Questions tagged [short-story]
Use this tag for questions about short stories. Do not use this tag for questions about novellas, flash fiction, or other types of short fiction.
282
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Am I legally allowed to expand someone else's short story into a novel?
For years I told a short story in my kindergarten classroom. It was written and freely shared by the writer. I rewrote the short story (2-3 pages) into a middle grade chapter book, expanding the plot, ...
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How do you know if your story is too complicated or just complicated enough?
I've been working on my current story for almost a year. It's a great story but at times it seems really complicated. How complicated is too complicated in a story?
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What is the proper formatting of type and quote marks when the main character talks aloud to himself, to someone else, or has internal dialogue?
I am authoring a novel. The main character interacts with others in oral conversation and will also have internal dialogue with himself, during the same conversation. Or he will talk aloud to an ...
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How do you do worldbuilding for many worlds in a collection of short stories when you have multiple worlds, and multiple alternate histories?
How do you do worldbuilding for many worlds in a collection of short stories when you have multiple worlds, and multiple alternate histories?
Say you're writing a collection of short stories, and ...
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Can a 17 year old take NSFW Commissions? [closed]
As a 17 year old, am I allowed to write NSFW for commissions? If so, how extreme? Actual s*x, blowjobs, tits, etc lol, what would be allowed?
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Short stories to practice writing
I’m writing a novel. I am planning the plot in detail and doing worldbuilding. In the meantime, I would like to write some short stories to practice writing itself (style, pacing, emotion, ...
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I want to write a short story without naming the places the characters visit
How can I write a short story without naming the places characters visit?
Example: If the main character visits a restaurant then I want to show it to the the reader without naming the restaurant.
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What factors can be used to make a villain more relatable to readers?
In situations where a character is an irredeemable and unrepentant villain (pedophile) but is just a regular everyman character in every other respect (he looks, acts, and speaking in an unremarkable ...
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How can we use ChatGPT to write stories? [closed]
If I have an idea for the plot of the story, what is the best way that I can use ChatGPT to make it write stories for me?
Edit. To everyone who has spent time answering with few assumptions (including ...
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How to write from the POV of a cell?
For science, my teacher wants us to write a children's book from the pov of a cell after a character gets hurt. I already wrote about a mouse breaking her ankle from ballet, but I now need to write ...
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How to write a character losing time
Stuff happens
-blackout-
More stuff happens
This is both how the character is supposed to experience time, and how it's written so far. But it has a number of problems. The biggest ones are:
It looks ...
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Complex cardiac surgery story
I will be writing a short story with the title as "Complex cardiac surgery".
Can this story written later converted to a documentary movie with the end user audience as MBBS (Medical) ...
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83
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In a collection of stories with multiple worlds, how do you cue your readers as to what world your story takes place?
In a collection of stories with multiple worlds, how do you cue your readers as to what world your story takes place?
Let's say I have a collection of short stories, there are 1,000 science fiction ...
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170
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Is there a website to generate short stories from prompts?
Is there a website that can take prompts/context & create short stories?
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Can you write a short story that's only an exposition for worldbuilding?
Can you write a short story that's only an exposition for worldbuilding?
Let's say that you have a collection of science fiction short stories. In order to have strong worldbuilding, is it possible to ...
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How should you tell reader in what world your story takes place if you are writing a collection of short novels taking place in different world?
How should you tell reader in what world your story takes place if you are writing a collection of short novels taking place in different world? Is it a problem if in some situations it's almost ...
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70
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How to decide on the ending of a story?
I've been writing a short story about a boy who accidentally killed his brother and went through a serious trauma that he even started taking drugs (knowing that he is only 12 y.o).
In this story, I ...
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Working backwards from "Delete the people, keep the math and jazz." (SciFi short story)
I'm a great lover and a modest consumer of the short story genre.
But I've precious little experience writing fiction.
A line just popped into my head while listening to music and working problem in ...
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What do I need to keep in mind when writing a "pilot" episode for a series?
I've been working on a series. However, the series is very long and incomplete, so it's difficult to get feedback on it from others.
So I’ve been considering writing a “pilot” episode. A short story ...
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2k
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How to write a character going insane
I am writing a short story for homework. The story is about a writer who has to write a narrative for a book fair she'll be attending as an honorary guest, but she can't come up with any ideas. In a ...
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My character surprised me with their behaviour while writing them, should I keep that behaviour or stick to how I had planned them?
I was doing some exploratory writing without much planning/thinking and one of the characters acted in a way I wasn't expecting!
In the narrative the character (normally kind/warm) is under stress, ...
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How can I change scene without changing chapter?
I'm writing a short story/novelette (unfinished but at about 7k words) and I have 5 chapters already. I intend to add more content during a second or third pass.
I've been using chapters to change ...
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I'm writing short stories in first-person view. How to include dialogue where there main character is not present?
I've started to write a book of short stories about a quirky nerdy guy and his growth into an adult man (see here for a description). I got a recommendation to use first-person narration.
While about ...
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Can you help me understand what a "lyrical short story" is?
What are the minimum requirements for a lyrical short story to be a story? If it is plotless what separates the lyrical short story from random chatter?
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What is the minimum requirement for a song to be considered a story?
I can't figure out if my songs are stories since they don't contain a climax, multiple characters, or a resolution.
For example is this song a story? It lacks conflict and climax and resolution but it ...
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How can I avoid overusing "I" and "I'm" in a first person short story?
The story I'm writing uses 'I' and 'I'm' way too much, and it's really obvious. The problem is that I cannot find words to replace the two, and when I do, it always changes and bends what I'm trying ...
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Which factors do we need to count to evaluate the standards of short story?
I like writing suspense-based short stories similar to this one on Wattpad, but I don’t know how to assess if my writing is good or meets the expectations of the suspense genre, or if my stories ...
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130
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Writing scenes where everything goes absurdly wrong?
I'm writing a short story where a mysterious rich man has just died and his friends are gathering to find out his will. The dead man was quite eccentric and wanted to send them all on a wild goose ...
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Need help with the correct wording: Platoon? Squad? Or something else? [closed]
I wrote a short story about a 6 men on a rescue mission to save a family during WWII. I originally called them a "platoon" and wrote about the main characters "platoon mates"; ...
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Writing a screenplay versus a short story
I've been writing short stories throughout my life, in a humorous style. Yet, these stories lack a literary quality, and the prose is rather plain. I'm debating whether to start writing screenplays ...
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Is it acceptable for a published short story to serve later as the prologue of a novel?
If I was to publish an original short story to get feedback for a concept and characters, would publishers find it distasteful if I then wanted to include the same text later as the prologue part of a ...
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183
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Moving story forward via conversation in first person
Background
I wrote a few paragraphs of a story, again as an assignment a little while ago, but now I plan on completing it. But there is a problem while I am writing. Unlike other short stories that ...
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Stuck with writer's block; how can my young protagonist overcome depression due to sudden loss of sight? [closed]
I'm writing a short story in which my protagonist is a little boy. An unexpected event happens and makes his life upside down which is blindness. This latter causes him depression and now I don't know ...
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169
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Asking about chapter's length
Is it okay if a short story's chapter's length is 450 words? If so, could you also have a chapter with 1000 or more words in the same story?
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87
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How can I expand my story to meet a minimum word count? [closed]
I'm writing a sinister story for school and it has to be 500-1000 words. But I only have 414 words and I don't know what else to add.
This is how it looks so far. How can I expand this to meet the 500-...
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How to switch between characters in a first person story?
I know you can switch between the 3rd and 1st and vice versa but how from one character to another both using the 1st person. I know chapter breaks would help but I only want to make a small story (1....
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Not sure how to continue my story [closed]
I'm writing a story (I think a bit long to post here, but I could if someone would like), which is a metaphor for depression. In the story (from a 3rd person past-tense POV, if that's helpful), an ...
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Improving my story opening? [closed]
I'm writing a story about a woman driving cross-country in search of her childhood home. There, she discovers the small town has grown to a suburban sprawl, and she's surprised to find that she can no ...
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How can I make the premise of e.g. a short story more real?
As far as my motivation in writing goes, I have long been frustrated about historical fiction I’ve read where the main character is basically an American dressed up in a cloak and armor.
The Caryatid: ...
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Describing unrelated events in first person viewpoints
How can I describe a scene in a short story with the first-person point of view, when the main character isn't taking part in the action, or even viewing the event?
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How can concurrent/dual dialogue be implemented in short story/fiction writing?
I am currently writing a short story that has two intertwined narratives told in inverse chronological order from each other. The two narratives meet/converge at the moment the protagonists receive ...
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How to develop ideas?
I participated in a weekly challenge prompt app and many asked me to continue writing and to make it a book but I can't find a good idea to develop that short story.
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Publishing of Collection of Short Stories
I have a collection of short stories--48 in total, a word count of 80,000 and 156 pages. Regarding publication, is such a collection likely to be too large? If I were to split it into two collections, ...
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When writing science fiction or horror, how to prevent the villain from becoming less scary as they are fleshed out?
I'm trying to write a horror short story about a shape-shifter, but I have trouble keeping it from sounding like a science fiction story.
The story starts out with a creepy tone, with a person close ...
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146
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Misspelling and punctuation how to improve?
Love telling/writing stories except I am the absolute worst at both spelling along with punctuation. Normally I care less about these things because I can still read them although many people get ...
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Formatting a story collection for submission to publishers
Anyone know of a definitive online resource on formatting a story collection for submission to publishers and agents? One knotty question in particular: does one use the title of the book throughout ...
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Does this sentence make sense grammatically? Is there anything I can do to improve it? [closed]
"The meticulously placed masses of skin under her eyes were captured involuntarily by the customary light fixtures of the hospital ward, sufficiently polluted with the indistinct clamour of her ...
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How can I begin writing a short story?
I like to read short stories, novels, documentaries etc.
I used to write a diary as well.
I am interested in beginning to write a short story or some other form of creative writing. But I struggle to ...
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Literary magazines that publish surreal/absurdist fiction?
Does anybody know of any literary magazines that publish surreal/absurdist fiction? I have a short story I'm looking to submit. The closest comparisons I can think of are A Clockwork Orange, Brave New ...
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Where can I find a beta reader for grammatical issues?
I’m looking forward to finding a beta reader to help getting me past my grammatical inaccuracies during my attempts at writing short stories.
I’m not a native English speaker, so I found myself ...
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