Fiction: Diagram #2

This is Part Two of the simplest and most comprehensive short-course on writing/pubbing short fiction available in the Western United States. Part One is available at my March 11th Posting.

By now, after using my Plastic Rules, you will have realized I left out a key thing: What could cause your possibly-related paragraphs to be a story?

In a story, a protagonist goes through some sort of change – but not if he just changes his underwear – unless - he is changing into Drag; that is a story.

So you check your paragraphs against this definition and find out you have a story. In Diagram #1, I started out talking about publishable fiction and you have followed all the PRs carefully and so you have a pubbable fiction.

You are now going to submit your fiction to some of the Literary Magazines. Most of the time, you will include a cover letter. You sound better if you can call your work micro, flash or just short fiction.

Micro Fictions are stories trimmed to a couple of sentences, or just less maybe than half a double-spaced, typewritten page. Flash Fiction gets it done in not over about three double-spaced, typewritten pages; “short” fictions might limit-out at five times that length.  Because Literary Magazine editors don’t have endless space, fictions longer than about five double-spaced, typewritten pages are not as competitive for publication.

Competition is out there. “It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear”* and it will not go away – ever. If you study what is trending in Publishing, you will figure out their rules. If you write by their rules, you will publish, but you will have a job. You can skip all that if you write and publish by your own rules. Writers do it all the time. Your completed, related paragraphs mean you are a Writer.

*Remember T-1?