Short Story Writing: Create Fiction from Personal Experience

Short Story Writing: Create Fiction from Personal Experience

“We’ve reached the end of the course and now the satisfying process of creating a story begins, or if you’ve been writing along with me, the process continues! For the final project, I invite you to take one of the experiences, people, objects, or memories that emerged during your brainstorming and turn it into a story. Start with brainstorming around a theme. Pets and animals are just one possible starting point. I’d encourage you to brainstorm around aspects of your world that are meaningful to you, be it clothes, or cars, travel, politics, members of your family, your teachers, or the streets in your neighbourhood. That way, you can be sure to have a wide range of stories to choose from, and what you don’t work on now, will be there for later. By brainstorming and making lists, we can keep reminding ourselves that there’s always something to write about. The more focused the subject of your story, the more freedom you have to enjoy the digressions. Allow yourself to drift off from the main theme, then bring yourself back to whatever you’re focused on your grandmother’s wedding dress, your trip to summer camp, the park near your house, your dog, a beach from childhood, that uncle who disappeared to Australia. Remember, it’s your story, and you can shape it and complicate it as much as you like. Add fictional elements or keep it purely autobiographical. Pretend to know what you don’t know! In a nutshell, I’d say that these are the steps to follow: 1) brainstorm around a theme, 2) pick a memory or experience to turn into a story, 3) keep it focused and simple, and enjoy the digressions the story takes you on. If you’re wondering how long your story should be, I’d say that a story takes as long as it takes. Some stories are as short as 50 words, and others are 5,000. For the purposes of the course, and to keep things manageable for me and your fellow writers here, please stay within a limit of around 1,000 words. A word limit can be a useful editing tool: it makes us aware of what is essential to the story, and what the story can do without. Share your process and questions with us in the forums, and then your final project, too. As you’ll see, there are many writers on the course, and stories can take a while to read, but I’ll read all final projects and do my best to answer all your questions. It might take a while, so do feel free to nudge me if anything is urgent. It’s been a real pleasure for me to share my process with you and my way of writing stories. There are infinite ways to write a story, so I hope mine has shown you how simple, complex, emotional, and entertaining the process of putting together a story can be. By sharing your process and stories, you’ll introduce us to different ways of approaching a story and engaging with the writing process. Be kind to yourself as you write, and take pleasure in the meandering and unpredictable workings of your imagination. I look forward to reading your stories and seeing you in the forums. Now, let’s get back to writing! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final Project And that's it for the moment. We've reached the end of this Domestika course. I hope that through brainstorming and writing with me, you've now realized how many stories you have to keep writing and developing. Get them out of your head and onto the page. Some you'll finish and others you'll come back to later, but once they're on the page, they're there for you to work on. The liberating and challenging thing about writing is that you make the rules. Through the writing itself, you'll learn how you write, and when you need ideas, you read the writing and the stories of great ...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Short Story Writing: Create Fiction from Personal Experience

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (802)
• 33947 students
• 5 units
• 19 lessons (2h 8m)
• 1 download

• Category

  Writing

• Areas

  Creative Writing, Creativity, Narrative, Non-Fiction Writing, Storytelling, Writing