Sure wish we had better news about the submissions to our latest LongShortStories Short Story Contest. But, alas, there were no short story entrants that tripped our trigger this time.

We continue to see stories with major spelling problems and grammatical mistakes that any writer worth their salt should know are unacceptable in this highly-competitive field of fiction writing.

Another thing is that many aspiring writers do not know how to punctuate dialogue. There is a simple fix for this. It is to read some great examples of short fiction and see firsthand how those writers do it. It’s not rocket science.

We continue to see story themes that have been done a thousand times. Hey, we want something unique and never before seen!

May we suggest that you review just how to create stunning short stories at the usual places on the Internet. If you own an e-reader, maybe you could purchase and download one of my ebooks from the Kindle Store and see how the good stuff looks.

Maybe you could buy a vocabulary-building book like “30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary.” Short story writing is all about using power words.

And last, but by no means least, know that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

We know that great and wonderfully talented short story writers are out there, honing their craft, editing and re-editing their manuscripts, and we ask that you send us something eye-popping and rare. We know you have it in you!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 9:40 pm and is filed under . 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.