SO YOU WANNA BE A WRITER

Short stories are the key.

Every year, the US coughs up one million novels. Many of these are self-published by dreamers. Most of them are pretty bad. Sturgeon’s Law: 80% of everything is crap. Sturgeon was correct. One need only peruse the evening’s television listings. For those who aspire to become published authors, there’s no better route than the short story.

Short stories are about one thing. The wages of fear. An elaborate practical joke. The twist ending, endemic to EC’s fifties comics such as Vault of Horror of Weird Fantasy. Many Twilight Zone episodes followed this path. Novels are about many things. Grief. Joy. Greed. Wonder. Choose your favorite authors and describe what they do. I like crime novels, and I’m currently reading my umpteenth Michael Connelly, who does the police procedural better than anyone. Connelly writes with a straight face and his books grab you by the throat. I know. I should stop saying that. I just like to grab people by the throat.

Joseph Wambaugh is a former police officer whose iconic novels are filled with irony. He delivers gut-busting humor back to back with tragedy. Many of his novels have been turned into movies: The Choir Boys, The Black Marble, The Onion Field. I recommend him as a seductive narrative voice.

Back to short stories. There’s an insatiable demand for short stories, and most of them pay. Use your search engine to find “short story markets.” Then, boy howdy! Stand back. Look at all those markets desperate for content. A short story can come from anywhere. It can come from a good title. “Drunk Octopus Wants To Fight.” I dragged the title “Trail of the Loathesome Swine” in my head for forty years before I found the story. It has since been reprinted four times. It’s about a rural Alabama boy who vows to avenge his sister’s death at the hands of a thousand pound feral hog. They’re real. Here he is with the hog he killed.

Write a short story about technology. Does it help, or hurt? It certainly didn’t help astronaut Dave Bowman when he was trying to get back in the spaceship. Science fiction has an insatiable appetite for short science fiction. All you need is imagination and a lucid style. Short stories are not where you discover your voice. Your voice will announce itself. Write the short story in the simplest, most-straightforward style you can. If you choose a stylized voice, so be it. Jerry Bingham’s novel Hades’ Kiss, about a modern detective named N. Vagelle, began as a series of short stories. Go to Amazon and look up Hades’ Kiss. Look at those reviews! Short stories can be your entry to novels, if you string them together.

I don’t. A short story is a short story. It’s meant to entertain you for fifteen minutes. Mark Twain loved the form. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” “A Dog’s Tale.” “Eve’s Diary.”

Edgar Allen Poe loved short stories. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” “The Purloined Letter.” “The Pit and the Pendulum.” All became movies. Ray Bradbury? Oh honey, don’t let me commence! Needless to say, Twain, Poe, and Bradbury are worth reading for many benefits. Entertainment. Form. Style. Twain and Poe wrote in styles appropriate to the time in which they lived. If you write a short story set in medieval England, brush up your Shakespeare. Read some Walter Scott. I prefer the here and now cuz I can just make it up as I go along.

Carry a pen and pad with you at all times. Write down anything that strikes your fancy. Interesting names. Interesting facts. Websites. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. If you want to write a story, let the topics fight it out in your brain. You can start with a genre. Horror. Humor. Sci-Fi. Think of the short stories you admire, and pass them through a mirror or a wormhole. Most of my short stories came from titles rattling around in my head. “Bat Fan Vs. Fat Ban.” I’ll run that next. I’m posting this right now, as I write it, because as soon as I do, I’ll think of a thousand other things I wanted to say.