Let’s Write a Short Story! by Joe Bunting
Joe Bunting, of the well-known writing blog The Write Practice, recently published the e-book Let’s Write a Short Story!. I agreed to review an advance review copy (and my apologies, Joe, for being so late with the review; life conspired to keep me from writing it until now, let alone finishing my short story WIP).
The purpose of this book is to help writers to write short stories and get them published. It’s a short book, only 153 pages in the PDF I received. But it’s packed full of useful information to get beginning writers on the fast track to short story publication.
The book begins with a reality check: some statistics on the low acceptance rates of submissions to major American literary magazines. But it goes on to give eight good reasons we should write short stories anyway.
Next, short stories are defined by giving four main attributes they generally share, and three things they are not. This is followed by some discussion of how to get published by literary magazines.
Chapter two covers some effective story writing strategies and story structures. I found this to be one of the most useful sections because it’s something I didn’t have a good understanding of.
The third chapter has a variety of useful tips for writing better stories. This was also very informative.
The following chapters cover such topics as:
- Overcoming writer’s block
- Editing and getting feedback
- How to submit stories
- Using short stories to help build your author platform
In summary, this book is full of excellent practical advice for writing and submitting short stories. I highly recommend it to any writers out there who are not already experienced in getting short stories published.
Related articles
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- Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on writing short stories (thedivineordinary.com)
- Let’s write a short story! (thethoughtfulbuttonhook.wordpress.com)
- Publishing Tips: 6 Ways To Make Your Short Story Collection Stand Out (huffingtonpost.com)
- So You Want to Write a Short Story (Part 1: Getting Started) (theartistrycollective.wordpress.com)
- Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story (gabriellegantz.wordpress.com)
- Short story reversing!! (thethoughtfulbuttonhook.wordpress.com)
The “effective story writing strategies and story structures” sounds interesting. I had heard about this book, and considered getting it, since writing fiction is something I recently started giving a try.
I recommend it if you want to get into writing short stories but aren’t sure how to start.
He also just announced a video mini-course that goes with it here, on sale for $28 until Oct. 12. I’m not a big fan of video course myself, but I’m considering it. The first section, “How to Dissect a Short Story” sounds very useful.