To Be Brief...

*crickets*

Sooooo...erm....?

Writing short! I love it! I love the challenge of writing short stories; I love the length; I love being able to finish something in a week rather than months.

There's not much I don't love about writing short stories!

M 

It looks like I am the first to arrive—a rarity for me indeed. Where to begin and how to do it without sounding like I’m embarking on a 10-step program?

Mmm… My name is Jodi Lynn Copeland and I am a Spice Author. Yeah, I think that still sounds like the opening for a 10-step program.

My first Spice title, a Brief—how fitting!—debuts on April 1st. Hot For It is a fun and steamy, with just a little bit of sad, first look at the “best friends become lovers” couple who appear in my part of the What Happens In Vegas… anthology out in trade paperback in May. After writing the Vegas novella, I fell in love with this couple, a feisty Latina cocktail waitress and a smoking hot firefighter, and just had to spend more time with them. And so Hot For It was born.

As for the secret behind writing brief, here’s a couple starter ideas...

1.      Keep the storyline contained: The word count for Briefs (or for any short story) is limited, so don’t expect your characters to meet, climb between the sheets twelve times, solve a mystery, and fall in everlasting love all within that word count. Could it happen? Sure. But the odds are good you won’t be able to fit all that in as well as the physical and emotional spark so critical to bringing the characters and their story to life.

2.      Start with a bang. No, not that kind of bang--though it would probably work well!  An engaging hook is key to any story. With a Brief, you have even less introduction room. Start with a scene that throws the reader into the story and character’s heads fast and keeps them there until the end. One thing that works well also is starting with the story already in motion. The trick is to bring your readers up to speed fast on what has gone done to date.

More later... When I'm not feeling quite so much like the lone woman at the front of the crowded room, relying on that "envisioning them in their underwear" strategy.

~ jodi

I love the idea of writing short. It's so concise! It's so exciting!

It's so hard! (And not in the good way.)

My CPs like to remind me I write with a cast of thousands. Is there room for secondaries in a Brief? Should one not even bother?

Dee

Briefs are a great way to get your toes wet. It's not a huge committement in terms of word count, so you can go out on a limb, and take a risk with a new genre, or have your characters explore a new sexual experience that maybe you don't think you could pull in a full single title, but you'd like to try a scene.

I think writing short actually inspires me to write other things. It also helps you build your craft because the word count is so important. I'm wordy, so writing short really teaches me to use every word, and that just strengthens me as a writer.

I also love the fact that you might come up with characters you adore, but you can't give them all that much conflict. Well, you don't need a whole heck of alot in a 15k short work, so that can be really liberating. You can just write what you want and make it satisfying for both you and the reader!

Charlotte

HI , Amanda McIntyre here, you'll note I have no cover yet, But my contemporary , MIRROR, MIRROR  is slated for September 2008. If you love flicks like 'Disturbia" and "Rear Window" themes, you'll likely enjoy this!

Ok, blatant PR out of the way: I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock and Twilight Zone. (Yeah, that dates me) but what I learned even in writing is how riveting short stories can be.

I equate it to Agnes Cravats(sp?) in 'Bewitched,' always looking out her window , spying on the neighbors and the strange goings on.

Writing a short story is similar. You pull back the curtain on a brief moment in time, sucked into the vortex of drama, sex, intrigue, & poignancy in the lives of those few characters.

Then, the curtain slips away, and falls, leaving the imprint on your memory.

Amadna McIntyre

MIRROR, MIRROR-September 2008/SPICE Briefs
DIARY OF COZETTE-October 2008/SPICE-Books
www.amandamcintyre.net * www.myspace.com/amandamcintyre
We're bringing sexy back...in time!  http://lustintime.blogspot.com
Coming in 2009: TORTURED and WINTER'S DESIRE anthology/SPICE-Books

Hey Dee.

Hi Ladies.

How much of your stories do you plot ahead of time?

Hi Lorie,

Well, as far as plotting, I'm really a fly by the seat of my pants kind of writer. I have a general idea of 'where I'm going with this' but then usually let the characters drive the plot. Sometimes that makes for great writing, other times I wonder why I don't sit down and actually plot it out. I'm just not a plotter, and I always end up doing it on the fly even when I decide I'm never going to do that again!

Eliza, my advice for getting into Spice (and remember, I'm new with Spice, so my opinion might not be worth beans) is to write the kind of story that appeals to you. The one thing that can be said about Spice is that it has no rules. They don't publish just one thing. And that makes it all the better. They don't do, and I think, want cookie cutter types of books. So, I'd say write that story you're dying to write, make it really polished and really sexy and submit it. I think Susan is really open to a multitude of ideas, and she's looking for 'different'.

Good luck!

Charlotte 

Hi, everyone.

I’m Grace. I wrote The Queen’s Tale (Feb ’08) And it looks like I’m (fashionably?) late to the party.

Fun topic! I like writing short because I can hold everything in my head at once. With longer projects, there are always those big blurry areas ahead. (“…and then something happens.”)  

Short also has that great Iceberg Impact Effect. You only read 10% but you feel all the stuff underneath. They stick with you.

So, I totally agree with Jina—I have to know my characters and their world really well, lots of details that never make it into the final story.

Also I’m weird that way—I need to know the people I’m having sex with!

Hi Star!

I think Susan will be interterested in a story that has a satisfying ending. She's often mentioned that they don't have to go riding off into the sunset together. And I would assume satisfying to mean that the end culminates in such a way that both characters, or ALL characters achieve goals or desires that they had set for themselves when the story began. Does that make sense?

Charlotte

Thanks for the compliment, Star. You are my second fan!--who is not related or doesn’t otherwise depend upon my hospitality. (I loved that book, Star Girl, btw. What a great alter-ego.)  

All those stories are just percolating around in your head, aren’t they? Write them all down. As many as you can. More is better. You’re shooting hoops in the driveway. The more you do it, the better you get. Who cares if it doesn’t fit a formula when you first get it down on paper? That’s what revisions are for!

Spice has a little more freedom with the boundaries of its conventions, from what I’ve read. I’ve definitely seen a few things that didn’t end all lovey-dovey. 

Same old thing, I know you've heard before. Got to meet the reader expectation. If you're writing straight up erotica—no problem. The reader doesn’t have a romantic expectation. If you are writing for the erotic-romance market, there better be a romantic ba-da-bing, at the end.

So here’s my question, when you read within the genre—what turns you on more? The things that have the emotional/lovey aspect? Or the stuff that doesn’t? 

I have to agree with the person who said write what you like. Briefs are short, sexually explicit stories. They're not long enough to explore every facet of your characters' lives -- but that doesn't mean the entire story has to be, or should be, a step by step description of their sexual encounters. Though that might work, too. ;)

Writing short, for me, means taking one moment in time, one small piece of their lives. Could be a day. An hour. Could be a span of a few months. But whatever happens in that time span is only one small PIECE of what they're doing. The story focuses on that small piece of their growth.

So far I've sold four Briefs. One was a fairy tale. One was a contemporary story with fantasy elements (the fantasy being the heroine's blog entries, her fantasy life, not elves and stuff), the third is a contemporary story dealing with two characters from a previous book, and the last is a contemp. story about a woman and a man meeting during a layover in the airport. The last one takes place in the span of only a few hours, while the others take place over a few months or at least weeks. But they all focus on one theme or event or moment or decision in the characters' lives.

Because these are sexy stories, it's my feeling a good portion of the plot should involve the sex in some way because you simply don't have room to make it about much more. But that doesn't mean you can't create an entire fully realized story that deals with more than just tab A and slot B.

M 

Grace, where've you been all my life? I find that an author who can end compellingly is always worth the read. :)

Bad ends can kill a book buzz. I read the end first so I'm never disappointed.

Or is that weird?

Dee

Dee -- I agree re: a satisfying ending.  To me, an ending should be like your perfume lingering on his pillow -- the scent stays with him long after you're gone...

Megan -- all your stories are great!!  You have a wonderful sense of bringing both the emotion and the sex act together so they blend seamlessly.

Jina 

Can I use that in my tag line?  That's perfect!

Thank you so much for sharing.  This is just the inspiration and focus I need to keep writing. Thanks again! 

for reading the end first: "That way, if I die before I reach the end, I'll know what happened."

What? It's valid! LOL!