by Trent Lorcher

Created on: May 14, 2008   Last Updated: January 02, 2009

None of my short stories has ever been published. Some publishers, four-hundred and twenty-two to be exact, don't recognize genius when they see it. There are millions of lesser-skilled writers who are perhaps jealous of my amazing short story writing success. Today, I present them with a gift, the gift of knowledge.

Remember these tips to avoid pitfalls and mistakes in writing short stories:

PREWRITING IS FOR LOSERS

My friend Bobby thinks he's all that because he creates elaborate story maps before writing. He mentioned something about making sure characters remain consistent and something about having a setting or some garbage like that. He also made something up about developing the action in the story around a central theme or idea. I laughed at him.

I think that made him angry because he brought up my twelve short stories whose characters' names changed halfway through. I told Steve he was just jealous. David then told me he was the one with the two best-selling novels and several published short stories. I scoffed at his insinuation. All you silly short story writers that try to avoid characters' names changing, inconsistent settings, no real theme or central idea, and completely unbelievable plot lines with your little prewriting bull crap can all go to heck. My motto is "Just Write Baby!"

ORGANIZING IS FOR IDIOTS

That guy Joseph I was telling you about earlier, he recommended I use graphic organizers to plan my writing. When you're as brilliant as I, you don't need to organize. He showed me this plot diagram thing with exposition (whatever that means), rising action (my fist'll rise and hit him in the face if he keeps talking his mumbo jumbo), climax (pervert!), falling action (and I can't get up), and denouement (what are we, French?).

Frank also mentioned something about developing my plot around a conflict. The only conflict I was going to develop was the one between me and him. He also mentioned something about having a protaga-something and an antaganagolisp. I almost bopped him when he mentioned dynamic and static characters. Static characters? What kind of idiot is going to have a character that walks around with his hair standing on end all the time that shocks people? Actually, that's a good idea. Anyway, my response to that idiot, Tony, was "Just Write Baby!"

REVISING IS FOR AMATEURS

After Jody told me about this conflict thing, she brings up this whole edit, revise, and proofread crap. Enraged, I finally screamed, "Don't you understand you're talking

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