way (but make sure they’re so subtle that the reader can’t work out how it will end) or make it a complete surprise. Short story writer and course tutor Joanna Barnden (who I interviewed in special episode 4 –
http://www.joannabarnden.co.uk
) suggests that you write down all the endings that you think the story would have then – they are likely to be how your reader would think too, so what you want to do would be to come up with something less obvious and this would make your ending stronger although it still has to be feasible; no little green aliens unless perhaps you’re writing science fiction. - Most published short stories are taken from real life so next time you buy a newspaper or magazine, leaf through it and see if there’s a true incident that will make a good short story. They usually have a dilemma of some sort but again think of where you could sell it to – if it’s gentle then think about structuring it for People’s Friend or if it’s a drama then Take a Break may be more suitable, or the other magazines if somewhere in between. It’s best to think about your market and write to it than have a story and pick the magazine that suits.
Episode 7’s seven sentence starts were…
1. Zoë threw down the flowers and turned to leave…
2. “Stop, thief!” Mr Rashid yelled as the front door slammed …
3. Fiona looked like a doll, dressed in pink …
4. “My mate wants to know if…”
5. Jimmy couldn’t help but laugh as Isobel came out the dressing room…
6. The car drove at him/the wall with frightening speed…
7. Robbie closed his eyes as he licked out the yoghurt pot…
