Short Fiction Secrets: How To Write And Sell Short Stories: Selling Writer Strategies, #2

By Angela Booth

Want to write short stories? If you answered yes, that's excellent… Here's why. Today, you can make money writing short fiction. Readers love short stories, because they can read a story in minutes, rather than devoting hours to reading a novel. 

Writing short stories is a fun and easy way to get started writing fiction — you can get paid to write, in your spare time. If you're new to writing fiction, you can learn the elements of writing fiction — short stories are much easier to control than longer fiction. 

Perhaps you're already writing fiction. In that case, writing short stories helps you in these ways:

* Short stories offer a way to market and promote your novels painlessly;

* You can try out new genres within hours, not months — you'll soon see what does, and doesn't, work for you in your fiction;

* You can increase your income;

* You can build a responsive mailing list of readers who love your fiction by offering some of your stories as free reads on your website.

In this book, we cover the elements of writing salable short stories quickly. We also look at publishing your short stories, and at ways to make money from them which you may not have considered.

Essentially, we focus on writing short stories which sell. 

Get started writing short stories today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Booth
• Release date: May 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533732439

Book preview

Short Fiction Secrets

Short Fiction Secrets

How To Write And Sell Short Stories Selling Writer Strategies 2

Angela Booth

Angela Booth

Contents

Title

Introduction: Build Your Fiction Writing Career With Short Stories

The boom in short fiction: what's a short story?

Why write short stories?

How to make money with short stories

Selling stories? A short word on copyright

Elements of short fiction

Your basic template for writing short fiction

How to use the plot-as-you-go: lazy author's method

Getting started: it's all in your first pages

Get mean: everyone fights (you need conflict)

The all-important story QUESTION (you must have it)

Get emotional: fiction is all about emotions

Emotions and thoughts: desires, hopes and programming

Point of view: choosing a POV character for a short story

Backstory is no story, keep it out of your fiction

Will your stories sell? (Research)

Selling your ebooks: self-publishing ebooks

Selling your ebooks: self-publishing to aggregators

Self-publishing to the Web: pros and cons

Sell short stories to magazines — try it, it will increase your readership

What is a serial, and why should you consider writing serials?

How to publish serially

Serial novel tips

Selling short stories: sell on your author website

Your Author Page: is it essential?

Social media promotion made simple

Develop habits which help you to write

About the Author

Also available from Angela Booth

Title

Short Fiction Secrets: How To Write And Sell Short Stories

Selling Writer Strategies 2

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By Angela Booth

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Copyright © 2016 Angela Booth.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, anywhere, without prior written permission from the author.

Author: Angela Booth

Website: Angela's Writing Classes

Angela Booth is a copywriter, blogger, writing teacher, and author. Her books have been widely published, and she writes several blogs to help writers.

Introduction: Build Your Fiction Writing Career With Short Stories

Hi Fellow Writer

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Want to write short stories?

If you answered yes, that's excellent… Here's why. Today, you can make money writing short fiction. That hasn't always been the case. For many years, writing short fiction was a no-no if you wanted to make money.

Then Amazon developed the Kindle Store and self-publishing became popular, creating a renaissance in short stories.

Authors love writing short stories and selling them as ebooks. Here’s why. They can publish faster. If they can charge $2.99 for a 10,000 word short story, or a 100,000 word novel, they’re making more money. Short stories take a lot less time to write than novels do.

Authors in some genres (notably erotica) could once make outstanding incomes, just writing short stories every week. Today, that's harder to do. If you're writing fiction, you need to write novels as well.

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Readers love short stories

Many readers prefer short stories, because they can read a story in minutes, rather than hours. Writers enjoy writing them too.

Writing short stories is a fun and easy way to get started writing fiction — you can get paid to write, in your spare time. If you're new to writing fiction, you can learn the elements of writing fiction by writing short stories; short stories are much easier to control than longer fiction.

Tip: if you're stuck on a novel, get your writing flow back by writing several short stories. You'll become inspired again.

Perhaps you're already writing novels. In that case, writing short stories helps in these ways:

* Short stories help you to promote your novels painlessly;

* You can try out new genres within hours, not months — you'll soon see what does, and doesn't, work for you;

* You can increase your income;

* You can build a responsive list of readers who love your fiction by offering some of your stories as free reads on your website.

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What we cover

In this book, we cover the elements of writing salable short stories quickly, and we look at ways in which you can publish, sell, and use your stories.

Let's get started.

The boom in short fiction: what's a short story?

Google's definition of a short story: a story with a fully developed theme but significantly shorter and less elaborate than a novel.

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John Hewitt of poewar.com has this definition: I define a short story as a brief, focused fictional piece that contains at minimum the following key elements: plot, setting, characterization and some sort of resolution.

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A short story isn't reality — but it needs to feel real

Here's what a short story isn't — a short story isn't reality — but it needs to feel real to your readers. Feel is vital. Fiction is all about emotion. Most bestselling authors are masters of emotion. For example, Stephen King writes about zombies, time splits, and alternate realities, but his way-out stories feel real to readers.

New to writing fiction?

New fiction writers tend to do one of two things. They attempt to make their stories (whether short stories or novels) real, which means that they're boring, boring, boring… Or they go in the other direction, and give an elaborate outline of something in which a lot happens, but we don't care, because we never become emotionally involved.

Neither strategy is satisfying to readers.

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My definition of a short story (this definition helps you to write your stories)

Here's my definition of a short story: "in a short story, something happens