Does your short story feel pointless? Here's the problem.

[Story_Marc]

So, over the last week I created a whole diagnostic of the many issues I've noticed with these and how to solve them. I'm going to be releasing it across the rest of April before I shift focus to serials and series. It's just important to do this first because people who can't handle the micro can't handle the macro.

Anyway, hope this helps with addressing this problem!

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Huh. I once submitted a short story to Amazing Stories (the 80s revival not the original; I learned to read about a year after that one folded IIRC!) and the editor who rejected it asked: "But what happens next? Does the narrator survive?"
Uhm... it was a horror story, the ending was left intentionally vague... but I guess they were just the wrong place to send it, despite it being the HOME of stories like that back during the pulp era!

 

[ShrimpShady]

Oh boy I was just thinking about how a short story I wrote was missing something

Although I've diagnosed the problem to be much more textual than with the events happening on the page

I do wonder what you think about stories where the "turn" is the ending. Where it's the final paragraph or sentence that completely shifts a previously straightforward narrative, and you're left to re-read the story under a new lens. Can't name any specific examples, but I swear I've read stuff like that

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Oh boy I was just thinking about how a short story I wrote was missing something

Although I've diagnosed the problem to be much more textual than with the events happening on the page

I do wonder what you think about stories where the "turn" is the ending. Where it's the final paragraph or sentence that completely shifts a previously straightforward narrative, and you're left to re-read the story under a new lens. Can't name any specific examples, but I swear I've read stuff like that

H. P. Lovecraft did that a bit. O. Henry as well, I think (at least in the one or two of his stories I read, which were supposedly typical, like, IIRC Gift Of the Magi). Ramsey Campbell is pretty good with that, too.

 

[Story_Marc]

Huh. I once submitted a short story to Amazing Stories (the 80s revival not the original; I learned to read about a year after that one folded IIRC!) and the editor who rejected it asked: "But what happens next? Does the narrator survive?"
Uhm... it was a horror story, the ending was left intentionally vague... but I guess they were just the wrong place to send it, despite it being the HOME of stories like that back during the pulp era!

Hmm... This actually sounds like it taps into a potential issue I bring up in a different video you'll get next week!

Oh boy I was just thinking about how a short story I wrote was missing something

Although I've diagnosed the problem to be much more textual than with the events happening on the page

I do wonder what you think about stories where the "turn" is the ending. Where it's the final paragraph or sentence that completely shifts a previously straightforward narrative, and you're left to re-read the story under a new lens. Can't name any specific examples, but I swear I've read stuff like that

The "turn" shouldn't be the ending itself and the reason why taps into what I'll speak about in said video I mentioned. Plus, what I broke down with short story structure.

More the problem with a turn with consequence is that you have no resulting meaning, which makes it feel incomplete. The consequence doesn't have to be long, but it DOES lead to those feelings in others, which is where it can lead into a problem.

But more on that next week!

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Hmm... This actually sounds like it taps into a potential issue I bring up in a different video you'll get next week!

As an aside, I left off the "punchline" - before I submitted it to the magazine, it won a "cash" (well, college bookstore credit) in a contest at college; I was one of only two Freshmen to win it and the other one, she took third place in all three categories.