Musing on 750 word stories

[FINLEYDIXON]

Submitted one for publication, then withdrew it

It's hard. Have you ever been repelling? By far, the hardest part is getting over the edge. Your instinct is to lean forward, but that only makes it near impossible to start. Lean back into it. The rest is easy—thrilling.

Go for it! Someone out there needs to read your story. Don't leave them hanging.

Enjoy!

Bask in the praise and criticism—it's the only way to improve.

 

[EmilyMiller]

It's hard. Have you ever been repelling? By far, the hardest part is getting over the edge. Your instinct is to lean forward, but that only makes it near impossible to start. Lean back into it. The rest is easy—thrilling.

Go for it! Someone out there needs to read your story. Don't leave them hanging.

Enjoy!

Bask in the praise and criticism—it's the only way to improve.

The hardest thing about rappelling is remembering how to tie a fisherman’s when you are tired and just want to get off the rock face.

Emily (grizzly climbing gal)

 

[StillStunned]

It's hard. Have you ever been repelling? By far, the hardest part is getting over the edge. Your instinct is to lean forward, but that only makes it near impossible to start. Lean back into it. The rest is easy—thrilling.

Go for it! Someone out there needs to read your story. Don't leave them hanging.

Enjoy!

Bask in the praise and criticism—it's the only way to improve.

Publishing isn't the problem. Knowing something isn't good enough to publish is the problem. I tried to force a story into a format that wasn't the right match. Luckily I realised before it was actually posted here.

 

[KeithD]

The hardest thing about rappelling is remembering how to tie a fisherman’s when you are tired and just want to get off the rock face.

Emily (grizzly climbing gal)

The hardest thing about rappelling is coming up with a believable excuse on why you can't do it that morning.

 

[lc69hunter]

I am finishing up a 750 page story that begs re-writing into a longer story, as I can not fit everything including nuance, into 750 words. How would you approach that?

 

[KeithD]

Pick out the most significant 750 words that preserve the elements of a story: dilemma/conflict/resolution or change (or purposely not). Nuance is sometimes just smothering gravy.

In one of my jobs, I reviewed intell reports going into the PDB--the President's Daily Brief. The word limit per entry was 250 words that were just to deal with what/why, with longer treatments provided in backup briefs if/as desired. (Although we were sanctioned to let it go to 300 if we thought that necessary.) I had a placard made for my desk saying, "Reduce to the most important 250 words," and I simply pointed to that when returning an analyst's first draft to him/her. It could/can be done. I assume it's still being done in the PDB.

 

[JamiePlynth]

Well, the month is over and my 30th story went live yesterday. Couple things I’ve learned- 1. Plenty of folks hate the concept of 750 word stories 2. Horror, sci-fi, humor do not yield a lot of views (maybe I just can’t write titles and descriptions I dunno) 3. Omg people are way serious about Loving Wives. So so so very serious. I don’t think I’ve had that many people rate a story before. I didn’t realize it was such a high traffic genre

In any case, I enjoyed the exercise- allowed me to play with some concepts, and the limits were motivating. Might try and convince myself to write in short spurts for longer stuff. It’s kinda like when you’ve lifted a weight, then tell yourself “only two more”… then you do two more, and repeat the mantra… if that makes sense

 

[VallesMarineris]

Well, the month is over and my 30th story went live yesterday. Couple things I’ve learned- 1. Plenty of folks hate the concept of 750 word stories 2. Horror, sci-fi, humor do not yield a lot of views (maybe I just can’t write titles and descriptions I dunno) 3. Omg people are way serious about Loving Wives. So so so very serious. I don’t think I’ve had that many people rate a story before. I didn’t realize it was such a high traffic genre

In any case, I enjoyed the exercise- allowed me to play with some concepts, and the limits were motivating. Might try and convince myself to write in short spurts for longer stuff. It’s kinda like when you’ve lifted a weight, then tell yourself “only two more”… then you do two more, and repeat the mantra… if that makes sense

I’d never considered entering the 750 word contest. Totally uninterested. My stuff runs to novella/novel length. But at about 8PM on Feb 28 I was reading a story by a new author (her first!) that turned me on and I got inspired to do a meta-story from it, so I dashed it off. My thoughts:

1) It was a good exercise in trimming down my wordiness. You know: “Kill all your darlings.”

2) It was tedious and annoying to trim/add to get to exactly 750 words. I would much rather we were give a range, say 750 - 780 words. Would have taken half the time. Do people cheat?

3) I think publishing to a wider audience caused the story to get rated lower than what I usually score. I got one comment from an Anonymous: “not much”. That was the whole thing [sic]. I wonder why they even bothered to comment.

4) On the other hand, the story seemed to generate useful publicity. Right after it published I started getting a stream of faves and follows above what I usually see.

So overall an interesting experience that I may repeat.

VM

Here’s the story if you’re interested:

 

[MillieDynamite]

Oh, that guy, whoever he is, always post that. I've gotten it one time and I've seen in other stories comments.

3) I think publishing to a wider audience caused the story to get rated lower than what I usually score. I got one comment from an Anonymous: “not much”. That was the whole thing [sic]. I wonder why they even bothered to comment.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I enjoyed the process of making a collection of 750 words into a story. Well, four of them. I work harder on them than the long stories but think I learned more about writing by doing them. Now the challenge is rework them into a publishable length to put up for sale. Yes, I'm a gredi khlb, greedy bitch. I wanna make some bread, cabbage, dough, money!!!

 

[Djmac1031]

So I did Three this time around, and they've done pretty well.

They definitely allowed me to try some different things, including writing from a gay male perspective that I don't think I could have done in a more detailed, longer story.

Got a lot of nice comments on all three, especially my Romance submission, Reunion.

No regrets this time around. I think all three of my submissions represent me and my different styles very well.

 

[alohadave]

I did 5, and I'm more than happy with the response to them. Hell, one of them is among my top rated stories.

It was a fun little diversion from writing longer, more in-depth works.

 

[Helgamite]

I was just thinking of trying to do a 750 word story. an hour later I'm well past 1500 words! the challenge for me is to think small! lol. I would like to try these challenges tho.