That’s a Wrap - Twelve Days of Short Stories
So, a month ago, I decided to challenge myself and write twelve short stories over a period of twenty-four days. This is a wash-up of how I thought it went, what I did well, and what I could have improved on.
Results
| Day | Primary Word | Backup Word | Point of View | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | abundant |
benefit |
3rd |  |
| 3 | point |
ideal |
1st | |
| 5 | piano |
snow |
3rd | |
| 7 | north |
sound |
1st | |
| 9 | dare |
style |
3rd |  |
| 11 | link |
representative |
1st | |
| 13 | devote |
virus |
1st | |
| 15 | grave |
brink |
1st | |
| 17 | jam |
rib |
1st | |
| 19 | injury |
ghost |
2nd | |
| 21 | flat |
radical |
1st | |
| 23 | glimpse |
reasonable |
3rd | |
So, as you can see I managed most of the days, completing 9/12 or 75%.
Lessons Learned
Time Management
Part of the challenge was to give myself only two days per story, which worked well for the most part, except when I got busy in the run-up to Christmas.
I can blame the 9th on wanting to have a nice meal with my other half, the 19th on being burnt out at work, and the 21st on having to drive six hours to London and back.
These excuses, however, are pretty thin because I had two days to write each story. I could have written it on the other day. That I can blame on poor time management.
The 15th was also a day late and remains unfinished.
Ultimately, I am not going to beat myself up. During all of this, I was working a full-time job, so these stories were being written in my evenings and weekends.
I am still very happy I managed 75% of the stories.
Primary vs. Backup Word
In the event that the primary prompt did not give me an idea of what to write, I had a backup word that I could use instead.
Of the nine stories written, I only had to use the backup word once, on the 7th.
The primary word was north, and although I had ideas of writing something about the ‘North Pole’, I had a better idea for sound that would allow me to try a different style of writing.
If I were to do this again, I would 100% keep the backup word as an option. Giving my brain an ‘out’ made the task seem less daunting. For the most part, however, I just wrote the first thing that came to my head.
On the 3rd I did jump from point to peak, but the prompts are supposed to be just that, prompts.
Grammar
My English education did not result in me knowing English very good. After the second story it became evident that I needed to reach for a Thesaurus frequently if I wanted to avoid using ‘said’ constantly.
I did need to keep looking up when to use an apostrophe because the rules around that don’t stick in my head.
About half way though I realised that writing all the stories in Visual Studio Code was depriving me of a grammar checker, and I suck at grammar. I don’t have an Office 365 licence, and in retrospect I could just have used LibraOffice, but instead I used https://languagetool.org/.
Doing this again, I would write in LibraOffice and then translate the text into Markdown (how this blog is powered).
Point of View
Based on my natural writing style, I can pretty effortlessly manage both first and third person writing. I relate more to first person so that tends to be my preferred style.
Annoyingly, I missed the only second person story on the 19th, but if I am being honest, the idea of writing second person was quite daunting. I have never read a story that is written from that perspective, so it was going to be quite an interesting and difficult challenge.
If I find myself in the mood I might come back around and write it, with a bit more time to get it right.
Genre
Now, I’m not a master of genre definitions, so these are probably incorrect, but here are the stories grouped by genre:
| Genre | Count | Days |
|---|---|---|
| Horror | 3 | 5 7 23 |
| Adventure | 2 | 3 15 |
| Sci-fi | 2 | 1 13 |
| Crime | 1 | 11 |
| Thriller | 1 | 17 |
As you can see, most of my stories were Horror and Adventure which I think work well in the thousand-ish word category. Set up a scenario, and describe what happens as a result.
I thought that, given I almost solely read Sci-fi, most of the stories would fit into that genre. That did not happen, with most of them being influences by film/TV that I had consumed previously.
An example is the ‘Krampus’ story on day 5; this was influenced heavily by the Minstrel Krampus episode of American Dad, which I watched a month or so ago.
Notably absent are Romance, and Fantasy.
Style
The main takeaway I have about what I wrote, is that the style of my writing does not differ much. All characters speak the same way and lack a lot of individual traits. I’m not sure if you can get that kind of uniqueness in a thousand words all the time, but I have seen it done effectively. All Systems Red did this really well; within the first 5 pages I had a good idea of the personality of the main character.
This is an area I really want to improve on.
I am happy I had a go at an LA Noir (11) style story, and a World War Z (17) inspired one.
Wrap Up
(It’s a Christmas joke)
Overall, I am pleased that I thought of, and executed, this idea. Each story could have been better, of course, but you don’t improve without repetition. I might try this again in 2025.
I still want to try my hand at writing a longer story. Let’s see if this exercise helped.
If you have read this far, and you read the stories, thank you for joining me, and I hope you don’t want your time back. No refunds!
