05/10/2024
If you’re in a writing slump, consider spending some time writing a short story. You’ll learn plenty of things that’ll help you when writing a full length novel, including;
✨ The importance of a moment; a short story tends to focus on a particular ‘moment’ when life throws up something unexpected, devastating, or wonderful for the character. Moments like this in a short story can be used an inciting incidents when writing a novel.
🤏 Sometimes less is more. Words for the sake of words can make your writing clunky or difficult to read. Short stories, particularly ones with a word count limit, teach you how to say what you need without all the faff.
📝 Honing the art of plotting; fitting a whole story into a low word count often requires careful plotting, and learning this way can help you when figuring out the important plot points of a novel.
💥 Start with a bang. Short stories don’t allow time for a long build up and novels too grab the reader’s attention when the beginning is explosively intriguing.
👌🏻 Practice makes perfect. This is true of all writing, be it stories or poetry or non-fiction.