Short Stories

I like writing short stories. My only problem is keeping them, y'know, short. It's pretty hopeless.

This thread is pretty much anything short stories. What kind of short stories do you write? How long is too long for a short story? How short is too short? Do you enter contests? How often? Do you ever write short stories based on your novels? I know I do.

Take it away, folks!

I write in every contest on Writers Digest. Right now there are two new writing contest for short stories and thank the gods' they aren't as short as before. Once i entered a contest on writers digest and it was only 750 words! 750 that is not enough! God.....i almost wanted to die..... it was like painful.... but now they aren't as short, though they're still short.

I tent to stray from my novel. I'll dip into Romance and Science Fiction more when i'm writing a short story. Also Horror/ Suspense.

Haha more like 7500 words. <3

I have the same exact problem--condensing. I go "la di da di da let's write a short story" and come out with 5,000+ words. D8 My creative writing teacher that I will have next year said that maybe she could help me work on that, which would be great. But still, how do you include a PLOT in 750 words? xD

I have the same problem. My creative writing teacher would ask for four pages and I would turn in three times that! Lol! I think something that helps keep a story short though is starting right in the middle. If you go right into the action and leave most of the introduction stuff, you can save words and it will help interest readers.
But 750 words? That is hard!

True, but you still have to explain what's going on. I don't care what anyone says--suspense without any explanation about what's happening is not fun. :/

My 9th grade teacher made us write a horror short story with a minimum of two pages. Everyone's was 2-6 pages...Mine was 13. Oops.

Well, I guess but I never like stories that have really slow beginnings that spend a lot of time explaining what's going on. To me it's better to figure it out in the action instead of saying it outright.

Haha! That's exactly what I would do!

my 750 word work acually got 101 place out of america and canada so i'm ok with it ^^

My old teacher asked for us to not work overyly hard, just a short paragraph in class. I took it home and wrote a seven page letter from a shoulder in wwII

Wow! That is fantastic! Congrats Angela!

Once my teacher told us to write a few sentences describing something in detail and I wrote a few pages! Then she was calling on people to read theirs and I was trying to hide in my desk because I didn't want to read for two minutes while everyone else just said two sentences! Lol!

Yeah right now i'm in college -second day woo- and we're writing something for randome things and get to read them. Well we get twenty minutes and most people have a page to two pages.

here i am with five pages and counting hahahah ^^

That's exactly like me! Like in Reflections, my creative writing club in school, we are given paper and a pencil and are told to write anything creative for ten minutes.

I'm the only one that comes out with anything. Half the people just say "I don't know what to write!"

Oh well.

You're taking college courses now? Lucky. I'd love to take a college creative writing course, but I'm only 16. >.<;

lol well i'm only 15 ^^

I'm talking writing and art.

Some famious authors and poets and playwrites are coming in this and next week so i cant wait XD

D8 That's awesome! I wish I could do that. >w<; Who are they? Anyone that you've heard of?

yeah i've heard of them but i can't recall their names right now ><