Our Short Story Writing Unit is here at last!
In this unit, we will study six short stories, explore story elements, and develop creative writing skills through short story writing. But never fear, this almost epic endeavor – a short story in 1,000 – 1,250 words – is completely do-able. Your task in the next 2 weeks is to unlock the block and unleash your creative genius.
There is no singular, perfected tried and true planning-and-plotting method when it comes to writing your story, but you’ll find that your task will be much easier with a plan or outline — even if it a series of post-it notes taped to every conceivable surface in your living space. Your story workbook will be your new best friend in the weeks to come, so do plan to take a lot of notes!
Before you succumb to periods of pathetic self-doubt, excuse-making and diminishing defeat, indulge in the words of wisdom from those who have ‘been there, done that.’
Attention Authors! We’d Love to Hear from You!
The Prep H Writing class of aspiring and emerging authors would like to invite accomplished authors, playwrights, poets, and anyone with a story to tell that might enlighten us on how you tackle the writing process.
Arkadaşlar selam,
2008 mezunuyum. Şu sıralar dizi yazarlığı yapıyorum. Tiyatro oyunları, kısa filmler de yazdım ve inanın her seferinde bilgisayar ekranındaki boş sayfaya bakarken “nasıl olacak da bu sayfalar dolacak?” diye düşünüyorum. Bu his hiçbir zaman geçmiyor kısacası. Sonra bir bakmışsınız sayfalarca yazmışsınız. Bu bir trans hali gibi. Kendini kaptırmakla ilgili. Yazdığını eleştirmemek gibi. Kötüyse sonra çöpe atarsınız 🙂 Ama önce bir yazın, yazın neler çıkacak bakın..
Fikir mi yok? Problem yok. Kendi hayatınızdan yola çıkın. Hikayeyi Mars’ta aramayın. Mars’la ilgili bir şey yazmayın demek değil bu tabi ki.. Kendinize dönün demek aslında. Martian filmi şu sıralar vizyonda. Belki izlemişsinizdir. O Mars’la ilgili bir film değil aslında. Yalnızlıkla ilgili bir film. Hepimizin aşina olduğu bir his. Dolayısıyla Martian’ı yazmak için de Mars’lı olmaya gerek yok 🙂 Günlük yaşantınızı esas alın. Arkadaşlarınızla olan ilişkilerinizi, ailenizi.. Her şey bir fikirdir aslında. Otobüste kulak kabarttığınız bir diyalog, taksicinin ülke haline söylenmesi, ailenizin sofradaki hali, küçük kardeşinizin fındık kabuğunu doldurmayan günlük dertleri, bir gazete haberi.. Fikir her yerde aslında. Bir kıvılcıma bakıyor sadece.
Kıvılcımı daha da ileri taşımak için ben genellikle müzikten de faydalanırım. Enstrumental müzikler dinleyebilirsiniz. İlham verir.
Benim için en önemlilerinden biri de sade olmak. Sade ve basit olmak. Basitliği “ucuz” anlamında kullanmıyorum. Fazla süslemelerden kaçınırım ben mesela. Ağdalı ve abartılı bir dil kullanmayı tercih etmem. Herkesin anlayabileceği bir şekilde derdimi anlatmayı tercih ederim. Duygular evrensel. Kelimeleri birinin kalbine dokunacak şekilde dizmek bu işin zor kısmı. Ama bu yol fiyakalı bir dilden değil de samimiyetten geçiyor bence.
Yukarıdaki abinin videosunu izlemedim. Yazar her zaman yazar diyor sanırım. Doğru diyor 🙂 Yazmak için masaya oturmanıza gerek yok. Fikrin zihninizde demlenmesine izin verin. Gece bulduğunuz harika fikir sabah kalktığınızda “ben nasıl bunu sevmişim” tarzı bir utanca da dönüşebilir. Bu yüzden kendinize zaman verin. Paniğe kapılmayın. Fikri demleyin. Masaya da oturmadan bir çay demleyin. Çay da fena yazdırmaz hani 🙂
Hepinize kolay gelsin.
Aksel
Aksel Bey,
Thank you for advice ,the example that you give about The Martian inspires me a lot. Before you give advice I was writing about unreal things but now I will write about my life. Wish you luck !
Even though I’m a little late, I still wanted to respond to your amazing advice on writing. I love writing but -I hate to admit it- I never have good ideas about what to write. Hopefully your advice will help me next time I try to start a story, I won’t spend as much time staring at the screen. I wish you good luck on your career; I hope you never run out of ideas! -Bahar Yoleri
Hello Aksel Bey,
You said that anything in our life could be a topic to write about, I usually find that in books and movies. I like to choose a character that isn’t talked about a lot and write, or at least think about their story. I don’t like to wait after finding an idea because every time I wait for more than a day, I throw the idea away. I get bored of it and find an idea. I think imagining living inside your story is also fun.
Thank you for writing to us,
Hello Aksel Bey,
First of all, thank you for writing to us. Your writing really gave me an idea of how to write comfortably. The thing i was most concerned about was the ideas. For example, you said ‘What am I going to write, how are these ideas going to come to me?’. You helped me to understand how to get over this feeling. I really like how you said just write, if it’s bad edit it or just throw it in the trash. Write what you want and just enjoy it. I never thought of it this way, I just focused on writing something my teacher would like. Now I will write freely and just get my ideas out there.
Thank you for writing to us. We appreciate your time and effort. You mentioned that if we can’t find anything to write, we can write about our lives. I think that is so true. I usually force myself to find things but maybe the perfect material for my story is in my life. It can be in bus, in school, anywhere basically. That really opened my eyes. Thank you for your advice.
Hello Aksel Bey,
Thank you for writing to us. It really inspired me when you told us that we should not try to write about Mars. That we shouldn’t think too hard to try to come up with a different idea. Because even great books start off with a simple event or feeling. Thank you again for writing to us, I think now I have an idea how to start my writings.
Thank you for taking your time and writing us.I really enjoyed reading your message.As you said, I think it is important not to panic.I also don’t like to read hyperbolic sentences. I like to read sentences that İ can understand easily. I wish you great success.Thank you. Rana Okan
Thank you for taking the time to write us. Since we are new with writing stories, the tips you gave us are very helpful. Once I tried to write a story in my free time and every time I ended up with a blank page with just a few words on it. Now I will try and write again without looking if it is confusing or weird. I can just rewrite it or throw it to trash, right? 🙂
Melissa van Mannekes
I’m very happy that you actually gave us advice about our writing unit. I’m sure this will help a lot. I usually don’t have a lot of ideas about what I am going to write, and I really liked the advice that you gave about it. I hope your career gets even better. Have a nice day.
Eren Kodal
Hello Aksel Bey,
Thank you for writing to us. It really inspired me when you told us that we should not try to write about Mars. That we shouldn’t think too hard to try to come up with a different idea. Because even great books start off with a simple event or feeling. Thank you again for writing to us, I think now I have an idea about how to start my writings.
Aksel Bey,
Writing a story -or writing anything really- seems very, very frightening but reading your advice kind of decreased my level of stress about it, though no advice could really make it go away. I think your thought about inspiration coming from simple things is inspiring itself.
So thank you for taking time to write us, you’ve been really helpful.
Duygu Çakmur
Thanks, Mr. Bonfil. I really appreciate that you took the time to write in order to help our class project. It’s so nice to see that you spare some time for us while being
busy. The example about The Martian film really opened my eyes. It was a wonderful and educative writing. And i think it will help us write our short story project. I want to thank you again for your writing and I wish you all the best of luck on your career.
-Gokmen Utku Dinedurga
Hello Aksel Bey,
Thank you for writing a very reasonable reply and gave ideas to write about. I will always remember the advice you gave us when I start writing. I really liked that you said that we can write internal topics instead of mixing everything up, and also not on writing too fancy.
Thank You
Thank you for your letter Aksel Bey,
I agree with the way you write about things. Everybody has different ways they like to do things, some people write better when they are in a different location or some might like to have some special thing to drink when they are writing .think that if you have a thought, you should wait and think about it for awhile. If you just sit at a boring place like a desk your writing will be boring, but by spending time thinking about what you want to write, listening to some music and get inspiration, then I think the writing will be more interesting but that is only my opinion.
Thank you again for your letter,
Freja Cuddington
Thank you for your advice Aksel Bey. We really appreciate it and we think that it will be very useful to us, while we’re writing our stories for this project. In your message message you said that you prefered to write simply and I agree with you because I think the best writing is when there is no exaggeration. Sincerely, Zeynep Veryeri
Aksel Bey,
Thank you for taking the time to write to us, I am Ayda. I was scared when I heard we were writing a short story. I mean, even a short story takes time and you have to come up with good ideas or else it will be boring and no one would like to read it. After reading your letter, I realized I actually can write a short story. Thanks for your help.
Thank you so much for your advice! I usually have trouble finding a topic to write about. I lose a lot of time just thinking about it and stressing myself out. After reading your advice I’ll try to let it go and just write about anything that comes to my mind and see how it goes.
Thank you again for your response
Ask Bey,
Hi, I just want to say thank you for taking time for us to write a letter. You told us to find the story in our life. I agree with you and I believe it’s something everyone should know. I will take your advice and try to be a better writer. Again,thank you.
Aksel Bey,
First of all, thank you for writing to us. You’ve taken time to give us some great advice. I can agree with you in some points. We don’t need to be in anywhere special to dream about Neverland. We don’t need the fancy words to draw a picture in people’s minds. Because the world is blue, green and red, not chartreuse, azure and garnet. Real life is a great inspiration for writing, but only if you have the imagination to take it one step further and out of the box.
I must disagree with you at one point. I prefer music with lyrics while writing. Because if you find the right track, the lyrics will inspire you and make you feel your own story in a way you never thought was possible.
Thank you again for writing!
Melis Avşar
I believe that any student of Miss St. Clair is indeed blessed. She is presenting you with challenges that might seem hard at this moment, but in the long run, all of you will consider yourselves lucky that you have shared a class with her.
A year ago she contacted me, asking what I thought of her assignment that her students go “all the way” and actually write an entire novel. I was delighted with her assignment, even though I suspect many of her students staggered out of class groaning under the weight of that assignment. You should realize that besides being an author, I’ve been a teacher for over thirty years. I currently teach history at the college level, but before that, I taught students your age for over a decade. Something you might not realize is that when a teacher gives an assignment like that, they are giving an assignment to themselves as well. . .they have to read, correct and grade EVERYTHING that you write!
Wow!
A year has passed since she assigned the class ahead of you the task of writing a novel. She recently contacted me to share the short story assignment and asked if I would send along some comments and advice to you.
I know some of you most likely breathed a sigh of relief. Rather than write fifty thousand or more words, she has challenged you to write a short story or novella. I smiled when I read her note because in many ways writing a short story or novella is every bit as tough as a novel.
When I write a novel I have a hundred thousand or more words to play with. I can spend five thousand words here, five thousand words there to layer in details of a story. A short story? Now that can be tough. Every word becomes precious. Many authors will eagerly accept an assignment to write a novel. But a short story? That is tough work.
Let me share an example. My very first publication was a short story in a magazine for guys your age. It was a science fiction story about a sport that can be played on the moon where gravity is one sixth that of Earth. When I first submitted the story it was over five thousand words long. The editor liked it but said I had to cut it down by a thousand words to fit their magazine. A thousand words? Which thousand words? I clung to each word, I needed them to describe life on the moon fifty years from now, the rules of the game and how it was played, who the main character was, what he felt, what he saw, and at the same time create plot tension. . . a story that people will WANT TO READ.
I’m touching on what is the core of good story telling with short stories. You can’t fool around with words and use an extra five hundred here or there. You have to be precise. You have to find the exact right word to fit your story. . . one word rather than ten, one paragraph rather than an entire page. Believe me, it was difficult to edit my work down and make that first short story a tale that a magazine would publish.
The editor finally accepted my revisions and soon asked me for another tale. That editor and I went on as a team for over twenty five years and he really taught me the business of writing. And believe me, he was a lot tougher than Miss St. Clair. I’d send in a story and he’d send it back a week later with red marks all over the page and sometimes entire pages tossed out. He was teaching me to be precise with my writing. To find that one perfect word or sentence. He was like a sports coach, at times shouting at me to do better, to go out and do it again, to cut another page, to get stronger with my writing, to learn to tell in a hundred words what previously took me a thousand words.
Success with short stories is all about editing, and editing. . .and yes editing!
Miss St. Clair has taken on the job of being your coach and without doubt will work you as hard as any sports coach telling you to run faster, or practice a move over and over until you get it right. A short story is never done when you have finished writing it for the first time. You have to put it away for a few days, then go back, pull it up and look at it again and again. As with a sport, it will be hard work, but with practice and a lot of rewrites you will finally get it right. That is a moment to be proud of, because at that moment you will know that you finally got it right.
I absolutely must add one more point. I admire all of you. Every story and every book I have ever written I have done so using English, the language I grew up with. I can not even begin to imagine doing so in French, Spanish or Turkish! Even though I am a best selling author I can not even begin to imagine achieving what you are now doing. I hope all of you see how remarkable your work is, and how proud you should be of what you are accomplishing in your writing class.
Hello Dr.Forstchen,
Thank you for writing to us, and you are right about short stories, every word is precious. That is why some of us were pretty sad when we were told we had to fit our stories in 5000 words, it is really a hard job to cut from your ideas to make it shorter. That is why we asked Ms. St. Clair if it could be longer (and she said yes), I can’t imagine not being able to say everything I want to just to fit it in the magazine, but from what you wrote I understood that sometimes you have to sacrifice a few things and think of a better ways to say them to make your story presentable. I have already started writing my novella but while reading your advice I saw that it needed MUCH MORE EDITING. I really appreciate you showing us how to make our stories better.
Hello Dr. Forstchen,
Thank you for taking the time to write to us and thank you for the advice you gave. I have been wondering about how to choose my words for my short story, and your advice really helped me. As you said, even when I have written my short story I am going to have to go back and edit my work. So, now I am going to focus more on writing my story and worry about the little details later. It will be way less stressful for me. Thank you again for writing to us.
-Ekin Karaoğuz
I’m very happy that you actually gave us advice about our writing unit. I’m sure this will help a lot. I usually don’t have a lot of ideas about what I am going to write, and I really liked the advice that you gave about it. I hope your career gets even better. Have a nice day.
Dr. Forstchen,
Thank you for taking your time and write to us. We are really pleased to get an advice from a best-seller author like you. In the beginning of the year my older brother was frightening me by saying you are going to write a novella but after reading your advice I feel relaxed. Your advice is so valuable for us and you helped us gain wisdom about being an author.
Hello Dr. Forstchen
I am really happy to see one the best selling writers giving me advice about how to write and admiring me. Whenever I start to write I change my mind and I dont like doing that, I want to be specific in my topic and write about it. With your advice I learn that I have to put the story away for some time until I become sure on my topic. Thanks for taking your time to write to us, good luck in your career!
Dr. Forstchen,
Thank you so much for taking your time and writing to us. In the beginning of the school year, I was very anxious because I’ve heard of that novel unit the advanced classes had to do. They had to write 50 thousand words, and I was definitely intimidated. But a few weeks ago I’ve learned that we were going to write a short story, and I was relieved. But now, reading your advice, I’m beginning to have second thoughts. Maybe writing a short story really is as hard as writing a novel. Because, like you said, you have to chose every single word precisely. Let’s hope it all goes well
Thank you so much for writing again!
Dr. Forstchen,
Thank you for taking the time to write to us. I admire your accomplishments and appreciate you for giving us some helpful advice. I think you are very right about short stories, and how it is hard to select the right words in the right situations. I will keep this in mind when I am writing it and I’m sure it will help me out a lot. Thank you for your admiration towards our hard work and your very helpful advice.
First of all I would like to thank you for your advice and I’m sure that your advice will help us in our attemps of being young writers (I didn’t use the word author because I don’t think we’re there yet). However I must say that I disagree with you, you are right that we have mmore options while writing a novel but also we need write a minimum of 50.000 words and this is not easy. In some point you run out of words I know that some books took years to get written and in my opinion, even though novels are a lot better, short stories are much easier to write.
Dear Dr. Forstchen
Thank you for writing this helpful piece of advice to us. I think you are definitely right about saying “Success with short stories is all about editing, and editing. . . and yes editing!” because every time I start to edit my piece of writing, I find many mistakes about not only grammar, about the quality of the sentences. I had a change to read your book “One Second After” and I think you use all your advices that you give to us and made an amazing book. I hope I will be successful as you in my novel.
I appreciate the time you spent to write this to us, i personally don’t know how i could write something so short and describe all my plot in a story, like you said it’s really hard to write a short story. We have to choose our words carefully. I really like fooling around and playing with words but it makes it almost impossible to do this. Your first published short story and how you kind of struggled with it really inspired me. I really like getting Miss St. Clair’s lesson to because the way she pushes us to do the best will make us better writes and better thinkers. Thank you for writing to us, i hope your career gets even better!
Thank you so much Dr.Forstchen for taking the time to write an encouraging and motivating post to us. It’s very kind of you to take the time to write to a group of people that you haven’t met and mean nothing to you. I know that knowing a successful author like you struggled so much at the past will help us a lot. I will listen to your advice and read my short again and again, and I won’t be afraid to change it again and again until I am happy with my writing. -Gokmen Utku Dinedurga
Thank you Mr. Forstchen! I can’t even express how excited I got when we started reading your letter. Even with all the work you have, you still took the time to write a letter for us and that makes me feel beyond grateful. Even though I always have liked writing in English, I think writing a short story will be rather hard. I agree with you at your point of using every word precisely. I believe that is going to be the real challenge when I start writing, but by the end of the assignment I’m sure I will be able to make progress. Thank you again for all the advice you gave, have a nice day!
Thank you very much Dr. Forstchen for writing to us! Being able to get advice from a successful author like you really excites all of us; because in my opinion, writing is one of the hardest things one can pursue a career in. Frankly, your comments on writing a short story scared me a lot, but it also made me realize how challenging it can be to be precise and choose the right words, which is helpful, because if it came as a surprise, I would have no idea how to deal with it. I hope your passion for writing never ends. I wish you all the best.
Hello Dr. Forstchen,
First of all, thank you for spending your time to write and advise us, I really appreciate it. Until I read your advice, I actually thought writing a story would be a lot easier than writing a whole novel. But now that I actually think about it, I can clearly see you’re right. It’ll be harder than I thought but I’m -nearly- sure I can make it happen especially with your helpful advice.
Have a nice day.
Duygu Çakmur
Dear Mr.Forstchen,
First of all I would like to thank you for writing us this letter that is full of advise and encouragement.
At first when Miss St.Clair gave us this assignment I was every frustrated because I had no idea what I was going to write about, now after finding a theme for my short story I do not know if I will be able to fit all my ideas in to it. Like you suggested I will try to pick the correct words to describe and explain my story without going overboard.
Once again thank you for taking the time to write to our class.
I really don’t know how to thank a best selling author, probably because I never done it before but, thanks! It is very kind of you to take your time and write to us and I think your advice is really going to help me because well, you’re an author of more than forty amazing books. And I challenge you to write a book in a foreign language. Thank you again for everything, I wish you continued success. -Ayda
Dear Mr. Forstchen
I want to thank you for taking your time to write this letter to us. Even though I’ve never read you’re books I’m looking forward to going to a bookstore and buy one. I love reading books and writing stories of my own so I was actually disappointed when Miss St. Clair told us to write a short story rather than a novel. Now after what you said about short stories I’m kind of scared to write one. I just hope that I can manage it somehow. Anyways I hope you’re have a nice day.
Duru Koçak
Dr. Forstchen,
I am very honoured to receive a comment from you. Reading your pieces or watching your interviews is great but a special comment from you made me feel really special. So thank you. I really admire your work. I was very touched by the fact that you shared your adventure through your published first story in a very personal way. I am really grateful for your advice. I was very concerned about this unit but your words came like medicine to me. I hope you will have a wonderful life and thank you for your beautiful pieces that you wrote for the world. Have an amazing day.
Dear Dr. Forstchen,
Thank you for taking your time and write to us. I am really happy about a writer like you posting advice in our blog. I totally agree about writing a short story is harder than a novel but after your writing I think I can do it. I am really happy about having Miss St. Clair as my writing teacher. I hope your career gets even better.
Hello Mr. Forstchen,
First of all thank you very much for writing to us. It is such a magnificent feeling to see you, a bestselling author, write to us. I really like that you touched the point where every word is precious. We should keep on hold of the words we are using when writing a short story otherwise there is a chance that they may exceed the limit. I now know that writing short stories aren’t as easy as we think and I will take the task more seriously.
Good luck in your life.
Dear Dr. Forstchen,
Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to write to us. I really appreciate it. At first I also thought that writing a novel would be much more difficult than writing a short story, so I could not help but feel relieved when Ms. St. Clair changed the assignment to writing a short story instead. However, now that I have read your advice, I realize that writing a short story is actually harder. I also really like your point of being precise with words. Have a nice day.