Tips for Writing Winning Short Stories
Writing Wining Short Stories
Award winning short story writer Martina Devlin says ‘ Joyce calls them epiphanies. William Trevor calls them glimpses. I'd call short stories snapshots…because a snapshot is the most important photograph in an album, the one that tells you all you need to know about its contents.’
It takes discipline and constant re-writing to see what should stay in a short story and what can be re-phrased or left out. Every word counts and every word must earn its place.
Entering short story competitions is a marvelous way to raise your profile as a writer - it gets you noticed. I know several writers who have got publishing deals for their long fiction as a result of winning a competition or having a story placed in an anthology. Read Brian O’Connor’s story here on writing.ie to see how talent really does win through.
How Short Stories Can Lead to Bigger Things
For those with a few moments to spare, I’d like to share my ‘short story’ on what changed my luck and transformed my ‘writer status’ from unpublished to published.
My envelope of rejections was bursting to capacity, so much so I had to open a folder to house them all. Despite several attempts to fling them in the fire and my laptop straight in after them, my persistent gene refused to give in. Something wasn’t connecting. I was well aware of that – I’d been told so by a few of the editors who’d rejected me. And though I spent days (weeks on occasion) rewriting those first three chapters again and again, the rejections became kinder but the result remained the same… ‘we’re sorry but this book isn’t for us’!
How to Make Your Own Luck with Short Stories
Ivy Bannister, award winning short stoy writer recently spoke at Dublin City Hall with authors Kate Kerrigan and Mary Malone as part of the Dublin Book Festival, 2011. The panel, discussing how short fiction can get you published, was chaired by Vanessa O'Loughlin. All the panelists were contributors to The Big Book of Hope, an anthology of short stories from over 40 of Irelands top authors, media personalities, business people and politicians compiled by Vanessa O'Loughlin to benefit The Hope Foundation and their work with the street children of Kolcatta. Here Ivy reveals her secrets for success.
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