Copyrighting short stories?
If you have any intention of ever publishing these stories, do not do it. Publishers and agents consider that to be totally amateur and unprofessional. It is as though you are sending a message to them you don't trust them. If you are fortunate enough to sell something and get a contract, the publisher will include that as a clause in your contract. They will obtain the copyright for you. The so called "poor man's copyright" where you put your work in an envelope and send it to yourself is useless in a court of law without other evidence to back it up and a lawyer. There are too many ways to fake that -- such as sending yourself a blank unsealed envelope and then inserting material into it and sealing it later, or backdating your computer and burning disks. The best way to protect yourself is to keep your work off the internet and only send it to the proper sources after you have checked them out with Absolute Write Water Cooler and Preditors and Editors. Make sure you send in the proper format according to their submission guidelines. Pax - C
Should i do a short story or a poetry collection for my project?
Short story; no contest. No one in 'is 'r 'er right mind is gonna wanna wade through your mediocre poetry. But there's a not-bad chance your mediocre short story might be tol'able. Note, I'm not bad-mouthin' you. I'm just makin' the natural assumption about the quality of your presentation. It's odds-on to be mediocre. Mine, too. My point is that a story that's not too bad is easier endured than a mess of poems that are not too bad, for most of us. You will count more people who will buy a Clive Cussler book than you will count people who buy a collection of Robert Frost poems.
I'm going to assume you know how to write both short stories and a full novel. I suppose the answer is ... write whichever you feel you can accomplish in say a year's time, and have the end product be worthy of publishing. A novel is big. It’s long and complicated and takes a big investment of time. You have to fill a lot of pages and do it well. Do I have a good opening hook? Is the pace okay? Did I make my hero tough but still loveable? What tense am I in? What name did I give the dog way back in chapter 2? Sometimes a book is so big it’s hard to see all the way to the end. And we give up. But a short story is…well, short. Short stories are quick to write and rewrite. Short stories don’t have time to get too complicated. They have the same rules as a novel, but they are streamlined. It’s easy to see in 1000 words where you need to fix the tense or put in a better description. You can complete a project without dedicating 6-8 months to it like you do when you commit to a novel. Short stories have characters, goals, motivations, and conflicts just like a full length novel. The story should include the protagonist (character),the antagonist (could be a person or a situation to overcome or a goal), something at stake (motivation), and an obstacle (conflict). In addition your story should focus on what changes not what happens, include a hook or unique element, and have emotional appeal. All in about four pages. Easy, right? All writers should try a short story. The lack of subplots and the need to write tight makes it easier to stay on track. When there are issues with a shorter work, you can more easily find the problem because it’s not buried under the many layers of a novel. Novels are simply short stories with more subplots and twists. Short stories range from 700 words up to 5000 words. The average magazine story length is 1500-2000 words. Anything under 1000 words is called a short short. If you're going to publish a collection of your short stories it might be a good idea to think of a theme for the book, so all of your stories are cohesive; love, hate, war, hope..etc.
Short stories do not have chapters. While there is a standard word count range for a short story, just because the work falls into that range doesn't make it a short story. A work that is short is just that; it is not necessarily a "short story," which has a specific structure regarding plot, characters, etc. In a novel, there is no average length of a chapter. Most novels do not have chapters unless the story is well-served by them. The writer sets up the story in units that best suit it. Generally, though, each unit (chapter, section, part) is roughly the same length.A page printed in standard format (double-spaced, TNR 12) is about 250 words per page. But you don't divide a novella or novel by words or pages. The story has to be as long as it needs to be, then it is divided, if at all, in to unit that support it.FYI, a novella falls somewhere between 18,000 to 40,000. What you describe is 7500 - 12,500. Talking about word count with such a big range (30-50 pp) tells me that you're thinking about it, not writing it.
Can short stories have chapters?
Short answer: yes. Long answer: It's probably better if they don't, at least for beginning writers. Longer short stories can have chapters (for one example of how this works, look at Servants of the Map, by Andrea Barrett [the short story, not her collection of short stories with the same name])--or sections, whatever you want to call them. Even normal-length short stories can have sections; sometimes they're just separated off by a blank line. But I have seen over and over--in my own early writing and in stories by other beginning writers--writers use really really short sections/chapters with few transitions. They end up with approximately two pages to a chapter, which means their scenes are so short they're not accomplishing anything in them. If you have this problem, look carefully at your scenes and decide if they are important enough to describe in detail. If they are, then write them like they're important--let them get long! If they aren't important enough to be long, then just summarize what happens and get on with the important parts of the story. Also, work on summarizing or skipping quickly through the in-between parts. This will make your story flow smoother, and you may find you don't feel the need for chapter breaks after all.
Is it possible to publish a very long short story as a book?
it particularly is nearly impossible at your age. Getting a e book or tale revealed is complicated even for people who've mastered their writing skills and who've been writing for an exceedingly long term. There are some people who write for years and years and not in any respect get something revealed. while you're severe approximately being a author then you will first study to understand the craft of writing. this suggests employing desirable grammar, discovering the thank you to tell a sturdy tale, and discovering what sells. you additionally must devote your self to examining somewhat some information. contained in the propose time, do your analyze. There are web pages which will inform you magazines and publishers which you would be able to positioned as much as.
Short-story anthology question?
Speed's nailed it. I agree completely. And why is the law like this, you wonder? Consider a writer like me. I write erotic fiction. There are many famous writers who disapprove of its very existence. Wouldn't it be great if I could include their speeches in my books? Boy oh boy, the looks on their faces! I'd give credit to each one, of course, and even note where the words were said or written. Is that okay? Or what if their words were used to sell male enhancement products or condoms? Or sex toys? Or breakfast cereal, cars, insurance... Would it be okay so long as the companies gave them credit for what they said? Of course not. Edit: I don't see any passive-aggressive behavior or attacks. I see people answering your question thoroughly and explaining their answers.
One of the best explanations for this trend that I have heard comes from an anthropological study on the "dying god" from J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough. His book says, "it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age... to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age". What he means is that, in situations where a culture's belief in the divine takes physical form, as it does in cultures with a god-king, it becomes necessary to do away with the king every so often so that the divinity is never sullied by age.In a similar manner, the "greatest" love stories are those where romance and desire is allowed to build to a peak and then is cut short. When love does not have to survive the strain of time, it is easy to imagine it, instead, as "timeless". This is why, in other great love stories, especially those for children, we hear the "happily ever after" cliche time and time again. "Happily ever after" is a way of either reconciling the boring reality of a constant and reliable love or a way of glossing over the eventual deterioration of that love.In essence, a "happy ending" is still going to amount to age and eventual death. What I would like to offer is an alternative interpretation of the tragic ending. A movie like "Moulin Rouge", which has a sort of a tragic ending is exactly like a happy ending with all the years of "this doesn't make a good movie" happiness between the time of union and the time of death removed. Therefore, great love stories are tragic because they concern themselves with the juiciest bits of love, and contentment is simply not juicy.
How many pages should a short story have?
A short story is generally between about five pages and fifty pages. Anything shorter than five pages is called a "short-short" or "flash fiction" and anything longer than about fifty is a novella or a novel. You don't often see forty or fifty page short stories though. If there is that much information, the author will usually go ahead and take it into novella/novel. What everyone says about word count is true, and is a better way to think about length because of the way fonts and formatting can change word count. As a general rule, think that if you're typing on Microsoft Office or Word Perfect in Times New Roman 12 font, there are approximately 300 words per page.