Bradbury Challenge, and On Structure

September 30, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* On Structure
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting

Note: I’m altering this challenge a little. Shorter works only, but they can be up to 14,999 words in length.

The whole point is to have fun and grow as a writer. You can join or rejoin the challenge at any time.

During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:

• Vanessa V. Kilmer “Jubilee’s Junket” 2986 Dystopian

• Adam Kozak “Delusions of Grandeur” 2590 Humor

• Alexander Nakul “Ermine in the Misty Land” 3762 (11304 words total) Fantasy, Wuxia (from last week)

• Alexander Nakul “With a smile of corpse” 4032 Thriller, Noir (from last week, late)

• Dave Taylor “Frank’s Scatter Gun” 2,085 Paranormal

On a Personal Note: I stepped out of the Bradbury Challenge. The story didn’t wrap in time. I also had very low fiction numbers yesterday. (grin) I basically ran out of steam and had to rest and reset.

On Structure

I sent this, in slightly different form, to my patrons at Patreon back in 2019.

If you write short fiction, it’s important to learn and understand the structure of short stories (or of vignettes, or both). Fortunately, that isn’t difficult.

Short Fiction—

If you’ve read a lot of short fiction—and why wouldn’t you if that’s what you want to write?—you’ve already subconsciously absorbed that structure. Your subconscious mind “knows” even if you believe you don’t.

So if you’ve read a lot of short fiction, all you have to know is that the short story is always about One Event. No more. That’s the whole trick to writing short fiction.

A short story has an opening, during which you ground the reader (pull him in), a middle and a satisfactory resolution. Or if you want to look at structure from a bits-and-pieces standpoint, it has a character with a problem in a setting—and a satisfactory resolution.

The vignette is the same, except for the resolution. It doesn’t have one. A vignette is simply a scene, a slice of life. The reader is left to infer his own resolution.

(Note: If you supply a specific resolution, even through implication, the scene is still resolved into a complete short story: See Frank Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?” or my own flash fiction short story “At Confession.”)

So the difference… If, as you’re walking along a sidewalk, you pass an open window and overhear an argument or part of an argument and write it down, that’s a vignette. If you stop and listen until the argument is concluded (resolved) and write it down, that’s a short story.

Novellas and Novels—

If you write novels, it’s important to learn and understand the structure of novels. I’m not talking about the “act” structures (3-act, 5-act, 7-act) or even about the expectations readers have in particular genres (although it’s important to learn those as well).

And of course, in every case learn with the conscious mind but apply with the creative subconscious.

But…

If you read a lot of novels—and again, why wouldn’t you if that’s what you want to write?—you subconsciously absorb novel structure anyway.

So really, if you read fiction, you’re all set.

All you need to know beyond what your subconscious mind already knows is that the novel begins with a character who has a problem in a setting. Sound familiar?

But unlike the short story, the novel is about several events, each of which leads to the next until you reach—you guessed it—a satisfactory resolution.

You might have picked up that the primary difference between the short story and the novel is the number of events covered by each. Simple as it sounds, that is correct.

In fact, many writers have written both at one time (see Isabel Allende’s The Stories of Eva Luna). I’ve often pulled scenes out of my novels, resolved them, and published them as stand-alone short stories.

Why? Because a novel is one publication (one more time my name gets “out there”). But a novel plus three short stories derived from that novel is four publications. (grin)

It’s called discoverability. And any of the short stories will introduce the same reader to the other shorts and to the novel and to the novel series.

So is it important to take workshops in which you study structure? For example, the 3-act (or 5-act or 7-act structure)?

Sure. Of course.

But learn and absorb it with your conscious mind (just as you learned back in the day how to form letters into words and where to put a period or a question mark)—and then don’t worry about it.

Just write. Your subconscious mind will supply what you need without conscious thought on your part.

A final note—and here I’ll invoke that conscious, critical mind: If part of a particular short story or novel that you’re reading blows you away, first, finish reading it for pleasure. Then go back and study the part(s) that blew you away to determine how the writer pulled that off.

Next to reading for pleasure in the first place, that’s the easiest and quickest way to learn structure.

Well, that and watching good movies and good sitcoms. You’ll absorb a lot from that too.

Hope you found this helpful. Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Watch for my upcoming post on the value of averages and the September Challenge.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

Shepherd This is a relatively new book/author discovery site. “We are like Goodreads but better for book discovery & better for authors.” Entirely free for authors.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 930

Writing of “The Darling Club”

Day 1…… 3274 words. To date…… 3274
Day 2…… 0498 words. To date…… 3772
Day 3…… 1130 words. To date…… 4902

Fiction for September…………………….. 83086
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 738048
Fiction since October 1…………………… 863624
Nonfiction for September………………… 28750
Nonfiction for 2024……………………….. 303590
2024 consumable words…………………. 867407

Average Fiction WPD (September)……… 2865

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 13
2024 Novellas to Date……………………. 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………. 14
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 95
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………. 251
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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