Less than 48 hours to go until our latest competition closes and yet again we have had some interesting entries. A number of them go to the heart of something I wrote about a few days ago under the heading When less is more.

That blog, if you recall, explored the idea that writing has to be effective, with every word doing its job and all the unnecessary ones stripped out.

Several of the entries to our competition have been short and sharp - not 2,000 words but nearer six or seven hundred words, if that. Does that kind of approach make for a good short story? Well, yes, it can do because sometimes a writer has an idea that needs no more that a few hundred words.

The golden rule for a short story? Tell it only in as many words as it needs - and not one syllable more. And now, since this blog threatens to become overwritten, I will sign off!

John Dean

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.