Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for December is Cozy Books, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Terena Elizabeth Bell and I discuss:

• How she merged images and text and other ways she experimented in her stories.
• Her advice for managing your mental health when writing about difficult topics.
• What it means to write what you see and how she applied it to her writing.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Terena Elizabeth Bell

Terena Elizabeth Bell is a fiction writer. Her debut short story collection, Tell Me What You See (Whiskey Tit), publishes Holiday 2022. Short stories, poetry, and journalism work have appeared in The Atlantic, Playboy, MysteryTribune, Santa Monica Review, Saturday Evening Post, and more than 100 similar publications throughout the US, the UK, Ireland, and Spain. Short fiction has won grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

She is a 2021 NYFA City Artists Corps winner, a 2018 Arlene Eisenberg Award winner, a 2018 Azbee Award of Excellence winner, and Centre College’s 2014 Distinguished Young Alumna of the Year. Lead editor of the Writing Through the Classics series of books on fiction craft, she has taught creative writing independently and through the New York Society Library, Woodlawn Children’s Home, and Bowling Green State University.

From 2005 to 2015, Bell served as CEO of an international translation company and, in 2012, was appointed to President Barack Obama’s White House Business Council by US Representative John Yarmuth. She holds a BA in English from Centre College and an MA in French from the University of Louisville. Originally from Sinking Fork, Kentucky, she lives in Manhattan, where her landlord once was Philip Roth.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Twitter, TikTok, buymeacoffee.com, and medium.com.

Tell Me What You See

Tell Me What You See is a collection of ten experimental short stories about the January 6th invasion on the US Capitol, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, the increase in Alzheimer’s cases, and other news events from 2020 and 2021. 

Written in both word and image, pieces from the collection have been called “​​inventive and topical and fresh, emotional, chaotic, and important” by The McNeese Review, “timely, relevant, and interesting” by The MIssouri Review, and “cool” by The Baffler. Title story “Tell Me What You See” is also a 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts City Artist Corps winner.

If you decide to check out the book, please do so via this Amazon Affiliate link. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 441

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 441: Writing an Experimental Short Story Collection – Interview with Terena Elizabeth Bell appeared first on DIY MFA.

Spring greetings, leisure learners, and word nerds! I hope this April has found you immersed in the power of individual words, a la National Poetry Month. Now, what happens when you put a whole bunch of words together, complete with punctuation? Hopefully, a short story. Pair it with the month we are heading into and you can conclude that May is National Short Story Month. Please note: friends from across the pond, beside the pond, and any other orientation involving the pond are always invited to join in on our bookish themes!  

WARNING: Lots of good feels possible this month!

Here is your April 2022 Leisure Learning List:

5 Minute Reads

As mentioned before, May is short story month…but sometimes we don’t even have time for short stories. 

As such, here is a compilation of short, short stories by literary greats. You will find Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, Kate Chopin, and Franz Kafka among the many authors in this list of stories, which has the additional benefit of being organized into Feel Good, Introspective, Dramatic, Witty, and Other-Worldy categories, among others. 

One piece I feel obligated to mention is Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as there is a deep appreciation among word nerds for The Yellow Wallpaper itself. 

10 Outstanding Contemporary Short Stories

If the 5 minute reads whetted your appetite for something longer, here are 10 outstanding literary short stories. 

Pravesh Bhardwaj of the famous Twitter #longreads account went through the list of the 276 stories he posted throughout 2021 and chose the best of the best. Each link on his page gives you full access to the work listed.  

Look for Lauren Groff’s short story as well as one by Sally Rooney. All pieces pair well with wine. (I have verified this for you.) 

All Stories Aloud

Ok, so maybe you had time for a Short Short story, but that was about it. How about listening to one of these acclaimed longer stories while doing errands or on a walk? 

The All Stories Aloud Youtube channel features free short stories read aloud by Albert Camus, Haruki Murakami, Graham Greene, and Alice Munro, among others. The time budget is about 20 mins to 1 hour if you want to listen to a story in its entirety.   

Comfort Books

Have you had a hard time getting back to life these past few months? Pandemic? War? Disgruntled by Pantone’s “it” color for 2022? (I actually like it.) 

My point is that life can be difficult to get through right now. 

While there are a ton of excellent self-help books out there, it is tough to keep up with the pace of coping skills one needs to acquire before the next disaster comes rollicking upon the world stage. 

LitHub has come up with a workable solution for modern-day families and adults who need short boosts of bravery when gearing up for human interaction. This list rounds up several lesser-known selections intended for children, but equally enjoyed by adults. Topics include pessimism, overall sadness, grief, calming practices, guilt, and even those days when you kinda-sorta hate yourself.  

I plan on reading through ALL of them.

Cornelius Eady Trio

Since it is technically still April, I’m sneaking in poet Cornelius Eady’s band. Eady himself is a renowned poet whose work is inspired by family life, race, and class. One of the elements that make his work easily recognizable is the use of rhythms found in blues and jazz music. He is the author of seven volumes of poetry, one of which qualified him as a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry while another garnered a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. 

Level the experience of National Poetry Month up by checking out his poems fully realized as music, played by himself and bandmates in the Cornelius Eady Trio. 

Even if you’re not particularly fond of jazz, it is still worth considering how musical rhythm enhances the meaning of the lines in a poem or the meaning of a word. (Ahem, ahem—prompt idea, anyone?)

Tell us in the comments: Which of these April 2022 Leisure Learning picks are you most excited to try?

Melissa Haas is the author and illustrator of Catula: The Misadventures of Dracula’s Cat and The Night Before Christmas (NOW WITH CATS), among other books. Follow Catula’s whereabouts on Instagram @CatulaTheCat or download a free coloring page at www.catulathebook.com.

The post April 2022 Leisure Learning appeared first on DIY MFA.

Charlie Jane is the author of the essay collection Never Say You Can’t Survive along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. 

Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney’s, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. 

Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

In this episode Charlie Jane Anders and I discuss:

• What makes something an “idea” versus a “story” and how to tell the difference.
• How to keep short stories contained while making them rich and deep.
• Why she believes endings are hard and what she does to cross the finish line.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Charlie Jane Anders 

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in a new young-adult trilogy released in April 2021, along with the short story Even Greater Mistakes and the essay collection Never Say You Can’t Survive. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney’s, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram.

Even Greater Mistakes

In her short story collection, Even Greater Mistakes, Charlie Jane Anders upends genre cliches and revitalizes classic tropes with heartfelt and pants-wettingly funny social commentary.

The woman who can see all possible futures is dating the man who can see the one and only foreordained future.

A wildly popular slapstick filmmaker is drawn, against his better judgment, into working with a fascist militia, against a background of social collapse.

Two friends must embark on an Epic Quest To Capture The Weapon That Threatens The Galaxy, or else they’ll never achieve their dream of opening a restaurant.

The stories in this collection, by their very outrageousness, achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. Anders once again proves she is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer, “this generation’s Le Guin.”

Never Say You Can’t Survive

From Charlie Jane Anders, the award-winning author of novels such as All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night, this is one of the most practical guides to storytelling that you will ever read.

The world is on fire.

So tell your story.

Things are scary right now. We’re all being swept along by a tidal wave of history, and it’s easy to feel helpless. But we’re not helpless: we have minds, and imaginations, and the ability to visualize other worlds and valiant struggles. And writing can be an act of resistance that reminds us that other futures and other ways of living are possible.

Full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish during the present emergency, Never Say You Can’t Survive is the perfect manual for creativity in unprecedented times.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via these Amazon affiliate links for Even Greater Mistakes and Never Say You Can’t Survive, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 390

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 390: Idea to Premise to Story: Crafting a Dynamic Short Story – Interview with Charlie Jane Anders appeared first on DIY MFA.

J.L. Torres is the author of a novel, The Accidental Native, as well as the short collection The Family Terrorist and Other Stories, a collection of poetry, Boricua Passport, and Migrations, a short story collection that won the inaugural Tomás Rivera Book Prize. 

He has published stories and poems in numerous journals and magazines including The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Eckleburg Review, Puerto del Sol, Las Americas Review, and the anthology Growing Up Latino. 

Born in Puerto Rico, raised in the South Bronx, he currently lives in Plattsburgh, New York. In addition to the Ph.D., he also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. 

He co-founded the Saranac Review and served as its Editor for many years. On a more personal note has no known hobbies, has never been in prison or any gangs, has never had quirky and funky jobs and is notoriously inept with tools.

In this episode J.L. Torres and I discuss:

• Writing for two audiences and how world building plays a major role in that process.
• What factors he considers when selecting the order of stories for a collection.
• His definition of “voice” and why it is so important in keeping readers engaged.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About J.L. Torres

J.L. Torres is the author of a novel, The Accidental Native; The Family Terrorist and Other Stories; the collection of poetry, Boricua Passport, and Migrations, the winner of the inaugural Tomás Rivera Book Prize. He has published stories and poems in numerous journals and magazines including The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Eckleburg Review, Puerto del Sol, Las Americas Review, and the anthology Growing Up Latino. 

Born in Puerto Rico, raised in the South Bronx, he lives in Plattsburgh, New York. Besides the Ph.D., he holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. He co-founded the Saranac Review and served as its Editor for many years. He has no known hobbies, has never been in prison or any gangs, has never had quirky and funky jobs, and is notoriously inept with tools.

You can find J.L. on his website or follow him on Twitter.

Migrations 

A ‘sucio’ goes to an underground clinic for therapy to end his machista ways and is accidentally transitioned. Ex-gangbangers gone straight deal with a troubled, gifted son drawn to the gangsta lifestyle promoted by an emerging music called hip hop. Dead and stuck “between somewhere and nowhere,” Roberto Clemente, the great Puerto Rican baseball icon, soon confronts the reason for his predicament. These are a few of the characters in J.L. Torres’s second story collection, Migrations, the inaugural winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Prize.

These stories take us inside the lives of self-exiles, unhomed, and unhinged people, estranged from loved ones, family, culture, and collective history. Despite the effects of colonization of the body and mind, Puerto Ricans have survived beyond geography and form an integral part of the American mosaic.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 389

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 389: A Master Class on Short Fiction, Voice, and Opening Lines – Interview with J.L. Torres appeared first on DIY MFA.

Khanh is the author of Flesh and The Demon Who Peddled Longing. 

He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. 

He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, and The C&R Press Fiction Prize. 

His new novel, Mrs. Rossi’s Dream, was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner

In this episode Khanh Ha and I discuss:

• How he writes death scenes in a way that is comfortable for him and powerful for the reader.
• The difference between style and voice and how writers can make both unique.
• Why writers need to stay faithful to their character when creating the POV of the narrative.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Khanh Ha

Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh and The Demon Who Peddled Longing. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, and The C&R Press Fiction Prize. His new novel, Mrs. Rossi’s Dream, was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner.

A Mother’s Tale

A tale of salvaging one’s soul from received and inherited war-related trauma. Within the titular beautiful story of a mother’s love for her son is the cruelty and senselessness of the Vietnam War, the poignant human connection, and a haunting narrative whose setting and atmosphere appear at times otherworldly through their landscape and inhabitants. Captured in the vivid descriptions of Vietnam’s country and culture are a host of characters, tortured and maimed and generous and still empathetic despite many obstacles, including a culture wrecked by losses. Somewhere in this chaos readers will find a tender link between the present-day survivors and those already gone. Rich and yet buoyant with a vision-like quality, this collection shares a common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion, where beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in ecstasy.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 382

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 382: Character, Setting, and Cinematic Storytelling in Short Stories – Interview with Khanh Ha appeared first on DIY MFA.

Alexander is the author of the collections Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a best book of the year by NPR, Google, and Electric Literature. His fiction and interviews have appeared in Rolling Stone, World Literature Today, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best American Experimental Writing.

He is the founder and director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and is a Professor of Creative Writing at Siena Heights University. Today we will be talking about his latest story collection: Universal Love.

In this episode Alexander and I discuss:

• How he balanced hope and cynicism in stories set in the not too distant future.
• His process for building a short story collection and choosing what was included.
• Why you should embrace the mess of early drafts and take plenty of risks.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About the Alexander

Alexander Weinstein is the author of the collections Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a best book of the year by NPR, Google, and Electric Literature. His fiction and interviews have appeared in Rolling Stone, World Literature Today, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best American Experimental Writing. He is the founder and director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and a Professor of Creative Writing at Siena Heights University. 

You can find Alexander on his website or follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Universal Love

A hypnotic collection of speculative fiction about compassion, love, and human resilience in the technological hyper-age, from Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World. 

Universal Love welcomes readers to a near-future world where our everyday technologies have fundamentally altered the possibilities and limits of how we love one another. In these gripping stories, a young boy tries to understand what keeps his father tethered to the drowned city they call home. A daughter gets to know her dead mother’s hologram better than she ever knew her living mother. And, at a time when unpleasant memories can be erased, a man undergoes electronic surgery to have his depression, and his past, forever removed.

In an age when technology offers the easiest cures for loneliness, the characters within these stories must wrestle with what it means to stay human in an increasingly cybernetic future, and how love can endure even the most alluring upgrades.

In the vein of Weinstein’s critically-acclaimed first collection, Universal Love is a visionary book, written with one foot in the real world and one stepping bravely into the future.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 366

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 366: The Art and Craft of a Short Story Collection – Interview with Alexander Weinstein appeared first on DIY MFA.

There are so many holidays and celebrations that sometimes it can be hard to keep up with them all, especially in the writing community. The longer I’m here and the more I learn, the more I want to be a part of every celebration, even if it isn’t my wheelhouse for reading and writing. Short stories in particular are a fantastic way to build your craft no matter what genre or form you write.

I wanted to help you celebrate Short Story Month this May by doing the work for you. If you’re a writer or lover of short, punchy fiction and nonfiction, then I have a treat for you. I’ve rounded up 10 articles and podcasts from the DIY MFA archives all about short stories from drafting to publishing and everything in between.

So, go ahead and celebrate International Short Story Month!

Seven Reasons to Write a Short Story

Need a reason to jump into writing short stories for May? In this article, Stacey Woodson talks about how writing short stories can help your writing career by giving you a chance to hone your craft and build your author brand in both marketing and voice. 

How Themes are Presented in Short Stories

Strong themes are a big element of short stories, but with so few words, how can a writer make sure their theme comes off clearly for their readers without overstating it? Columnist Sara Letourneau dives into the keys to constructing a theme in a short story and shares a couple of her favorite short stories and their themes as examples.

Episode 141: From Short Stories to Novels — Interview with Susan Perabo

In this episode of DIY MFA Radio, Gabriela interviews author Susan Perabo about characters, imagery, and why it is important for writers to be able to write both short stories and novel length work. Scandalous, right? Thankfully, Susan also talks about the challenges and advantages of short stories to help motivate those of us who might be a little skeptical.

Why Short Stories Matter: Guest Post by Emma Komlos-Hrobsky

One of the best things about short stories is their unique way of punching the reader in the gut in so few words. Put more eloquently in her article, Emma Komlos-Hrobsky talks about the unique way that short stories can appeal to readers and why they have lasted throughout the ages despite not being as popular as the novel format.

 Anthologies and Collections: Putting Stories Together to Tell Bigger Stories

I’m a big fan of short story anthologies that tell a bigger story, and in this article, our leading lady Gabriela Pereira herself tells us how we can put together our own collections of short stories with overarching themes that tie together oh so well. 

 #5onFri: Five Tips for Writing a Great Short Story

Now, I hope you don’t think writing short stories is the easy way out for writers who don’t want to tackle the challenge of a novel. Writing a short story has its unique challenges, and fortunately Ann Thu Nguyenova has our back. In her #5onFri article, she gives readers five tips for writing a great short story.

Opening Doors Through Poetry and Short Fiction

Creative nonfiction and fiction short stories are a fantastic way to learn about different people and cultures and their unique experiences. In this article, author Brenda Joyce Patterson writes about her eye-opening experiences with different short stories and how readers can open doors for themselves by reading and writing short stories.

Short Fiction Suggested Reading

No idea where to start with reading short stories? Hopefully you’ve been able to find a few interesting pieces from our authors above, but if not, Corey Brown’s list in her article will give you a great jumping off point for short story indulgence.

Episode 209: The Internal Process of Writing — Interview with Maxine Rosaler

Maxine Rosaler is an accomplished short story writer, and in this podcast episode, Maxine and Gabriela talk about quality over quantity in short stories and the difference between a novel in stories vs. a short story collection among other great advice about drafting. So, go ahead and give it a listen.

 A Short Story from the Slush to the Cover

Have you ever wondered how literary magazines take a story from submission to final print and how they choose what stories to include in their issues? So did Bill Paterson. In his article, Bill breaks down an Editor’s process for accepting and rejecting a short story.

Happy Short Story Month, word nerds. Feel free to share your favorite short stories or what kind of short stories you write in the comments or on our social media posts this month!

Olivia Fisher is a writer and editor who loves to read and write middle grade fiction. When she isn’t imagining living in a treehouse or chasing down her two young boys, she enjoys curling up with a book, writing her next epic adventure, or fighting off the ghosts of the Bermuda Triangle while hauling up the untold treasures and hidden histories of the civilizations deep within its secretive waters. While only some of that is true, she does love animals, babies, and trying to live in the state of child-like wonder that we all secretly, or not so secretly, miss. Follow along with her adventures on Twitter or hire her for your next writing escapade on Fiverr. 

The post All about Short Stories appeared first on DIY MFA.

Sara Schaff is the author of two short story collections The Invention of Love and Say Something Nice About Me. She is a CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist in fiction and a finalist for the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award for short fiction. Her writing has appeared in Catapult, Kenyon Review Online, Yale Review Online, The Belladonna, Michigan Quarterly Review, LitHub, and others. 

A graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at the University of Michigan, Sara has taught at Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, and St. Lawrence University, as well as in China, Colombia, and Northern Ireland, where she also studied storytelling. She lives in the North Country and is an assistant professor of English at the SUNY Plattsburgh.

In this episode Sara and I discuss:

• How approaching her characters emotions more authentically created a significant change in her writing style.
• What a writer can do to best bring a reader into the story, and help a reader fully get to know their characters.
• Why feedback from other writers isn’t always helpful if it relies too much on suggestions for fixes and harsh criticisms, and not enough on building community.

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Sara Schaff is the author of the story collections The Invention of Love (Split Lip Press 2020) and Say Something Nice About Me (Augury Books 2016), a CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist in fiction and a 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for short fiction. Her writing has appeared in Catapult, Kenyon Review Online, Yale Review Online, The Belladonna, Michigan Quarterly Review, LitHub, and elsewhere. 

A graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at the University of Michigan, Sara has taught at Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, and St. Lawrence University, as well as in China, Colombia, and Northern Ireland, where she also studied storytelling. Sara lives in the North Country of New York State with her husband, the poet Benjamin Landry, and their daughter. She is an assistant professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

You can find out more about Sara on her website. You can also follow her on Goodreads, Instagram and Twitter.

The Invention of Love

The stories in The Invention of Love are about, among other things, women taking control of their lives, even as they fall apart. What is love, if not an invention—not just a human instinct but an artful construction? The women who people The Invention of Love, Sara Schaff’s second story collection, long to conceive of themselves  as artists, as lovers, as good sisters and daughters—while contending  with financial insecurity and the reality of twenty-first century womanhood. A college student finds her voice as an artist through a tiny lie. A woman grieves her mother’s death by shopping for houses she can’t afford and will never live in. Against the backdrop of the 2016  election, a copywriter contends with misogyny in the workplace by using that very misogyny against her incompetent male boss. Nostalgic for the women they were or might have been—or still might yet become—their stories illuminate the moments where everything changes—even when what  changes is how we must see our futures.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 333

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 333: Unpacking the Short Story Workshop – Interview with Sara Schaff appeared first on DIY MFA.

— Bess

In 1996, the publication of a new Louisa May Alcott novel called A Long Fatal Love Chase caused a stir. It was obvious from the title alone that this wasn’t another tome about the March sisters. But the subject matter was astonishing. In the novel, a man falls in love with a young woman, whisks her away on a world tour, and stalks her after she leaves him. Although Alcott’s “blood and thunder” tales (the inspiration for Jo March’s) were discovered by Alcott scholars Madeleine B. Stern and Leona Rostenberg in the 1940s, it wasn’t widely known in 1996 that Alcott wrote anything besides what she once termed the “moral pap” for the young for which she became famous. 

But she most certainly did. She wrote tales of passion, deception, and revenge under a pseudonym. (Rostenberg actually whooped in the Houghton library at Harvard when they finally proved that A.M. Barnard was actually Louisa May Alcott. The librarian wasn’t pleased.) 

Her characters avenge themselves against lovers who abandon them, play men off each other to gain an advantageous marriage, and have fiery tempers that put Jo and Amy March’s to shame. For this article, I focused on stories in the collection The Feminist Alcott: Stories of a Woman’s Power edited by Madeleine B. Stern. Reading these stories recently, I was struck by their similarity to the main characters in the wildly popular domestic thriller genre of today. 

Although the Alcott family’s activities as abolitionists, feminists, and proponents of equality for all are well known to Alcott scholars and die-hard fans, those who are more Little Women fans might not know about these unorthodox (for the nineteenth century) attitudes or the fact that Alcott wrote thrilling tales in order to support her family. She wrote under the aforementioned pseudonym, in order to spare her family from embarrassment over the salacious subject matter. But these tales weren’t just salacious. They were blatantly subversive. 

How does this connect to mysteries and thrillers? These stories are examples of sensation fiction, which was a precursor to those genres. Sensation fiction is a combination of Gothic and Romantic literature, meant both in the sense of causing a physical sensation and attracting the attention of readers with wild material. In fact, one of the most famous examples of sensation fiction The Woman in White was written by Wilkie Collins, who also wrote The Moonstone, widely considered to be the first detective novel. 

In these sensational stories, Alcott subverted gender and class expectations much more overtly than in Little Women. And unlike in Little Women, there is no criticism by a male character of these tales that helped her earn a living and in which she found secret satisfaction. 

“I think my natural ambition is for the lurid” — Louisa May Alcott 

Pauline’s Passion and Punishment

The first story in the collection is titled “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment.” Pauline Valary is the very definition of a woman scorned. She enlists the help of her admirer Manuel to get revenge on her former lover Gilbert. Gilbert led Pauline to believe they would marry, then left her for a young heiress named Barbara (tellingly nicknamed Babie). Manuel and Pauline marry and proceed to stalk Gilbert and Babie on their travels. As you can tell from the title, Pauline might just get her revenge, but if she does, it comes with a price. 

Pauline is a compelling example of a femme fatale. While she has obviously let bitterness and vengeance have too much sway in her heart, it’s satisfying to see her go after what she wants and be as dark and complicated as she pleases. In fact, her dogged commitment to her twisted plot of revenge reminds me of Amy Elliott Dunne in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. 

V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots

In “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” Alcott introduces us to Virginie Varens (same last name as Adele Varens, Mr. Rochester’s ward in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre), a “mercenary, vain, and hollow-hearted” actress who seeks money and security through marriage to a Scottish peer. Her plan tragically thwarted by her cousin, fellow actor, and jealous lover Victor, Virginie assumes a new identity and seeks security by any means necessary. 

Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s Power

Jean Muir, the main character in “Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s Power,” is an incredibly complex character. In this twisted, suspenseful tale, she borrows the mask of traditional womanhood to get back at a society that victimized her. She does this by almost literally wearing a mask. We discover on her first night with the Coventry family that she wears a costume to make her appear nineteen rather than thirty. After she goes to her room for the night, she vows “I’ll not fail again if there is power in a woman’s wit and will!” She then removes several false teeth and her makeup. Like Virginie Varens, she is an actress seeking security through marriage, no matter how much cunning and even outright deception she must employ.

In her guise as a young governess, Jean proves strangely magnetic. Despite some initial distrust from a few family members, she speedily wins over everyone. She is an astute judge of character, finding the exact route to each person’s affections and following it. Once she gains their affection, she plays the three Coventry men against each other. She is ruthless with nerves of steel, but the darkness of her character is leavened by moments of true empathy and compassion. While I won’t spoil the ending and tell whether Jean achieves her aim of safety in an advantageous marriage, I will say she is not punished for her tempestuous emotions as Pauline was. “Behind a Mask” was published two years before Little Women and is one of the last and many think the best of Alcott’s thriller tales. The difference between Pauline and Jean shows the growth in Alcott’s skill as a writer. 

Taming a Tartar

In the collection’s final story “Taming a Tartar,” Alcott subverted traditional roles by having Englishwoman Sibyl Varna tame the Russian prince Alexis Demidoff rather than the other way around. Sybil takes a position as companion to the prince’s sister Nadja. In the course of this position, she gets to know both very well and uses her confidence and good sense to help Alexis tame his temper and Nadja stand up to her brother. It’s very satisfying to see a sexist story in the vein of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew turned on its head. Although there are elements that are hard to take (namely Alexis’s occasionally aggressive behavior to Sibyl and one instance of cruel behavior to his dog Mouche), it is overall a worthy read, due to a heroine very similar to Jo March (no darkness in Sibyl) and a memorable (for the nineteenth century) exchange between Alexis and Sibyl at the end.

Alcott’s sensation fiction adds a fascinating facet to the beloved author. These stories are dramatic, tempestuous, and just plain interesting. They are also a drop in the bucket from a very prolific author. If you are a fan of Little Women, intrigued by Greta Gerwig’s groundbreaking adaptation, or just a fan of thrillers and Gothic fiction, I encourage you to explore Alcott’s dark side. 

Sara Farmer lives in Austin, TX, with her husband, three kids, and two cats. When she’s not chasing kids and cats, she reads and writes mysteries. You can find her at www.kittymomma.com and on Twitter @avonlea79.

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Because of these constraints, short stories are a great tool to practice writing. Short stories can teach you to cut out the unnecessary fluff and practice writing a wide variety of stories as they are much faster to finish than novels. You can try various genres, test story ideas, and more.

In this article, we’ll give you five simple tips for writing a great short story. Take out your pen or your laptop, and get your creative juices flowing!

1) Just get the first draft out

As writers, our minds are trained to filter out ideas and make edits as we are writing. After we write a sentence, we instantly look for ways to improve it. When writing a short story, this can actually stifle creativity.

Don’t worry too much about plot holes or word counts when writing the first draft. Instead, focus on getting a full story out. If your brain is trying to kill an idea before you write it, just write it out. There’s no harm and could be a seed of something great. The first draft is not the final draft and there will be plenty of room to iron out the details and mistakes before any living soul needs to see your story. For more details on editing a short story, this guide is pretty good.

This process often results in a stronger story, more creative ideas, and a faster process for writing a short story. If you need more story ideas, there’s this great list of short story ideas that you can use.

2) Don’t lose yourself in the details

In a short story, every word counts. You don’t have the freedom that writing a novel provides to expand for pages at a time. You’ll have to focus on what the reader absolutely must know about and trim away all the excess content.

In your first draft, feel free to include as much as you want. Then give it a second read, asking yourself: Does this sentence add anything to the story? Does it provide the necessary information? Can I make this scene simpler or shorter?

Try and focus on the details that matter, and let go of the rest. It’s hard cutting away parts that you love, but sometimes this is just what your story needs to go from good to great!

When it comes to short stories, remember the saying: Good things, when short, are twice as good.

3) Make the dialogue believable

If your short story has dialogue, the quality of the dialogue can make or break the story. If it seems fake or over-the-top, it simply won’t work to keep the story flowing naturally. Try and get into your character’s minds and hearts, and write with their own voice. A naive 14-year-old student and a weathered veteran won’t think, talk, or even gesture the same way.

Creating believable dialogue is an intrinsic part of making the audience relate to your characters and your plot. This is particularly difficult in short stories because writers intuitively try to include only the dialogue that moves the plot forward, making the conversations sound unnatural. Try and read the dialogue out loud after you’ve written your story’s conversations. If it doesn’t feel natural, try to play around with the words until you find the right mix. If you don’t know somebody in the right age range to use as a reference point, try looking at the dialogue in YouTube videos or movies. Compare that to your own dialogue to see how on-point you are.

To practice dialogue-writing, I often write fanfiction to practice using different characters, styles, and emotions within the dialogue. It becomes very easy to tell when you don’t write dialogue properly within fanfiction because when reading out loud, you’ll notice that the dialogue feels “out of character”. I’ll often go to Commaful’s fanfiction page, choose a fandom, and start practicing. The Star Wars section is one of my favorites for this exercise because if you can write dialogue for aliens, then you can probably write dialogue for anybody.

4) Show, don’t tell!

I know, I know, you’ve probably been given this advice throughout your life, but it actually applies even more for short stories. If something happens in your story, don’t just tell the reader about it, but rather reveal it to them through the plot. One way to visualize the difference is to imagine your story as a movie. Imagine if the most critical points of the movie were narrated rather than shown. This makes your audience engage and connect with the characters instead of simply reading about a situation.

Showing rather than telling helps readers build a closer relationship with the characters and helps draw readers in. It’s critical to draw readers in and help them relate to characters quickly in a short story because readers won’t feel the twists and turns of the story without being emotionally invested and you have limited words to get them invested. Plus, if you merely tell them about an essential part of the story, you are missing out on the opportunity to create drama and suspense!

5) Jump right into the action

In a short story, there is no time for long introductions or world-building. Instead of character introductions or explanations of the rules of the universe, great short stories often weave worldbuilding into the plot.

You meet the protagonist and the antagonist through the adventure. If the world has dragons, introduce the dragon when the dragon actually appears in the story. If the world uses magic, introduce that when the character uses magic.

This helps give the story the fast-paced feeling a short story needs and helps you meet any word count limits you may have.

What are you waiting for? Get writing your short story!

These are five basic tips that you can apply to your short story writing immediately. Short stories have become increasingly popular over the years with the decrease of attention spans and the dominance of social media. Many short story apps have sprung up and short stories are now even shared on Instagram. There has never been a better time to get into short story writing. Not only are they incredibly fun to write, but they also can be incredibly useful for growing your audience.

Anna Thu Nguyenova is a writer, entrepreneur, actress, and founder of Saigon Comic Con.

The post #5onFri: Five Tips for Writing a Great Short Story appeared first on DIY MFA.