Carry a Short Story Kit in Your Pocket
When you want to write a short story, but you have a life, too.
New writers sometimes have to experiment with the art of writing. Many who I talk to come by the Medium route, starting with non-fiction and how-to articles. To some of them, writing fiction would be fun, but they have no idea as to where to start.
The new writers I talk to sometimes try to begin with a book, a novel and get bogged down, never to return. I, being the huge proponent that I am for incrementalism, suggest the start works better with writing short stories.
I like systems, order, and guardrails to my interstate, so when I first started suggesting short stories, I searched many places for an easy template for new writers to use to “paint by the numbers” and there were none that I could find.
So I made my own, based on the “hero’s journey,” that can be adapted to either a book or short story.