I’m in that muddy middle between novel manuscripts, where I fill my time either writing smaller projects or revising pieces that have gathered a bit of dust. Recently, I’ve gone on something of a short story kick. I know my main flaw in this type of prose. Mainly, most of my short stories end up sounding like novel synopses. It is for some reason incredibly difficult for me to compress the character depth, plot, and niftiness, as well as the many other elements that make a short story worth reading, into one cohesive package. A natural part of my mind starts trailing out all the thought streamers for any idea I get, and before you know it there’s a huge mess that’s going to take more than 10,000 words to cleanup. Paring this down to magazine standards is my challenge, one which I may someday overcome.
In the meantime, I know that one of the best ways to learn how to write a good novel is to read good novels. Therefore, if I apply my hugely quantum-superstring theory of logic and common sense, one might thusly theorize that by reading good short stories you can learn to write them…maybe? This is of course assuming that I have a modicum of writing talent in the first place, but one does hope that there are at least a few aspects of writing that are learned as you go along.
Imagine my surprise and pleasure then to find this treasure trove of Free Speculative Fiction Online. It’s a bare bones website, to be sure, but you aren’t gonna go there the ooh-pretty graphics, now are you? I didn’t think so. No. Go for the stories. They have been nice enough to lay everything out for you alphabetically, as well as indexed by the magazines, and even the awards the stories have won.
If you want a strong dose without having to browse around a lot, try the Recommended Stories link for tales by Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Terry Bisson. They’ve got some classics here, as well as many I’m sure you’ve never seen before. And the more we read, the better we’ll get at writing our own, right? Or at least we’ll gain a better understanding of how much work we still have yet to do. At least we won’t be bored.
I see that smile.
What? You only just discovered them? 🙂
Yeah, I loved it when I first found the Free SF site. And SciFiction (which I’m still ticked got cancelled). But they kept the stories up there, so half-a-hooray for scifi.com.
Mir
Why did they cancel SciFiction, anyways? I literally found that site a day after they closed it down. Bummed me out, but yeah, at least the work is still available.
You know, I don’t remember. I do know they set up a companion blog, where folks could write up their fave story at SciFiction. I was gonna do it, but someone had already done the story I was gonna do. Can’t even remember the name of the blog. I’m senile.
Congrats on the DKA acceptance.
I gave it thumbs up the day the revise came in, we just had to wait for others to read it and thumb it up, too.
Mir
Thanks for the support! It was fun to revisit the story with the suggestions you all gave for the first go-round. Much less..er..depressing version, methinks.
Hey! Now that’s pretty cool. Most of my “short stories” read like scenes from novels, so . . . yeah. I need to read some shorts and figure out how to keep a short story . . . short.
DKA acceptance? *pokes* Do tell.