{"id":5257,"date":"2007-08-10T08:10:33","date_gmt":"2007-08-10T08:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shilohwalker.wordpress.com\/2007\/08\/10\/writing-short\/"},"modified":"2007-08-10T08:10:33","modified_gmt":"2007-08-10T08:10:33","slug":"writing-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2007\/08\/writing-short\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing short&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, I <a href=\"http:\/\/shilohwalker.wordpress.com\/2007\/08\/06\/for-the-writers\/\">mentioned a new writing opporunity<\/a> for those who do erotic romance.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/fractured-fiction.blogspot.com\">Ann<\/a> commented:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Unfortunately\u2026I can\u2019t write short, but maybe I\u2019ll give it a try.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You know, there&#8217;s a trick to writing short.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve got&#8230; hmmmmm&#8230;.at least eight &#8216;quickie&#8217; type stories, as in under 15K.\u00a0 Scads of novellas, between 18-25k.\u00a0 And I&#8217;ve learned a few things about writing short stories and novellas, not just from the ones I&#8217;ve written, but from the ones I&#8217;ve read of others.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few suggestions and tips:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep it simple.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t go excessive on the world building if you&#8217;re trying to keep the word count under a certain number.\u00a0 Detailed world building in a short story tends to mean you&#8217;re going to skimp in other areas.\u00a0 Consciously or not.\u00a0 It&#8217;s going to happen.<\/li>\n<li>Limit the backstory.\u00a0 Again, if you&#8217;re on a limited word count, that backstory is going to take up precious space that you&#8217;ll need for the actual hero and heroine&#8217;s story.\u00a0 If you have to have that backstory, bear in mind, you might not be able to get everything that you need in under 15K, or whatever the number is.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes it&#8217;s easier if the hero and heroine already know each other.\u00a0 Maybe they are friends and they&#8217;ll be doing the friends to lovers deal.\u00a0 Maybe they hate each other, only to find out that isn&#8217;t love&#8230;it&#8217;s lust!\u00a0 Whatever.\u00a0 If you put together two brand new characters and expect the reader to believe you can make them fall in love in under forty pages, you&#8217;re going to have your hands full.<\/li>\n<li>Keep the secondaries to a bare minimum.\u00a0 A short story doesn&#8217;t have room for them.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t skimp on the plot.\u00a0 Readers want a story, even in a short story, they want a story.\u00a0 The plot has to be there and it needs to be more than just a string of reasons for the hero and the heroine to fall into bed every other paragraph.\u00a0 But because of the word count, bear in mind, you don&#8217;t have a lot of room for some earth shattering\u00a0conspiracy or a clever whodunit, not if you want to tell the hero and the heroine&#8217;s story.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sometimes you find out that a story is going to be longer than you expected.\u00a0 <em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/excerpt_ggd.htm\">Good Girls Don&#8217;t<\/a><\/em> was going to be a quickie type story and ended up going upwards of 30k.\u00a0 If you have a story in mind and you think it&#8217;s going to be 15k, don&#8217;t be surprised if it goes over.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t be afraid to go over.\u00a0 If it&#8217;s a good story, you stand a better chance of finding a home if you do the story justice and not skimp the vital areas just to make it the right word length.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping it short and sweet does work for some, not everybody, but some.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, I mentioned a new writing opporunity for those who do erotic romance. Ann commented: Unfortunately\u2026I can\u2019t write short, but maybe I\u2019ll give<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2007\/08\/writing-short\/\" class=\"more-link\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Writing short&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10161045129738658_54762468447":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Writing short... - Shiloh Walker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2007\/08\/writing-short\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Writing short... - Shiloh Walker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The other day, I mentioned a new writing opporunity for those who do erotic romance. 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