Writing a short story...

[Paksenarrion]

The thing is, I'm usually good at writing if somebody gives me a head-start (like when we get the assignment to make a story out of a sentence), but I'm bad at drawing my own inspiration.

"John Stalvern waited..."

...and...go! ^_^

A little more substance in that sentence would have worked. And the way a short story is written, I essentially have to work backwards, since it usually begins with the event already happening.

"John Stalvern waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were demons in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway."

Okay, go! ^_^

 

[vanguard135]

School shooting. You'll get an A, I gaurentee it. But not the perspective of the shooter(s). Thats just screwed up

 

[Chancie]

Try googling "story idea generator." You'll get a bunch of different ones and just play with a few until you find one you like. Usually works for me when I get stuck.

They'll just give you simple ideas that you can work off of. Best thing ever. xD

 

[Arkhangelsk]

School shooting. You'll get an A, I gaurentee it. But not the perspective of the shooter(s). Thats just screwed up

Aww, but I like crazy stories...

Try googling "story idea generator." You'll get a bunch of different ones and just play with a few until you find one you like. Usually works for me when I get stuck.

They'll just give you simple ideas that you can work off of. Best thing ever. xD

That's an interesting approach. I'll have to try it.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

The thing is, I'm usually good at writing if somebody gives me a head-start (like when we get the assignment to make a story out of a sentence), but I'm bad at drawing my own inspiration.

"John Stalvern waited..."

...and...go! ^_^

A little more substance in that sentence would have worked. And the way a short story is written, I essentially have to work backwards, since it usually begins with the event already happening.

"John Stalvern waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were demons in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway."

Okay, go! ^_^

I smell a sci-fi fantasy tale.

 

[Davrel]

So as a huge assignment for school, I have to write a short story (around 2-4 pages long).

Huge? Wait until you hit university; last piece of work I handed in was 49 pages long.

OT: 2-4 pages means you won't have to/be able go into great detail about anything, so avoid a complicated plot. Horror stories work well in this regard as you can leave things that might otherwise have required explanation down to the paranormal...as long as you don't rely on that too heavily. Don't bother with sci-fi, space-marine stuff unless you're really drawing a blank; that genre is just cheesy and would require far more detail than a 2-4 page story could contain.

Lavish detail on an ordinary event, with a moral spin thrown in there too. Remember use of language too - you don't want to start writing a list. Futility of certain everyday events, maybe? I'm no author, but this is how I handled that kind of assignment at school and it was always successful for me (i.e. top marks).

 

[Arkhangelsk]

So as a huge assignment for school, I have to write a short story (around 2-4 pages long).

Huge? Wait until you hit university; last piece of work I handed in was 49 pages long.

OT: 2-4 pages means you won't have to/be able go into great detail about anything, so avoid a complicated plot. Horror stories work well in this regard as you can leave things that might otherwise have required explanation down to the paranormal...as long as you don't rely on that too heavily.

Lavish detail on an ordinary event, with a moral spin thrown in their too. Futility of certain everyday events, maybe? I'm no author, but this is how I handled that kind of assignment at school and it was always successful for me.

Maybe not huge in that aspect, but it affects my grade pretty much.

Right now I followed the advice from a poster here earlier on, who told me to make the main character enter with a gun. It's going slow, but I'm at least making some progress.

 

[LostTimeLady]

I find a good way to get going with a story is to start with a title first. So with that in mind you could make up a random title and work from there, or you could 'borrow' a title from another book or TV programme episode and write your own story around that title. Note that I'm saying only borrow the title not the story or plot as the last thing you want is to get an Unclassified Grade because of plagerism.

 

[Davrel]

-snip-

-snip-

Maybe not huge in that aspect, but it affects my grade pretty much.

Right now I followed the advice from a poster here earlier on, who told me to make the main character enter with a gun. It's going slow, but I'm at least making some progress.

Well, keep at it, good luck!

 

[Broady Brio]

Write about someone you know and a "What if?" story.

I wrote about one person and added a few touches to him, such as being a sadist bunny torturer, who gets visited by his sister, accendently hurts her so she has to go to the hospital and then questioned by a policeman about "high pitched squeals." This got an "A" grade.

Spoiler: How did I come up with such a story?

My teacher did a excerise where you had a picture of someone and with that someone, you had to write traits of what could this person had. I did this with a partner and we thought of the standard loner but the one that stuck out was that he liked to harm small childern. Then we modified it to small animals and finally rabbits[footnote]I don't promote violence of any kind, it was just a funny idea that this lonely guy did something strange as their hobby.[/footnote]. Don't ask us why, we were going along with it and laughing all through that lesson.