How to write short stories

From introduction:

A glimpse at the advertising columns of our leading magazines shows that whatever else this country may be shy of, there is certainly no lack of correspondence schools that learns you the art of short-story writing. The most notorious of these schools make the boast that one of their pupils cleaned up $5000.00 and no hundreds of dollars writing short stories according to the system learnt in their course, though it doesn't say if that amount was cleaned up in one year or fifty.

However, for some reason another when your skin through the pages of high-class periodicals, you don't very often find them cluttered up with stories that were written by boys or gals who had to win their phi beta skeleton keys at this or that story-writing college.

In fact, most of the successful authors of the short fiction of to-day never went to no kind of a college, or if they did, they studied piano tuning or the barber trade.

They could have got just as far in what I call the literary game if they had stayed home those four years and helped mother carry out the empty bottles.

The answer is that you can't find any school in Preface operation up to date, whether it be a general institution of learning or a school that specializes in story writing, which can make a great author out of a born druggist. But a little group of our deeper drinkers has suggested that maybe boys and gals who want to take up writing as their life work would be benefited if some person like I was to give them a few hints in regards to the technic of the short story, how to go about planning it and writing it, when and where to plant the love interest and climax, and finally how to market the finished product without leaving no bad taste in the mouth.

Well, then, it seems to me like the best method to use in giving out these hints is to try and describe my own personal procedure from the time I get inspired till the time the manuscript is loaded onto the trucks. The first thing I generally always do is try and get hold of a catchy title, like for instance, "Basil Hargrave's Vermifuge," or "Fun at the Incinerating Plant."

Contents:

The facts -- Some like them cold -- Alibi Ike -- The golden honeymoon -- Champion -- My roomy -- A caddy's diary -- A frame-up -- Harmony -- Horseshoes

the book details :

Author: Ring Lardner

Publication date: 1924

Company: New York; London : Charles Scribner's Sons

Download

How to write short stories - PDF book by Ring Lardner