The stories of Bryan Young

In some of his books, Kurt Vonnegut lamented the diminishing magazine market because that's where you found short stories. And short stories were the best place for writers to hone their craft. There are a lot of ways this system helped writers do this, and, in a culture with allegedly dwindling attention spans reign, short stories can still be a great place to learn. But what should you be doing? What should you be looking to get out of short stories? How can they help? Well, here's a list of ideas I have about the subject: Short stories are short - This might sound obvious, but there are a lot of layers to this one. In a format so short, it gives you a lot of room to stretch your creativity and try out new things without feeling chained to them. Sometimes, writing a novel or a screenplay, even one you love implicitly, can get to be sort of a slog. When you weigh taking new stylistic risks you might hate 20,000 words into a novel, you might not go for it. A short sto...

Welcome back, everyone. I've had a lot of conferences and conventions over the last month and feel like I've been neglecting all five of you who faithfully read this space. I'm sorry. I'll try to let less time pass between each post. Though I must admit, November will probably be light, too, as I'll be cranking on a book for National Novel Writing Month. I haven't been working on drafting a new novel in a few months. I did take a break and wrote a feature-length screenplay in the time between this post and my last. But I've been doing a lot of revision lately. Like, a lot. I got into this cycle of just writing novels and then writing the next one. And then the next one. I literally have 11 manuscripts I'm sitting on. And I'm in the midst of editing my fifth one in this cycle. It's slow going work. I feel like it takes me longer to revise a book than write it. It's more thoughtful work. And it's more discerning. You're rewritin...