How to Write Sizzling Short Stories — Even if You Think You Can’t
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper’d with love’s sighs;
Love’s Labour’s Lost — Shakespeare
Writing short stories is often a test of the author’s ability to deceive the reader.
Writers must be good a telling lies.
I’ve read the above many times. Often, I’d agree with it outright, but really, it means something quite different than being a teller of lies.
When I first began to write stories, I sat down, pen and paper before me, and began to think. My mind was blank.
The strangest feeling enveloped me, and I realised that I had nothing to say. It was as if all ideas about anything at all that could happen in a story had evaded me.
The pen and paper had magically transformed my mind into a void.
The name of the story that I wanted to write was, “The Red Barn”.
I had no idea where the name came from, nor why I wanted to write a story about a red barn.
I knew that a travelling salesman had a car breakdown, his only option was to walk to a farm and ask for help, it was late, the sun was dipping behind the fields. The farmer offered no more help than to tell the salesman that he could sleep in the barn, and…
