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Short Story Ideas

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honey:
Ok, since there hasn't been too much writing chatter around these boards lately, I've thought of a topic I'd love to hear some thoughts on.

Writing short stories. It seems impossibly hard. Lets say you have to write a short story and you have a 2000 word limit, how do you go about coming up with an idea? How do you tell an entire story in 2000 words? Is there a trick to it? Are there ideas that work better than others? And if you just write about like a specific moment, ie your first day at school, or your first kiss, or the day your dog died... are those considered complete stories?

I only ask because I was thinking about writing an essay for the annual writers digest competition because I have a cute idea. But then it got me thinking that it might be fun to write a short story too, and I realized that I have no idea how I would do that.

Anyway, I do it for the challenges all the time, but I'm basing it all around a picture then or I'm using the BSB which are characters that we all already know. How do you write an original short story, that introduces new characters, has a plot, and is a complete story all in 2000 words? Ideas? Suggestions?

RokofAges75:
I think short stories are hard too.  I went through a phase where I liked to write them, but now it seems too hard to tell a good story in only a few pages.

mare:
I LOVE writing short stories. Maybe it's because I have such a short attention span lol but I love the challenge of creating a full idea out of a scene. I try to leave my shorts open ended so if I want to I can always go back and add more.

nicksgal:
I don't like writing short stories because my brain works on epic proportions. lol

kristy_05_88:

--- Quote from: nicksgal on April 18, 2008, 10:53:06 PM ---I don't like writing short stories because my brain works on epic proportions. lol

--- End quote ---

For me too. I like writing them, but I don't have many. Every time I set out to write a short story, it turns into like 300 pages.

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