15 Days to Write and

Submit a Short Story

A Let’s Write a Short Story! Workbook

By Joe Bunting

Copyright © 2012 by The Write Practice

TheWritePractice.com

Contents

About this Workbook 4

Part One: Read!

Day One: Read Widely 10

Day Two: Dissect 14

Part Two: Write!

Day Three: Delve into a Character 21

Day Four: Set the Mood 24

Day Five: Create a Catastrophe 26

Day Six: SHOW! 29

Day Seven: Deal With Writer's Block 32

Day Eight: Fill In the Blanks 35

Part Three: Edit!

Day Nine: Rewrite 37

Day Ten: Edit and Outsource 39

Day Eleven: Receive and Read 43

Day Twelve: Rewrite 47

Part Four: Submit!

Day Thirteen: Rewrite. Get Ready to Submit. 50

Day Fourteen: Read Aloud 52

Day Fifteen: Submit! 52

After You Submit 56

“A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.”

—David Sedaris

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

—Lorrie Moore

4

About This Workbook

The purpose of this workbook is, of course, to help you write and

submit a short story in fifteen days. However, I think it will be

helpful to talk about what exactly I mean by “write a short story.”

There are many kinds of short stories, just as there are many

kinds of novels, and the kind you want to write may not be the

same as the kind I want to write.

If you want to write a literary short story, you should aim for

3,000 to 5,000 words, which is the length most literary magazine

editors say they prefer. If you'd like to write speculative fiction,

though—sci-fi, fantasy, or horror—the length can vary wildly.

However, I notice quite a few of the top speculative magazines

requesting very short fiction of 1,500 words or less. Because

length is such an inexact science, our first order of business in this

workbook will be to read and study several different magazines to

get a sense of what's being published.

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This workbook requires about an hour a day, and the goal is that if

you follow it for the next fifteen days, you will have completed and

submitted a short story. It may even be pretty good!

I'm asking for fifteen hours of your life, but I'm also asking for

fifteen days. I don't want you to write this short story all at once.

Yes, if want to keep writing for longer than an hour one day, that's

great. However, don’t take the next day off, thinking you can rest

on your accomplishment. One of your best tools as a writer is your

subconscious. While you brush your teeth, drive to work, or

exercise, your subconscious will be in the writing studio, fiddling

away at your story without your knowledge. Give your

subconscious the space it needs to work.

Over the next two weeks, your subconscious may whisper an idea,

a phrase, or an image, often at the most innoportune times—while

you’re driving or taking a shower, for example. I recommend

carrying a notebook or a tape recorder for these moments. Your

subconscious is much smarter than you. You’ll want to capture its

wisdom.. As Saul Bellow said, “You never have to change anything

you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

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Please note that you will write more words than you use in the

final draft of you story. You might even write twice as many. This

is normal and necessary. Only half of your job is to write. The

other half is to pick the best words out of the ones you've already

written.

And as always, keep in mind the words of G.K. Chesterton, “I owe

my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice

and going away and doing the exact opposite.”

This workbook won’t write your story. It might help walk you

through a process, but you will do the writing. Trust your

instincts. If your instincts tell you to write about something I

haven't suggested, go ahead and do it. My goal is not to make you

follow a formula. I just want to help you write a short story. Use

this resource as you will. Jump around, take more time than I

suggest. Skip a section altogether. You can even crumple it into a

ball and swallow it. If it helps you write your short story, I don’t

care.

Now, let’s go write a short story.

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Supplies and Resources

Before you begin, I suggest purchasing a few items and

bookmarking a few websites. These will help along the way.

Supplies

• A notebook and a pen (duh.)

• A copy of Let's Write a Short Story! (duh again.)

• A printer (if you don't have one) and paper

• Letter size envelopes (#10)

• 9x12 size envelopes

• Stamps

Resources

• e.ggtimer.com - An online egg timer*

• letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines - A list of 44

literary magazines to research and submit to. *Most of the exercises in this workbook will be timed. I find that when people write fast,

focused, distraction-free, they almost always write better. If you prefer, you can always

use a clock, a watch, or a real egg timer.

Part One:

Read!

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Day One: Read Widely

“If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

—Stephen King

Exercise One: Put Pen to Paper. The hardest part is getting started. For many, this is when writer's

block sets in strongest, when the page is completely blank and you

have no strings of story to grasp at. So don't worry about what you

write, don't worry about the end result, just put your pen (or your

fingers) to paper (or the keyboard) and write something.

Anything.

You could write gibberish, like, “Eedle whop too soul cut shoe.”

You could write what's around you, like, “He leaned back in his

chair, took a deep breath, and as he lifted his arms to stretch, he

spilled his coffee everywhere.”

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Or you could begin in the middle of an action scene, like,

“Richard’s face was pummelled repeatedly until he was conscious

only of the sound of fists against his cheekbones.”

It doesn't matter. Just begin.

Short Story Prompt Free write for fifteen minutes. If it turns into a story, go with it. If not, just let it be.

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Exercise Two: Read Stories.

From Let's Write a Short Story:

You can't write short stories if you don't read short stories.

Short Story Prompt

Read three to five short stories from three to five literary

magazines, one story per magazine. To find a list of literary

magazines, many of which have stories free, online, go to

letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines.

Alternatively, you can get this all done at once by reading a yearly

anthology of the best stories.

Here are the three major literary yearly anthologies:

The Best American Short Stories

The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses

The Pen / O. Henry Prize

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And the major science fiction and fantasy yearly anthologies:

The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

The Year's Best SF

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Day Two: Dissect

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”

—T.S. Eliot

Exercise One: Study a Story.

You could read a hundred short stories and not know how to write

one. The difference between a reader and a writer is that a reader

studies the work of those who have gone before her. She reads

slowly and carefully until she understands the purpose of every

sentence, how each sentence works as part of the whole. She asks,

“Why this sentence here? Why did you choose this word? How

will you transition from this scene to the next? How did you make

me feel so hopeful/sad/alone/alive?”

Whenever I start writing in a new format, whether it's a

newspaper article or a blog post or a short story, I read a few

excellent examples of writing and dissect them. For a short story, I

might ask some of the following questions:

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Opening: How did the author open the story? Why did the

author start there? Why did he or she choose these words

and sentences?

Character: How does the author introduce the main

character? How does he or she introduce other characters?

Does the character transform? How? What event caused the

character to transform?

Mood: What is the mood of the story?

Central event: What is the central event? Does it have one?

Structure: How is it structured? Is there a hole in the story?

Do you see bookends?

Ending: How does the author end the story? Read the last

page painstakingly slowly. Why did the author end there?

Why did he or she use those words and sentences?

Tense: What tense (past, present, first person, third person)

is the story? How does that affect the way the story is told?

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Voice: Which elements of a story does the author rely on

(see chapter three of Let's Write a Short Story)? Skim a few

other stories from that magazine. Do they have a similar

tone?

Short Story Prompt Choose a short story from those you read on Day One. Read,

dissect, and analyze it for for forty-five minutes.

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Exercise Two: Steal.

What elements of this story can you repurpose in your own story?

Remember, the best writers steal liberally. Shakespeare himself

stole the plot of Romeo and Juliet from a book published only

thirty years prior called, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and

Juliet. If you do steal, though, make sure to try to follow these

three rules:

1. “Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.” John Milton.

If you are going to imitate, don't imitate just one author. Imitate

several. The odd combination of them all will give your style its

own flare.

However, be sure to choose who you imitate carefully. For exam-

ple, you may not want to imitate Stephenie Meyer or E.L. James.

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2. Be influenced “in a way that no one rec-ognizes,” said Billy Collins.

Take your influencers' style and tweak it just enough to give it an

air of originality. In other words, make their style your own.

Maybe no one will ever know you were copying!

3. Transcend your influences.

Your job is to go farther than those you're imitating, to push the

boundaries of the language and bring something new to the world.

I believe this happens naturally. If you imitate long enough,

eventually, you'll find your own voice. It will be some crazy

combination of everyone you've imitated plus something that is

wholly you.

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Short Story Prompt

Write for fifteen minutes. Incorporate at least one thing from the

short story you dissected, and at least one thing from the stories

you read on Day One.

Part Two:

Write!

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Day Three: Delve into a Character

“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character.”

—Flannery O'Connor

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

—William Faulkner

Exercise One: Action and Motivation

Good characters are the heart of fiction. Who is your character?

What does she want? How can you make her believable?

According to Orson Scott Card, the strongest three forms of

characterization are:

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Action: “Bill punched the bald man.”

Past Action: “A month ago, Bill waited in his car outside

PCE Investments, where his wife worked. When she left the

office and drove away, he drove fifty yards behind her,

ducking under the steering wheel so she wouldn't see him.”

Motivation: “She parked the car at a hotel on the other side

of town. When she got out, he saw a bald man approach her.

They embraced, and he drove away.”

Short Story Prompt

Give it a try. Write for thirty minutes. Write about some

mundane, normal thing your character might do. As you write,

ask your character, “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

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Exercise Two: A Conversation

According to Orson Scott Card, the next best way to characterize

your main character is through dialogue.

Short Story Prompt

Write for thirty minutes describing a conversation your character

has with another character or a group of characters.

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Day Four: Set the Mood

“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”

—Edgar Allen Poe Exercise: What is the mood of the pages you've written so far?

• Sad

• Ironic

• Effervescent

• Triumphant

• Depressed

• Blocked

• Humorous

• Chatty

• Critical

• Hopeful

What mood do you want to create with the rest of your short

story? How can you create that mood?

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Short Story Prompt

Write for thirty minutes.

Then, take a break. Stretch. Pace around for a few minutes. Write

for thirty minutes more.

If you're stuck...

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks, 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.' And it might just be the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'”

—Maya Angelou

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Day Five: Create a Catastrophe

Exercise One: Kill Your Character

According to author PJ Reece, in every story the main character

must die. Reece doesn’t mean he has to experience a physical

death but rather the death of his identity. He must come to the

end of himself and his capabilites. The old person he used to be

must to be destroyed, and a new person must replace him.

This moment of transformation is usually the central event in a

story, and Reece calls it the “hole” everything else flows into.

What is your central event? What is your hole in the middle of the

story?

Short Story Prompt

What does your main character value? What does he put invest identity in? Write about your character “dying” for thirty minutes.

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Exercise Two: Create Conflict

Good stories have powerful bad guys, whether the bad guy is

external (a person, a group of people, or nature) or internal (a

belief or side of the protagonist's personality).

Short Story Prompt

Write about one or all of the following:

• Your main character has to do something that terrifies him

or her.

• Your main character gets into an argument with a friend or

family member.

• Your main character wants something he or she can't have.

• Someone dies.

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Day Six: SHOW!

“For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.”

—John Cheever

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.”

—Anton Chekhov

Exercise One: Show, Don't Tell

You've heard the writing advice, “Show, don't tell.”

It’s actually wrong. Telling can be extremely useful, especially in a

short story where you have to cover a lot of story in a small

amount of space.

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However, you don't want to tell too much or your story will be flat

and unemotional and will fail to draw the reader into the world or

your story.

Often, we fall into telling when we focus on inner monologue and

exposition (see chapter three of Let’s Write a Short Story for

definitions). Instead, focus on action, dialogue, and description.

Add specificity and depth to the scene. Think of your writing as a

movie, showing all the details of every moment.

Short Story Prompt

Today, glance over what you've written so far. Do you see

examples where you told your readers instead of showing them?

Rewrite those scenes by showing instead of telling.

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Exercise Two: Description

One of the best ways to pace your story—so that it feels neither too

abrupt nor too slow—is by sprinkling one to three sentences of

description between sections of action, dialogue, inner

monologue, and exposition. Description is what your character

sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells. Here’s an example from

chapter three of Let’s Write a Short Story:

Tommy woke to the feel of a warm breeze on his cheeks and bare arms. The oak leaves struck into each other in the wind and sounded like an audience of elves applauding. He smelled the grass and the breeze tasted like lemon and iron.

Got it? Now, give it a try!

Short Story Prompt

Go back through your story, adding careful observations on the

setting and what characters look like.

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Day Seven: Deal with Writer’s Block

“When you can't create. You can work.”

—Henry Miller

Excercise One: The Worst Sentence

At some point in this process, you might get writer's block. It's

normal. It happens to nearly every writer, especially the most

ambitious.

In Let's Write a Short Story, I told the story about Barry Michels,

a psychologist who counseled one blocked screenwriter to kneel

before his computer every morning for one minute, praying to

heaven to write the worst sentence in the world. The screenwriter

thought it was silly, but he did it, and a few months later he had

written a screenplay that would win him an Academy Award.

Now it's your turn.

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Short Story Prompt

Attempt to write the worst sentence in the world.

Write for thirty minutes.

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Exercise Two: Nearing the End

You should have a good amount of material by now. Whether

you're close to the end of your story, or you feel like it's just a big

mess that will never be finished, keep writing.

If you're stuck, feel free to pound your head against the table a few

times, but keep writing. Your breakthrough is coming.

If you're finished, keep adding content anyway. When you edit

and rewrite your story, you might find your later work is better

than what you wrote earlier.

Short Story Prompt

Keep writing. Almost there. Write for thirty minutes.

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Day Eight: Fill in the Blanks Exercise One: Re-Read Your Story Slowly

It's time to start wrapping your story up, but if you're not finished,

don't worry, there's still time. Before you begin to write today,

though, spend some time analyzing your story.

• Are there any gaps in the narrative?

• Does the timing make sense?

• Are your characters believable?

• Is there conflict on every page?

• Does your main character have a transformation?

Short Story Prompt

Read your story and work on the parts that need work.

Write for one hour.

Part Three

Edit!

35

Day Nine: Rewrite

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

—Elmore Leonard

Exercise One: Bookends

Does your story have a book jacket structure? See Chapter Two in

Let's Write a Short Story for a refresher on the book jacket

structure.

The book jacket structure is one of the best ways I've found to add

harmony and a sense of purpose to your story. How can you

implement it? Do you need to rewrite your ending? Can you add a

new beginning instead?

Short Story Prompt

Rewrite the beginning or end of your story to incorporate the book

jacket structure. If you have to, rewrite both.

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Write for thirty minutes.

Exercise Two: The Hardest Part

Today is the day you dive into the snags and blemishes of your

story and finish it.

The hardest part of writing is rewriting. We don't want to dive into

the uncomfortable knowledge that our story is imperfect.

Finishing your story is like pulling teeth out of your own mouth. It

can really hurt!

Here's a trick I use to motivate myself to finish my stories when I

don't want to: first, print it out. Then, take your story and your

pen, and go for a walk. As you walk, read your story and make

corrections or suggestions to yourself. Then, if you get stuck, just

look up at the sky, take a deep breath and keep walking.

At the very least, it's more pleasant than hunching over your

computer!

Short Story Prompt

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Reread your story and rewrite any section that feels off to you. Put

the finishing touches on your story. Rewrite for thirty minutes.

Day Ten: Edit and Outsource

Exercise One: Edit

Today, we’re going to put a little polish on your short story and go

through our first round of “publishing.”

One of the central ideas of Let's Write a Short Story is you need to

get your work out into the hands of real peopleas soon as you can.

Why? Because you are a really bad judge of your own work. Before

you can write something worth reading, you need feedback from

others to know if what you've written is good or not.

The goal is not to get it perfect. In fact, even if your story isn't

done, I want you to stop writing and rewriting. Instead we're

going to put on a little polish.

Turn to Chapter Five of Let's Write a Short Story and brush up on

your editing skills.

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Short Story Prompt

Polish your short story by spell checking, and searching and

deleting weak verbs, weak words, adverbs, and the word “some.”

Edit for about thirty minutes.

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Exercise Two: Honest Critique

Writers always ask me, “When will I know if my story is finished?

How do you know if my work is any good?”

The answer is, I'm not really sure. Most of the time, we know a

good short story when we see it. That's why getting feedback from

a group of people is so important.

When I send my stories out, I don't discriminate. I send it to

writers, readers, TV watchers, and even kids. Other writers are

often the worst critics, so the best thing to do is get as broad a

group as you can. Often, I will even post on Facebook or Twitter to

ask for readers. You'd be surprised at how many people will say

yes.

Short Story Prompt

Email or hand-deliver your story to at least five people as your

makeshift critique group.

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Most writing teachers and writing books will tell you to ask them

to be brutally honest with you. However, I think it's okay if you

ask your critique group to soften their criticism.

Sometimes, feedback can become so harsh you become

immobilized by shame and rejection. If you can find people who

will give you tough feedback in an encouraging way, you're much

more likely to improve, in my opinion.

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Day Eleven: Receive and Read

“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

—Neil Gaiman

Exercise One: Say Thank You

Over the next two or three days, you should start receiving

feedback from your makeshift critique group.

In the last chapter, I said you aren't a very good judge of your own

work. However, over the next few days, you will start to doubt

that. In fact, you will probably start thinking your “friends” are

just about the worst judges ever.

Despite how frustrated, annoyed or dismissive you are toward the

feedback of your critique group, your job is not to show them how

they're wrong. They did you a favor, after all. Instead, look for

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patterns in their feedback. If one person doesn’t like a phrase, an

event, or a character you’re in love with, you might not have to

change anything. If two or three people say the same thing, you

almost certainly should.

Short Story Prompt

As you receive feedback on your short story, say thank you, and

incorporate as much of their feedback as you can into your

manuscript.

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Exercise Two: Read Widely (Again)

At the start of this workbook, you read three to five magazines to

get a sense of the form of the short story. Now, do the same but

with a different purpose. This time, read to see if your story would

be a good fit for their magazine.

When analyzing magazines as potential publishers of my work, I

try to look at the following criteria:

Genre: Do they publish my genre? You don't want submit a

horror story to a magazine that publishes literary fiction.

Tone/Mood: Do the stories in their magazine sound like

mine? Is their magazine too intellectual or not intellectual

enough? Is their magazine too strange? Too funny? Too

action-oriented? Too gushy and romantic?

Subject: Do they publish stories about similar subjects? For

example, if your story is about children, religion, or horses,

make sure you find magazines that publish stories involving

those subjects.

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Try to find three to five literary magazines that would be a good fit

for your work.

Short Story Prompt

Skim two to three stories in five to ten different magazines. You

don't need to read the whole story, just a few paragraphs.

Would your story fit? If so, check out the magazine's submission

guidelines to see if there is anything that would bar your story

from being a good match.

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Day Twelve: Rewrite

“I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

—Vladimir Nabokov

Exercise: Finish Your Story

Today, try to finish your story.

By now you have hopefully gotten most of the feedback from your

critique group. Put their feedback to use.

Try to make every sentence sing and every detail jump out. Cut

unnecessary words, sentences, and scenes. Put those commas in

the right places. Question every line of dialogue to see if it's true to

the character.

Are your characters believable?

Is your ending satisfying?

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Is your pacing brisk enough to entertain but slow enough to

take everything in?

Does your character transform?

Is your central event vivid and powerful enough?

Is the mood uniform throughout?

If not, how can you fix your story as fast as possible?

Short Story Prompt

Reread and rewrite for an hour (or as long as you have to).

Part Four

Submit!

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Day Thirteen: Reformat

You've come a long way, and it's almost time to submit your baby.

However, there are still a few things to do before sending your

story out into the world.

Nearly every literary magazine expects you to submit your short

story in standard manuscript formatting. You don't want an editor

rejecting your story just because you used the wrong font or didn't

include the word count on the first page.

Before beginning to reformat your manuscript, brush up on

standard manuscript formatting in Chapter Six of Let's Write a

Short Story. As a reference, I've included a summary below:

q Include your name, address, phone number, email in top left

corner.

q Put the word count in top right corner, rounded to the

nearest hundred words.

q Use 12 point, courier font.

q Double-space your lines.

q Use 1-inch margins.

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q Center title and author name, and include it halfway down

first page.

q Use indents to show paragraphs, not line breaks.

q At the top right corner of your page, use a header with your

last name, the abbreviated story title, and the page number,

beginning on page two.

Also, if you've been able to target a few magazines to submit to,

now is a good time to go to their submission guidelines to see if

they require anything special.

Short Story Prompt

Format your manuscript according to standard formatting.

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Day Fourteen: Read Aloud

“Read aloud, and think about, every sentence and para-graph. Is it clearly written? Does it make sense? Do all the words serve the story?”

—Linda Swanson-Davies, editor of Glimmer Train

Exercise: Mistake-Free

Before you send your story off, you'll want sure it's free of typos

and grammar errors. Reading aloud forces you to read slowly and

carefully, meaning you catch more mistakes than you would

otherwise. Also, by hearing the words out loud, you'll be able to

edit for readability, phonoaesthetics, and pacing.

Short Story Prompt

Read your short story out loud. Fix any spelling errors, grammar

mistakes, or ugly-sounding sentences.

Then, read your story through again.

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Day Fifteen: Submit!

Exercise One: Write a cover letter.

As we discussed in Chapter Six of Let's Write a Short Story, the

best cover letter in the world isn’t going to get you published. Still,

they’re recommended. Here are the components of a standard

cover letter:

The Address. “Dear Fiction Editor,” will suffice, but see if

you can find their name on the magazine's website.

The Title of Your Manuscript. The first line mainly

shares the title of your manuscript. It's traditional to include

a word count, but that isn't terribly important since the

word-count should be included on the first page of your

manuscript.

Bio. Your bio shouldn't be more than thirty words long, and

should contain your writing credits, if you have any.

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Simultaneous Submission? If you're submitting your

story simultaneously to other magazines as well, mention

that. However you don't have to say where you're submitting

to.

Signoff. Thank them again, write your name, and that's all!

Short Story Prompt

Spend no more than seven minutes writing your cover letter.

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Exercise Two: Submit!

The time has come. FINALLY! After two long weeks of reading,

writing, and editing, it's time to submit your manuscript.

By this time, you should have scoped out three to five literary

magazines to submit to, but if you haven't, take a look at our list of

literary magazines at letswriteashortstory.com/literary-

magazines, or find your own at duotrope.com. Also, make sure to

read every magazine's guidelines in detail before submitting so as

not to get rejected just for formatting mistakes.

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After You Submit

Congratulations! You just wrote and submitted a short story!

If you completed the challenge, share your success on Twitter,

using the hashtag #letswrite, and on our Facebook page.

Also, you can track all your submissions through duotrope.com.

It’s an essential resource.

Regardless of whether or not your story is accepted, be proud of

the fact that you have pushed your writing skills one step further.

If you’re story is rejected, remember that rejection is a red badge

of honor. It means you’re serious, you’re disciplined, and you

won’t give up. If you haven’t been rejected, it probably means

you’re not passionate enough.

Give yourself a few days to celebrate your accomplishment. Then

get to work on your next story!