I'm experimenting with writing a short story on twitter. It's turning out to be a great writing excercise, trying to create short, interesting posts that continue the storyline. The 140 character limit is a challenge, especially since I want to throw in a few hash tags at the end. It's keeping me to about 100 characters per post.
I attempted something similar when I first got on twitter. I wrote poetry in 140 characters. That was fun, but trying to keep a story going is tough. I've completed the first main scene on the story, setting up the main character, motives, and setting. For those who don't want to wade through my tweets to assemble the story, I'm posting the first scene here.
I have kept the twitter format, including the hash tags, so it is presented, as writen, in single lines of 140 characters or less. I think it turned out well. I'm interested in readers' opinions. I'm not sure it is reader friendly on twitter. Perhaps if I had a profile devoted to the story alone, but you still end up reading in reverse.
So here it is, in a more readable format:
“Restraint”
The stays in her corset were stilettos. Her fingerless gloves, fine steel mesh. In her black lace garter, a loaded derringer. #steampunk
The steel of the derringer was cool against her thigh, reminding her it was there, ready to be touched, fingered, fired. #steampunk #romance
Her eyes glinted with blue steel, a gift of the war and a kryon laser blast. Her finger twitched in anticipation and desire. #steampunk
She slid the pistol slowly from her garter. Any sound would alert him. He turned. She raised her knee. "This is gonna hurt" ... #steampunk
A bolt of fire ripped down her leg, he fell to his knees. "Damn," she cursed. "So much for the silk stockings." He fell over. #steampunk
Hot lead pierced cool flesh; bones cracked, flesh ripped. Sensory overload. Vestigial emotions burst from atrophied mind. Confusion...
He dropped to his knees. What was it? Not hate. Nor anger. The implants accentuated those. He knew them well. #amwriting #steampunk
Hormones raged; adrenaline, testosterone; even as the control implates tried to shut them down in order to slow the bleeding. #steampunk
Emergency shutdown. In the dark moments as systems rebooted, clarity bloomed. She wasn't the enemy. He loved her. #steampunk #romance
She limped to the corpse. No movement other than the implants pumping chemicals. It would regenerate. She'd stop that. #steampunk #romance
She aimed at the control box on the back of its head. Tears filled eyes that had seen thousands die without blinking. #steampunk #romance
"It's not him," she told herself. "He's dead, gone. I held him when he died." She cocked her weapon. #amwriting #steampunk #romance
A hand gripped her ankle. "I love you," a mechanical voice grated. "Finish it, Dee." She pulled the trigger. #amwriting #steampunk #romance
Gears and viscious liquids sprayed when the bullet exploded the control box. She fell to her knees in blood and chemicals. #steampunk
They would pay for sending her dead lover to assasinate her. "I love you, Jake," she choked out. #amwriting #steampunk #romance
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- maxwell cynn
- I'm a novelist, freelance writer, amateur coder, webmaster, and Indie publisher who writes deliciously romantic speculative fiction and book reviews from a wide range of genres.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Guest blogging and other stuff
Last week a friend asked me to write a short piece for her blog The Angsty Writer. I decided on a Christmas story. Now, normally I'm a bit of a Scrooge about Christmas. It's the whole commercial aspect of the holiday, not the holiday itself. Every year people go into a feeding frenzy shopping, and spend far more than they can afford. We are inundated by advertisements that assure us she will love us more if we buy her a diamond, and if we don't get our kids the latest electronics we suck as parents.
The crime rate always rises at Christmas. Not surprising as people feel obligated to spend the food money on frivolous gifts, and spend their kids college money on that new video game system. Our culture puts pressure on people to give, even when they can't afford it. Someone can't buy those new fashionable shoes their kid "must have" so they steal them. Better to be a criminal than a bad parent, right?
Our culture of stuff; the newest, the nicest, the most popular stuff; turns "peace on earth good will toward men" into a stress filled race to buy. Christmas in America seems more like, "stress on earth, get the hell out of my way." Every year we hear of incidents of people fighting in the toy store over some limited supply or another, or people being trampled during a sale. Then, of course we have the week after Christmas when domestic violence explodes. Such a joyous time.
In our current economic malaise I guess the retailers need a good old fashioned door buster shopping season, but the people are less able to afford it this year than in years past, and that just adds more stress to people barely scratching by now. Did I mention suicide rates skyrocket during the holidays?
I'm trying hard not to be a Scrooge this year. I do love Christmas, the idyllic Christmas of peace and love and sharing. I enjoy being with family, singing carols, giving gifts, and just being jolly. Maybe that's why all the bad things get to me so much. Christmas in the modern world has become a heavy burden on those who need it most, the poor and the lonely.
I'm going to try and be merry this year, but I will still privately morn with those whose Christmas is not so warm and fuzzy: the homeless, the fatherless, the childless, the poor, the unloved, the unemployed and the under-employed, and all those whose Christmas is a time of panic and stress, disappointment and depression. They are what Christmas is all about.
God Bless Us, Every One
The crime rate always rises at Christmas. Not surprising as people feel obligated to spend the food money on frivolous gifts, and spend their kids college money on that new video game system. Our culture puts pressure on people to give, even when they can't afford it. Someone can't buy those new fashionable shoes their kid "must have" so they steal them. Better to be a criminal than a bad parent, right?
Our culture of stuff; the newest, the nicest, the most popular stuff; turns "peace on earth good will toward men" into a stress filled race to buy. Christmas in America seems more like, "stress on earth, get the hell out of my way." Every year we hear of incidents of people fighting in the toy store over some limited supply or another, or people being trampled during a sale. Then, of course we have the week after Christmas when domestic violence explodes. Such a joyous time.
In our current economic malaise I guess the retailers need a good old fashioned door buster shopping season, but the people are less able to afford it this year than in years past, and that just adds more stress to people barely scratching by now. Did I mention suicide rates skyrocket during the holidays?
I'm trying hard not to be a Scrooge this year. I do love Christmas, the idyllic Christmas of peace and love and sharing. I enjoy being with family, singing carols, giving gifts, and just being jolly. Maybe that's why all the bad things get to me so much. Christmas in the modern world has become a heavy burden on those who need it most, the poor and the lonely.
I'm going to try and be merry this year, but I will still privately morn with those whose Christmas is not so warm and fuzzy: the homeless, the fatherless, the childless, the poor, the unloved, the unemployed and the under-employed, and all those whose Christmas is a time of panic and stress, disappointment and depression. They are what Christmas is all about.
God Bless Us, Every One
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Writing Short: A novelist's guide to short fiction
Many novelists find it hard to write short stories, just as many short story writers cannot imagine writing an 80k story. But writing is writing and one form can actually improve the other. Many of the greatest names in literature wrote short stories; H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Clemons, Earnest Hemingway, and more recently Stephen King. As we all know, Hemingway also wrote non-fiction as a journalist. He would say that a writer should be able to write anything well. And King, known for his very long novels, started out writing short fiction for magazines.
You may ask, why write short? Valid question. There are a host of benefits to writing short fiction and even trying your hand at journalism. First and foremost it will improve your writing. I'll get into that as we proceed. Second, and equally important, the short story market is much more open to aspiring writers and your chances of being published are much better. That gets your name, and your voice, out where readers, agents, and publishers can discover it. First let's look at how your writing will improve when you slim it down to 5k words.
The same rules that apply to long fiction apply to short fiction. But to get into that limited word count the writer must be more selective and succinct with their prose. You can't, obviously, write a two page description of your character's new dress, and you can't pick War and Peace as your plot. Writing short is a practice in precision and getting the most kick out of every word. Let's start with plot.
Like any story, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Writing 101, right. But many would-be writers tend to cut one out to get under the word count. They will start right in the middle, wrap it up in one sentence at the end, or rip out the all-important middle. But a short story still has to be a complete story. The protag should also show some progression through the story, the events should have some effect on the characters. If the events mean nothing to the characters why would they have meaning to the reader?
Keep the plot simple and straight forward. You can't slip in side plots and peripheral intrigue like you can in a novel. Stay on point. Novelist's often have trouble writing a good synopsis of their work, writing short will improve that skill tremendously. Find the core of the story you want to tell, then stay focused. Think beginning, middle, end. Where does the character start, what happens, what is the effect? Even the epic “Lord of the Rings” can be summarized as: Young hobbit is thrown into a difficult situation, is whisked away into world changing events, but finds the inner strength to rise beyond what he and others thought were insurmountable odds to complete his task.
I recently wrote a short, short story for a contest; 1500 words or less. Very short for me. My short stories generally run 5-8k words. My guide was the words of Hemingway. “I've seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I've seen a school of over fifty sperm whales in the same stretch of water and once harpooned one over nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg.” (from George Plimpton, “An Interview with Earnest Hemingway”)
What we leave out is provided by the reader. Readers are very imaginative, short story readers even more so. When they read a well written story they see every detail, feel every emotion, hear every sound. The writer doesn't need to explain it all. In “Death in the Afternoon” Hemingway tells us, “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.” but... “A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”
A short story can be rich and poignant, just look at some of the great short stories in classic literature. The writer knows the grand, epic tale which surrounds the short story and the reader senses it in every line. In short fiction much is left to the very adequate imagination of the reader. Unlike modern novels, filled with elaborate descriptions and convoluted side plots, short fiction drafts the reader into an active role of filling in the blanks. In my recent story, published in Fissure Magazine, I could simply say a Victorian character wore a waistcoat. The reader knows what Victorian men's fashion looked like. It required no description.
Likewise I described the heroine in my recent ultra-short story, not in a long-winded paragraph, but by simple key phrases slipped into the story line: “Her long gown flowed weightlessly as she moved through the jovial crowd and across the dance floor, her corset showing no sign of respiration, her eyes showing no hint of emotion behind the brightly feathered mask she wore.” The reader can picture a woman in an elegant Victorian gown entering the room, and a host of other character information is given in a very short scene. The reader is left to imagine an elaborate Victorian masked ball and the heroine briskly passing through the crowd.
Beyond training the writer to be more succinct and purposeful in there prose, writing short teaches us to be vicious editors. In the 1500 word short, I originally wrote over 2500 words. I edited entire paragraphs from the text. That would be equivalent to trimming a 100k manuscript down to 60k, deleting entire chapters. But I kept asking myself, as Hemingway demands, “does the reader already know this? Do they need to know? Can they guess?”
Yet, what is left in the end must be a complete story; beginning, middle, and end. I was a little worried I had gone too far, so I sent it off to a couple of authors I respect for a quick read. One told me I had hurried the ending, leaving it flat. A quick rewrite of the ending solved the problem. I can't say it enough, don't forget to keep the story a complete story. Beginning, middle, end, and the characters progress in some way. Leave your readers wanting another story, not wanting more from that story. It's a thin line, but it will make your prose stronger and your editing more focused.
As I alluded to earlier, the market for short fiction is growing even as the novel market shrinks. It is pure economics. Editors are more willing to risk one short story in a magazine from an unknown writer than risk rolling out a complete novel. Publishing short stories in magazines and anthologies gives readers a taste of your writing, helps you get comfortable working with editors and meeting deadlines, makes your writing stronger and more professional, and the credits look good on your queries. So give it a try. It's also a great distraction between novels, and keeps your creative juices flowing.
Keep writing,
max
You may ask, why write short? Valid question. There are a host of benefits to writing short fiction and even trying your hand at journalism. First and foremost it will improve your writing. I'll get into that as we proceed. Second, and equally important, the short story market is much more open to aspiring writers and your chances of being published are much better. That gets your name, and your voice, out where readers, agents, and publishers can discover it. First let's look at how your writing will improve when you slim it down to 5k words.
The same rules that apply to long fiction apply to short fiction. But to get into that limited word count the writer must be more selective and succinct with their prose. You can't, obviously, write a two page description of your character's new dress, and you can't pick War and Peace as your plot. Writing short is a practice in precision and getting the most kick out of every word. Let's start with plot.
Like any story, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Writing 101, right. But many would-be writers tend to cut one out to get under the word count. They will start right in the middle, wrap it up in one sentence at the end, or rip out the all-important middle. But a short story still has to be a complete story. The protag should also show some progression through the story, the events should have some effect on the characters. If the events mean nothing to the characters why would they have meaning to the reader?
Keep the plot simple and straight forward. You can't slip in side plots and peripheral intrigue like you can in a novel. Stay on point. Novelist's often have trouble writing a good synopsis of their work, writing short will improve that skill tremendously. Find the core of the story you want to tell, then stay focused. Think beginning, middle, end. Where does the character start, what happens, what is the effect? Even the epic “Lord of the Rings” can be summarized as: Young hobbit is thrown into a difficult situation, is whisked away into world changing events, but finds the inner strength to rise beyond what he and others thought were insurmountable odds to complete his task.
I recently wrote a short, short story for a contest; 1500 words or less. Very short for me. My short stories generally run 5-8k words. My guide was the words of Hemingway. “I've seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I've seen a school of over fifty sperm whales in the same stretch of water and once harpooned one over nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg.” (from George Plimpton, “An Interview with Earnest Hemingway”)
What we leave out is provided by the reader. Readers are very imaginative, short story readers even more so. When they read a well written story they see every detail, feel every emotion, hear every sound. The writer doesn't need to explain it all. In “Death in the Afternoon” Hemingway tells us, “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.” but... “A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”
A short story can be rich and poignant, just look at some of the great short stories in classic literature. The writer knows the grand, epic tale which surrounds the short story and the reader senses it in every line. In short fiction much is left to the very adequate imagination of the reader. Unlike modern novels, filled with elaborate descriptions and convoluted side plots, short fiction drafts the reader into an active role of filling in the blanks. In my recent story, published in Fissure Magazine, I could simply say a Victorian character wore a waistcoat. The reader knows what Victorian men's fashion looked like. It required no description.
Likewise I described the heroine in my recent ultra-short story, not in a long-winded paragraph, but by simple key phrases slipped into the story line: “Her long gown flowed weightlessly as she moved through the jovial crowd and across the dance floor, her corset showing no sign of respiration, her eyes showing no hint of emotion behind the brightly feathered mask she wore.” The reader can picture a woman in an elegant Victorian gown entering the room, and a host of other character information is given in a very short scene. The reader is left to imagine an elaborate Victorian masked ball and the heroine briskly passing through the crowd.
Beyond training the writer to be more succinct and purposeful in there prose, writing short teaches us to be vicious editors. In the 1500 word short, I originally wrote over 2500 words. I edited entire paragraphs from the text. That would be equivalent to trimming a 100k manuscript down to 60k, deleting entire chapters. But I kept asking myself, as Hemingway demands, “does the reader already know this? Do they need to know? Can they guess?”
Yet, what is left in the end must be a complete story; beginning, middle, and end. I was a little worried I had gone too far, so I sent it off to a couple of authors I respect for a quick read. One told me I had hurried the ending, leaving it flat. A quick rewrite of the ending solved the problem. I can't say it enough, don't forget to keep the story a complete story. Beginning, middle, end, and the characters progress in some way. Leave your readers wanting another story, not wanting more from that story. It's a thin line, but it will make your prose stronger and your editing more focused.
As I alluded to earlier, the market for short fiction is growing even as the novel market shrinks. It is pure economics. Editors are more willing to risk one short story in a magazine from an unknown writer than risk rolling out a complete novel. Publishing short stories in magazines and anthologies gives readers a taste of your writing, helps you get comfortable working with editors and meeting deadlines, makes your writing stronger and more professional, and the credits look good on your queries. So give it a try. It's also a great distraction between novels, and keeps your creative juices flowing.
Keep writing,
max
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