5 tips to organize your story collection

Hi, I'm Cecilia and I'm here to share with you what for me could be the 5 most relevant tips to organize your story collection.

The collection of stories, tales, or stories can be compared to a piece of music: your piece can start subtly and end with a closing with drums and cymbals, or start with them and end with a delicate touch. Another possible analogy is that of a house in which your readers or viewers should feel welcome, walk through at their own pace, and finally leave wanting to visit again. So, following this image, consider the following tips:

1. The first story is the gateway to the collection
The best thing to do when it comes to catching readers and viewers is to start strong: the first story is the door to your collection, if it is not inviting, if it does not propose the rules of the game, it may scare us away or feel misleading. Consider one of your favorite stories and take into account that, besides liking it a lot, it should serve as a taste of what awaits us.

2. Build the center as a staircase or an emotional journey.
The hook is achieved with your opening, but you should not trust: the heart of the collection is, as in the human body, at the center. It is in this part that the sum of ideas, emotions, characters of your stories is made and if your readers or viewers follow the stories in order, you will be taking them by the hand through the journey you want them to make.
If there is a story that gets in the way of that journey: get it out of the way.

3. Try to leave through the big door
The last story should be the one with which you identify the taste in your mouth, the last impressions and images you want to leave in those who visited your collection. So that, when you close the book, or finish the video sequence, what you evoke emotionally and intellectually remains floating or invites those who have just taken the tour to share it with someone else.

You may decide to close with a story as strong as the first, or with something seemingly simpler in appearance but powerful in its message. You may decide to close with a touch of humor and irony, or you may decide to close with a story that will surprise us, surprise us, make us shed a tear or two.

4. Better a short trip than a bad trip
Sacrifice the stories you are not convinced of to make a shorter but better collection if necessary: there will be tales and stories that are just part of your previous experience to reach a great final product. Learning from what you're not entirely convinced of is important to your creative process, not to the final product.

5. Recognize doors to other collections
You may like some stories very much but find that they take you to other emotional places or to different concepts: reserve them for another construction, for another route. Instead of forcing them or discarding them, let them inspire you and serve as the entrance to a new process, a new path.

To learn more about how to create a collection of short stories, stories, narrative illustrations or short films, take a look at my course Concept for a Short Story Collection, where you can start with a collection from scratch or give sense and order to the stories you already have developed and could make up your first collection.

See you there!