How-I-Do: Stages of Creation Part 6 - Mediums

If you have been following the my series stages until this point, you should be at the point of getting feedback for your completed draft. This month, we’re going to take a break from giving you tips for story creation and instead, give you some pointers regarding the various mediums you can tell your stories through. ​

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To keep things simple, I’m going to limit each medium to a single, main tip, some from personal experience, and some from friends in the industry.

Comics

Number 1 Rule of writing for comics: If it still reads perfectly fine without the visuals, then it’s probably not best in comic form.

I learnt this from writing ‘Unstable Foundations’. Coming from a largely prose background, I had to think of the story dialogue and descriptions in terms of still art - No point if your comics consists of talking-head panels 90% of the time. In comics, you have the advantage of art to show your story instead of wrecking your brain on how to ‘show, don’t tell’ - use it.

Podcasts

Long story short - You need to feel the story with only your ears.

Welcome to Night Vale, Within the Wires, Archive 81, Serial - after listening to these podcasts for a while, I came to a conclusion of the commonality between all of them (and why are they are so good). You can feel and be in the story without the need for visual aids.

The balance between an audibly tantalizing story and leaving things up to the imagination is crucial - and rather enjoyable, coming from a listener’s point-of-view.

Prose - Long Form

I know this is old advice but - begin with the end in mind.

In longer fiction, it’ll help to keep your base idea as simple as possible (like Inception. Hehe.) - that way, you’ll have a solid foundation on which you can plant your tree of a story. Personally, the most-heard advice I’ve gotten from editors and mentors find their commonality in keeping the base idea simple.

Here are some branches you can think about after you get your base story idea down:

• Consequences to actions need to be relatable and not convenient.
• Try not to make things too easy for your protagonist.
• What is the skeletal system in your world?

Prose - Short Form

Pro TIp: Have your beginning, middle, and end all encompassed into the needed word limit.

All stories need to be all-encompassing, so readers won’t have the chance to point out loopholes in another story that they may find in the universe you decided to spread out over all your works a la Terry Pratchett. You may have a plan to have all your stories be linked by a single universe, but your readers don’t know - or are interested in - that.

So yes, many of the best short stories are able to balance leaving the reader wanting more but can also stand alone.

Bonus: Word Limits

There have been a few times where stories were rejected because they submitted stories which were too long - if your story exceeds the word limit by 1.5x, then try another place with a higher word limit, or start scrutinizing for areas that really need to be cut, or considering if your story should be a short story in the first place.

Generally, most places ask for stories between 2,000 to 8,000 words for short stories. Pulp Toast (the zine I handle) asks for stories below 3,000 words. And no, no amount of begging and declaration of passion “for writing” will help your case if your story is rejected (see previous post on the Editor’s Table).   

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And that’s all we have for the first half of the year - stay tuned next month as we start tackling some of the trickiest stages of getting your work out there. ​