Hi everyone! Happy Wednesday, aka Writer’s Nook day! I hope you’re all doing well and enjoying your summer. Last week and the week before I threw a lot of stuff at you about worldbuilding, so this week I’ll chill a bit. Let’s talk about short stories! And better than that, let’s write a short story!
Okay, first of all, disclaimer: short stories are my enemy. I can’t, for the life of me, write anything that could fall under the definition of “short,” which made my four years of being a creative writing major the WORST because of course I couldn’t throw a novel at my professors (even though I wanted to). But don’t get me wrong: I like writing short stories, IN THEORY, because I love writing stories in general, HOWEVER, the short part is where I falter. Because, in case you haven’t noticed by the, uh, everything about me, I like to ramble. A lot. I like to word sprawl. And a lot of times, the ideas I have are best suited for novels because my brain works primarily in big pictures and not so much in zoomed-in scenes. And zoomed-in scenes are exactly what make a short story.
So rest assured, friends of mine, that just because I eternally struggle with writing short stories doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t know how. I do, I just get carried away, hehe.
Anyway, let’s get into it. I’ll start us off with an activity I’m totally stealing from one of my creative writing professors (one of the best I had tbh): story kernels.
If you’re like me and don’t know how to write anything short ever, story kernels will (hopefully) save your life like they saved mine. We’re going to start with an anecdote: a short narrative of something that has happened to you. Just think of a memory -- it can be recent, or from your childhood; it can be sad or funny or weird or even just mundane and normal -- and tell us what happened. Plain and simple.
As my professor said, “This is the what happened that will allow you to later imagine the what could happen.” The idea is to take one (very small, very short) experience that you had and just write it down. But here’s the catch: don’t make it longer than like, two pages. Yeah, I know. I hate it too. But that’s your absolute limit: two pages. Or if you prefer, 500 words. Single-spacing and tiny fonts count as cheating!
The great thing about the story kernel strategy is that it gives you a really easy start for a story: it starts you off with something you know better than anything – your own life. And it also helps you keep your story zoomed in and specific – because of the length limit and because you’re writing about a snippet of your life.
All right, guys. Break time. I want you to grab a notebook and pen or your laptop or whatever it is you use to write, set a timer for twenty minutes, and just write. Don’t stop. Twenty minutes. I’ll allow you one (1) snack break. But then back to writing! Write your life-based story kernel. Remember, no more than two pages! And at the end of twenty minutes, stop wherever you are (but, like, you can finish your sentence, that’s fine). If you didn’t get a complete story down in that very short time frame, that’s okay! But hey, you have more words now than you did twenty minutes ago! And that’s an accomplishment!
Now that you’ve got something started, hopefully you want to keep going until you finish it! And if you are motivated and pumped and want to go do that right now, go for it!! I won’t be offended if you stop reading because you just NEED to get some more words down. In fact, I encourage it.
But if you wrote for twenty minutes and are like “Okay that’s quite enough for now,” I feel that, and that’s valid too. In that case, I’ll give you something (hopefully) worth reading up ahead!
If the story kernel is your first step toward a new, original, short (emphasis on short) story, then step two is to shift perspectives a little. Keep using the same story/scene/memory you used for the first kernel, and now write it again – but from a different point of view. If you wrote the first part from your own perspective (which you probably did, since you wrote about your own memory), write it this time from the point of view of someone else in the story. And yes, I’ll let you have a little more wiggle room. You can make it 3-4 pages now (or between 1000 and 1500 words). You’re welcome ;)
So now that we’re shifting perspectives, your story is moving a little bit more toward fiction. It’s less autobiography, more making things up. Get into another character’s head (even if that character is someone you know in real life). When I did this activity in my class, I wrote the first kernel about going for a walk with my dog in a cemetery, where we saw a few deer. The first one was from my point of view, but I wrote the second one from the deer’s perspective, just to give it a different and interesting twist. So do something like that with yours! Think outside the box, really work your creativity and start to mold your personal memory into a new story.
Short stories can get overwhelming sometimes when you get wrapped up in how much you want to accomplish in such a small space, and then you end up writing a whole novel like me. Again, that’s why the kernels are helpful: they keep you confined to a single scene/event, and that you dig into details more than you would writing longer fiction. Short stories are about zooming in, taking a big world and focusing on something small. And then you make that small thing seem like the only important thing in this big world.
I hope you guys find the kernel method helpful! In my writing class, we went through like four phases of kernels, changing them and lengthening them with each rewrite. It really is a clever way to build a story, so if anyone’s interested I’d be happy to share the further steps. For now, I’ll leave y’all with just the first two, but feel free to reach out if you want more!
What I’m Writing: Since July is coming to an end it’s also the end of Camp NaNoWriMo! I’ve mentioned NaNo a few times before because I just love it, and this month I’ve been unusually productive. I started the month with a goal to write 80,000 words, and with two days to go I’m almost there – only 3000 words left! I’ve made a ton of progress on my fantasy book called The Oracle Stone, and I’m very excited to be done with it so I can look into self-publishing (and so I can go write something else).
What I’m Reading: I’m in the midst of The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski, and I’m enjoying it a lot! It’s an intriguing story with awesome characters and a really well-built world. I’m interested to see how everything will turn out; I love fantasy with a touch of mystery!
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