₦airaland Forum

princesa: Larry! Welcome back again. This place though is dry and this time around you didn't miss so much.

Just give me one more week, dear. And I'll come back fully to make this place as wet as a woman aroused.

texanomaly: Did you fall off the face of the earth?

To be honest, it's actually the other way round; the face of the earth fell off me.

The guy is really a great writer. He'll inspire a lot of lives, definitely.

timpaker:
**cleans contact lens**
**login....nairaland.com**
**navigates to chat room**



Hello, who dey here?

Howdy?

frank3.16:
Thanks Larry, I will look into that... What do u think if I just change the 'To' to 'to' will it make sense?

Besides where have u been, hope u are good

What 'To' might that be?

I'm great, buddy. Missed you loads. Nice work you're doing here. Keep it up, sir.

Seriously Frank, you should revisit the title of this work. It should rather be Secrets Of The Gods...no matter what anybody may say contrarily, the current title is simply grammatically jejune; it plainly defies one of the rules of Capitalization.

Ishilove: Larry Sun!! Doth mine eyes deceive me??

Still trapped in the deepest of barns in Ogbomosho. Howdy, Empress?

Oahray: Larry
Is this you? Welcome back bro

Not fully back, but will be checking in every once in a while. How do you do, dear literary gladiator?

Shugamania: I prefer summer.





Miss ya like a phone without network..
How've u been? And when will u be back?

I'm great, buddy.
Surely before December...[/i]I'm sure to be through with my [i]stuffs by then.
Gotta go now.

Shugamania: am seeing things..



Howdy princesa

Definitely... Missed you like winter.

Jekyll & Hyde:
[color=#000033]I'm good. How about you?[/color]

Great, buddy. I'm sure you're having a nice time.

HumbledbYGrace: What's your problem?

Your not a writer so stop forming.

Btw, try taking english courses on your free time, that might help you.

Oh my goodness!

Oahray: Foxy behave na

HumbledbYGrace: I will personally deal with you...hold your horses right there mr

Foxy_Flow: Personally do what?

Drop that is jor.

You gimme horse make I hold for you?

Foxy_Flow: You see one thing about women wey I hate. Una dey wan show professionalism.

Abeg make una waka jor. Competition since before e start, we no see any of these nonsense, na now we come dey see am.

Mtchw.

Omolola or whatever your name is, you should better stop forming capon here o.

Ishilove, you ma respect yourself. Some people don already submit so all una analysis na rubbish.

Leave am for subsequent editions.

Simple.

Wow! Nothing much has changed. That's great news.

princesa: mother nairaland keeps reaching out to her children

welcome back, and as expected you've missed a lot. One week off nl and so much would pass you by, let alone months of sabbatical leave.

Hope you would stay with us a while?

That explains why I'm currently feeling like an alien.

Awww, no...not yet. I'm sorry.

Just having a peep now.

Omolola1: Hello writers,

I'm honoured to be part of the judges. I only got to know about this thread recently.


Writing short stories means beginning as close to the conclusion as possible, and grabbing the reader in the very first moments.

Here are a few tips:

- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Write a Catchy Short Paragraph

In today’s fast-moving world, the first sentence of your short story should catch your reader’s attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict. Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.

Example: "I heard my neighbor through the wall"
(Dry and uninteresting)

"The neighbor behind us practiced scream therapy in his shower almost every day"

The second sentence catches the reader’s attention. Who is this guy who goes in his shower every day and screams? Why does he do that? What, exactly, is“scream therapy”? Let’s keep reading…

Developing Characters
In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story. Here is a partial list of character details to help you get started.
Name
Age
Job
Ethnicity
Appearance
Residence
Pets
Religion
Hobbies
Single or married?
Children?
Temperament
Favorite color
Friends
Favorite foods
Drinking patterns
Phobias
Faults
Something hated?
Secrets?
Strong memories?
Any illnesses?
Nervous gestures?
Sleep patterns
Imagining all these details will help you get to know your character, but your reader probably won’t need to know much more than the most important things in four areas:
Appearance: Gives your reader a visual understanding of the character.
Action: Show the reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives.
Speech: Develop the character as a person — don’t merely have your character announce important plot details.
Thought: Bring the reader into your character’s mind, to show them your character’s unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

Choose a Point of View
Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the action objectively.

Write Meaningful Dialogue
Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is doing when speaking.

Set Up The Plot
Plot is what happens, the storyline, the action.

Create Conflicts and Tension
Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end.

Find a Resolution
The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

If I were you, I'd take note of the above, because that is what I, Omolola would be looking out for.

All the best!

This Omolola is just OH MY GOD!

Howdy, JH?

Good Morning, Peeps. Happy Sunday.

Mynd_44: Did you enjoy your ban?

I wasn't banned, I am barned...as Ishilove recently proclaimed.

uj_sizzle: Keep pulling disappearing acts on us. Missed u too

I'm very sorry about that.

Missed you guys...still missing you actually.

You guys are doing some great jobs here. I wish I were part of this but, unfortunately, I'm keeping some very tight schedules. Great job, Dy. God bless you all.