I was sitting doodling and scribbling down ideas for short stories for around two hours this morning, in between ploughing through post after post on other writers blogs in the hopes of finding hints and tips for producing saleable - dare I even say profitable? - short stories. I've never written a short story before so feel I need all the help I can get.
My thoughts turned to my Novel (as yet un-published and in need of splitting and tweeking if it's ever to find it's way on to the Kindle marketplace) and it hit me... Sarah, the main character of my novel, was the source of my short story! The novel starts twelve months after Sarah travels to Africa with her Fiance. Something happens to her on that trip which changes both her and her life forever. The events which took place in Africa are, of course, outlined in the Novel, but the whole story isn't told in it's full detail, but it could be - as a stand alone short story!
Now, I'm not really in the habit of writing to word counts, as I prefer the freedom of writing until I run out of things to write, but, for Sarah and her shocking experiences at the hands of her captors - I can make an exception! I've looked at Kindle sold shorts and they seem to be around the 8000 word mark (give or take) which is very do-able, so that's my first goal - a short story about Sarah's lifechanging trip to Africa in around 8000 words!!
To the notepad!!
Tick Tock...
MoJo xox
Good Luck with the story - 8000 words doesn't seem a very short story to me! I'm more used to doing 1000 words or so for women's magazines.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that you can also make your blog available for Kindle via Amazon & charge a subscription? It's not something I've done (I don't own a Kindle) so I don't how easy it is but it may be worth looking into.
Morning Sally :o)
ReplyDeleteFirstly, congrats on your recent publishing successes! It's great to see your name in print again. You're getting to be quite a regular in the writing magazines!
Secondly, but sort of ties in with "firstly", thanks for the tip off on publishing Blogs via Kindle. Funnily enough, literally minutes after I read your comment on here I sat down to read my April copy of Writers' Forum and spotted your Kindle hint in there too!!
I've looked into it and it's really easy to do - you just need a suitably professional looking blog, so I need to do a bit of work. You could probably get yours online in minutes! The earnings from the blog subscriptions are not fantastic, but I've read quite a few reports of people selling subscriptions to their blogs to then find that the same people buying the subscriptions started buying the other work they have available on Kindle!
I love the Kindle marketplace!
Bev xx