The Art of Short Story and Novella Writing

Savvy Writers, Book 2

By: Kim Knight

Narrated by: Kim Knight

Length: 1 hr and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Compared to novel writing, short stories and novellas need special and different skills that every writer should master. Readers love shorter stories! From Kim Knight, the award-winning and number one best-selling author of 365 Days of Writing Prompts for Romance Writers, The Art of Short Story and Novella Writing writer’s reference is perfect for both seasoned and aspiring writers of all genres. The Art of Short Story and Novella Writing will help you perfect, sharpen, and increase your skills and abilities when writing engaging short stories, novellas, or novelettes for both stand-alone and series stories. With detailed and practical steps, the sole aim of this guide is to help writers confidently write within a high demand and well-paid market. With easy-to-engage-with chapters, discover the practical art of shorter story and novella writing. The Art of Short Story and Novella Writing includes practical exercises to help you master the skills to write your next series of stories:

• Storytelling styles for short stories: how and why it should differentiate from novel writing.
• Character development with limited word count.
• Strengthening themes and plots with limited word count.
• Where and how to start a shorter story to capture a reader’s attention.
• Creating compelling stories with peaks and satisfying endings for readers, with a small word count.
• Learn about the market, paid writing contests, and where to submit shorter stories.

Each chapter has a dedicated writing space for every practical exercise and for plotting your ideas and characters. Writing compelling shorter stories with meaning and well-developed characters is not easy! But with The Art of Short Story and Novella Writing, you will ramp up your skill set and become a master of the technique.

©2020 Kim Knight (P)2020 Kim Knight

I expected a bit more professionalism

I am getting frustrated with authors supposedly writing craft books on the short story who actually give you little understanding of how to write small. While this author gave some useable advice and information, the book was supposed to be applicable to just about any genre. The author repeatedly tells you she writes mostly romantic suspense. (No problem. I like romantic suspense novels. So why not write the piece geared toward the genres with which she has the most experience?) Her advice runs along the line of write what you want, but fit it into the word count of the type of market you intend to sell to. That is a bit of old news.

She gives links to websites that help you with writing prompts, Writer’s Digest’s annual publication of “Writer’s Market” which gives you details on publishers in the US (I assume in the UK as well although I don’t recall her specifically mentioning the geography covered by the writer’s market books), and a few other online sources for writers. She suggests that Google is the writer’s best friend these days. Her discussion about the form and mechanics of writing a short story was woefully short and inadequate, which what I was most interested in. And that seems to be the one thing every writer of these kind of books.

And lastly, while I applaud her effort to do it herself, the production value of her personal recording of this book seriously needed better equipment and perhaps a narrator who would have gone back through the recording and listened to how grating the noise is at each of the chapter breaks. Also, there was heavy an echo picked up on the entire recording because she apparently did not use sound muffling foam on the walls of her recording studio. She might also have discovered how difficult many English speakers might find the unique pronunciation of her London accent. While I love all kinds of British accents and am pretty good at pinpointing their location of origin in the UK, I found her narration difficult to listen to. The greatest problem with her narration was that she sounded as if she were reading a text she’d never seen before. She did try to add some life to her voice, but unfortunately it ended up with emphasis being placed on inappropriate sections of the text and it ended up wrapping the reading in a stilted cadence.

There’s a reason voiceover actors earn big bucks.

Helpful Tips

Useful tips for writing short stories delivered in an encouraging, no nonsense fun way.