Guest post by Cindy Lynn Speer, author of 'Wishes and Sorrows'
Since my new
short story collection, Wishes and Sorrows,
is a little different from my usual fare, I thought I would talk about short
story writing.
I keep talking
about how, since these stories are over a large chunk of my life, that in a way
it’s a great bit of closet biography. If
you read deep enough, you can see what I valued back in college versus what I
value now. You can see the change in my
voice. I should be careful because I
make it almost sound like some of my stories are weaker, but it’s not that at
all. They are merely different.
One example,
for me, is “The Jester’s Heart.” I
started it years ago, probably somewhere between “The Train” and “Every Word I
Speak.” I finished it, but I never took
it through the polishing drafts. I found
it, and I could tell that it needed work because back then, being of a more
literary mind set (four years of being an English Major will do that to you)
that I did not mind being dark and obscure.
Me, now, I
want to expand, show more beauty of the scene, be more descriptive, at least as
long as the constrains of the medium will allow. So I expanded. I explained more in the text. I gave my readers more.
So what I have
learned about writing short stories from all of this?
1. Trust your narrator. Follow what they say, write it all down and
see where they take you.
2. Polish. Make sure that
everything in the story points to the main reason of the story. You need to stay tight, no matter how
alluring a conversation between two characters is, or how awesome a scene. You can get away with some of this in a
longer work…it can be important developemental stuff…but in a short story,
everything should flow and be part of getting to the main event.
3. Short stories are liberating.
In a novel you need to create a lot of little paths to expand the story
and make it meaningful. Like in the
short stories, it has to make sense that it is there, but there is so much more
that you need to accomplish. Short
stories, the reader does not expect as much exposition. They are there to just experience that aspect
of the story.
I love short
stories because they allow me to explore fairy tales in a quiet, focused
way. I guess that is why I love short
stories, period. I can tell this one
story, this one aspect, I can capture something and move on.
*********
Cindy Lynn Speer is the author of several novels, including The Chocolatier’s Wife and the short story collection Wishes and Sorrows. She loves mixing fantasy, mystery and romance and playing with the old stories. When not writing she can be found reading, teaching people historical fencing, and costuming.
Purchase from Dragonwell and Amazon
About Wishes and Sorrows:
“Richly ambitious” — Publishers WeeklyFor every wish there is a sorrow…Wishes are born from sorrows, blessings are sometimes curses, and even fairy godmothers cannot always get what they want. In this original collection, Cindy Lynn Speer, the author of “The Chocolatier’s Wife”, brings to life creatures of myths and tales, mixing them into a vibrant tapestry of stories, happy and sad, magical and real, each lovingly crafted and sure to touch the reader’s soul.Step into the world where magic is real, and every mundane bit of reality is as magical as a true fairy tale.
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