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How to Write a Series of Short Stories


By Tabitha Levin

One of the most lucrative ways to make a living writing short fiction is to write a series of them. Many readers don’t like buying one story on its own, but by bundling a few together, especially if they all build on each other creating a series, is a good way to get people to buy your work. But where do you start? That’s easy because this article will go over some tips on how to write a series of short stories so that you can start your fiction empire.

Think of the Stories like Television Episodes

Most good television series all follow a similar format. Each of them has one overarching theme that carries through the season, but each episode has its own mini plot where all the action and drama is resolved within the show.

They use the same main characters (with a cast of minor characters who may appear in only a few episodes or just one) and each show is often related to a previous one.

This is how you should approach writing your short story series. Each story should work as a standalone, so that if a reader happened to only buy one of your books, they’d be satisfied that they got a full story (rather than leaving them with a cliff-hanger where nothing is resolved). Yet each book should also hint of more in following stories.

Creating a series this way is one of the fastest ways to build a following since very often readers will come looking for more of your work if they liked the first.

Decide How Many Stories Will Be In the Series

Just like the television executive will decide on how many shows will be in the full program, you need to determine how many you are going to write before the series is over.

Usually you can’t have as many stories as a television show does, so a good number to aim for could be five, seven, or even ten. It’s really up to you and how many you think you could write without burning out or boring readers.

Once you have all of them written, you can then publish them as singles, and also bundle them into a collection.

Obviously you don’t need me to tell you that the collection is likely to be far more popular than the single stories as people like to get value for their money (and you’ve made the bundle good value right?).

That’s just one way to write a good [http://www.squidoo.com/writing-a-short-story-series]short story series. If you would like some more tips, from an author who writes them for a living, head over to [http://www.squidoo.com/writing-a-short-story-series]http://www.squidoo.com/writing-a-short-story-series.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Write-a-Series-of-Short-Stories&id=7204182] How to Write a Series of Short Stories

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