The Two-Week Short Story

By Sherry D. Ramsey

If you have two weeks, you can write a short story. 

 

Do you find planning, starting, or finishing short stories a challenge? Does it take forever to reach "The End" of that first draft–if you ever do? If so, this ebook is for you.

 

The eight comprehensive lessons in this ebook course are designed to guide you from the first idea brainstorming session, through the rough and rocky middle of your story, to finding and accomplishing the most satisfying ending. 

 

Using a variety of instructions, worksheets, checklists, and discussions, each lesson keeps you moving forward on your story at a steady pace. The structure assists you in writing every day for a two-week period, keeping you motivated and offering methods for avoiding blocks and other writing pitfalls. 

 

Too many stories are started but never finished. Use this plan to finish every story you start. Solid first drafts are the raw material every writer needs. This ebook can help you complete one every time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sherry D. Ramsey
• Release date: May 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9780993897368

Sherry D. Ramsey

Sherry D. Ramsey is a speculative fiction writer, editor, publisher, creativity addict and self-confessed internet geek. When she's not writing, she makes jewelry, gardens, hones her creative procrastination skills on social media, and consumes far more coffee and chocolate than is likely good for her.Her debut novel, One's Aspect to the Sun, was published by Tyche Books in late 2013 and was awarded the Book Publishers of Alberta "Book of the Year" Award for Speculative Fiction. The sequel, Dark Beneath the Moon, is due out from Tyche in 2015. Her other books include To Unimagined Shores—Collected Stories. With her partners at Third Person Press (http://www.thirdpersonpress.com), she has co-edited five anthologies of regional short fiction to date. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies in North America and beyond. Every November she disappears into the strange realm of National Novel Writing Month and emerges gasping at the end, clutching something resembling a novel.A member of the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia Writer’s Council, Sherry is also a past Vice-President and Secretary-Treasurer of SF Canada, Canada's national association for Speculative Fiction Professionals.You can visit Sherry online www.sherrydramsey.com, find her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter @sdramsey.

Book preview

First published as a serial email course in 2008

Copyright © 2008-2017 by Sherry D. Ramsey

Cover © 2017 by Sherry D. Ramsey

All rights reserved.

No part of this ebook or ebook course materials may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This ebook and the ebook course materials are provided to you for your own personal use, including making a backup copy for yourself. The contents herein may not be given away or sold, packaged with other courses, added to websites, forwarded, shared, or in any other way reproduced without express written permission of the copyright holder named above.

This book contains advice and instructional material intended to assist you in your writing journey. Using this book does not guarantee that you will write a great short story! The author has done all she can; the rest is up to you!

Sherry D. Ramsey

Email: [e-mail]

Web: sherrydramsey.com

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

The Two-Week Short Story: A Guide to a Fast First Draft

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9938973-6-8

Don’t miss this ebook’s companion, Short Story Workshop for One: A Workbook for Stronger Fiction

Find all the details at www.sherrydramsey.com

Introduction

Welcome to the Two-Week Short Story! Together over the next two weeks, we're going to write a short story. Well, you're going to write it, and I'm going to do my best to guide you through the process.

The first time you read this ebook, I’d like you to treat it as a course, which is how these materials started life. Lessons were delivered every other day for two weeks, and students would read and act on the lessons as they arrived. You’ll get more out of the ebook if you employ the same strategy: read a chapter at a time, follow the instructions, and then move on to the next chapter in a day or two.

Two weeks might not sound like a very long time in which to write your story. You might have partially-finished works that have been sitting and stagnating for much longer than that, or stories you've been slaving over for months without ever getting to the end. We all have other demands on our time, and all too often writing time falls to the bottom of the list. So you're probably asking, how am I going to do this?

We're going to use some strategies to write this story that will hopefully make the process easier, faster, and if we're lucky, more fun for you, the writer. We're also going to talk about avoiding things that might make you get stuck or slow your progress.

To get the most out of this course, I'm going to suggest that you not browse the chapters while at work, or while you're multi-tasking other things, or in two-minute chunks scattered through the day. I'm assuming that if you want to write a complete short story draft in two weeks, you already know you're going to have to put some time on it. For the first few chapters at least, set aside a time to work on the course, read the chapter first and then follow any instructions.

You're not going to have a completely finished and polished story at the end of this course, but you should have a solid, well-constructed first draft. The biggest thing to remember is: don't take your writing too seriously, especially in this first draft stage. It's better to write an awful first draft than to never finish the story at all. Everything can be changed and improved later, but you need that raw material to work with. So let's find out how we're going to get it.

If you want to follow the schedule originally envisioned for this method as a two-week email course, your reading should break down something like this:

Chapter One - Day One

Chapter Two - Day Three

Chapter Three - Day Five

Chapter Four - Day Seven

Chapter Five - Day Nine

Chapter Six - Day Eleven

Chapter Seven - Day Thirteen/Fourteen

Chapter Eight - When you write The End

Chapter One - Light A Fire

Tools

For this chapter/lesson, all you need are some note-making tools. I strongly suggest pen/pencil and paper or index cards, but if you're more comfortable making notes on the computer, go with what works for you. At the end of this chapter, you’ll find a worksheet you might find helpful