Our Story Begins: Writing Fiction for the First Time: A Penultimate Writing Guide

This guide is written with first time fiction writers in mind. Perhaps you used to write short stories in high school or college and it’s been a while. This book might also be helpful as a refresher course for anyone who wants to get back to the basics of writing short fiction. The classic Anton Chekov and O.Henry short story lives on today in authors like Tess Hadley and Wells Tower. My favorite short story writers include Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, the late William Trevor, Richard Ford, Richard Bausch and the late Raymond Carver. Many literary magazines and journals and online literary sites are still looking for short story submissions. But beware, it’s a crowded field, and your story is probably competing with hundreds if not thousands of other stories for an editor’s attention. In my experience as an MFA graduate student and Associate Editor of The Greensboro Review, I was looking at 800 unsolicited submissions twice a year, and weeding out 760 of them, so the main editor could select the 20 out of the 40 surviving submissions. I’m sure the statistics are about the same. But I write because I love the short story format. I fell in love with John Updike’s story “A&P” on a warm, fall day my sophomore year in college, and remarked, I want to write a story just as interesting. I’m not sure I have done that, but I do have two short story collections published, and a third in the works. To help you get started, we will look at the standard short story, as well as flash fiction (defined by word count). We will also look at short story elements like setting, characterization and plot, as well as developing your stories in a critique group environment. Finally, I will provide multiple writing prompts and exercises, in the Appendix, so you can keep using this book indefinitely. Mark it up, highlight it, and tear out sections that you find meaningful.

Santa Barbara, CA native Jon Obermeyer is a graduate
 of Westmont College. He holds the Master of Fine Arts in 
Creative Writing degree from the University of North Carolina
 at Greensboro, where he earned a graduate fellowship and served as Associate Editor of The Greensboro Review. Jon is the author of twelve books of creative work, including The Reassurance of Ghosts, Salsipuedes, Occupational Hazards and Wingspan (poems), The Winter Practice and Centripetal Force (short stories), The Low Wire: Meditations on Loss and Creative Restoration (essays), It Happens That Fast, Briarcliff, The Harbor and The Guests (memoir) and Myriad: A Poet's Guide to the Writing Life Jon's short stories have appeared
 in Equator, Cities & Roads, and O.Henry Festival Stories. His story "Not Really Mine to Give" was runner-up in the 1982 Santa Barbara News & Review fiction contest. Clyde Edgerton selected his short story "Confessions of a Pacifist" for publication in the North Carolina Writers Network's Fiction Syndication Competition. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the News & Review and The New York Times. Jon's poetry has been a two-time finalist for the James Applewhite Prize, sponsored by North Carolina Literary Review. His poems have appeared in The Greensboro Review, International Poetry Review, A Carolina Literary Companion, Spectrum, Spectrum 60th Anthology, Blue Pitcher, Coraddi, Phoenix, Santa Barbara Magazine, Stroke Connection Magazine, Northern Virginia Review and in the Greensboro writers anthology, Edge of Our World. In his career, he has been a banker, business owner, marketing director and a business development executive in the fields of advertising and public relations, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology and digital media. He is the father of two adult daughters and lives in Durham, NC.