Stephen L. Thompson's Blog, page 3

Five Sentence Stories

 Over twenty yearsago, a writing friend and I would email each other these short, five sentence stories.  I think one of us had read about some famousauthor using such short stories as a way to get the juices flowing.  It was a challenge and we saw it as a way tohone our skills.  Ultimately, I turned acouple of these exercises into longer short stories and I’ve had a few

Short story – “Plans”

“Plans”Around the beginning ofOctober, Anna had decided that after years of erratic work, 2025 would be TheYear of Finishing Her Novel.  Her planhad been to wait until the holiday madness had passed, before hunkering down towrite her still untitled magnum opus. But then in November that utterly deplorable … thing (Anna couldn’tbring herself to call it human) was elected. 

Random Writing Tips – Rewriting the same story

 Twenty some years ago, Ibought a book – probably at a library book sale – of the collected shortstories of this author.  I can’t rememberwhich author it was, but I’m pretty sure he had been active back in the 50’sand 60’s, and I think I’d read a few of his novels, so he wasn’t a completeunknown to me.  About halfway through thebook, I’m reading a story and thinking, I’ve

My writing plans for 2025

A couple monthsago, I made a decision about my writing plans for 2025.  Part of my 2024 plans had been to post astory each month on my website, one each month on my Ko-fi profile, and oneevery other month on one of my blogs.  Theones on my website I would get the idea, write it, and post it that month,while the others were either new ones I could write in advance, or revised

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2024

This quarter I continuedwriting a story each month on my website, publishing, “What is it?,” “A Possibility?,” and “A Noble Act.” I also reposted “In My Day,” “Moving On,” and“There’s a Cream for that” on my Ko-fi profile. I also posted the story “Spooky Story” and reposted “Did You Think Otherwise?” on one of my blogs.#I forgot to count howmany microfiction stories and haikus I

My thoughts on Doctor Who “Joy to the World”

These are just somerandom thoughts I had on “Joy to the World.” I don’t have a system to give it agrade, but I’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a … 5ish.  There is a near-certainty that I will neverwatch it again, and in a few months I’ll probably be hard pressed to rememberthe plot.Spoilers.What I liked.Fifteen or twenty yearsago, I came up with a story idea of a Doctor-like

Random Writing Tips – Using common words for weird things

Over a year ago, I wrotea post on why writers should Chill on the weird words.  The basic idea, is if you jump right into astory and have characters drinking regilum and eating roasted glarthen all incelebration of Clathenmas Eve, you’ll end up with a lot of readers who are moreconfused than engrossed in the story.  Usingweird words isn’t bad, it’s pretty standard in fantasy and

Writing in these dark times

I recently had anidea for a story.  Some 10,000 years fromnow, humanity is on the verge of extinction – for reasons – and they use all oftheir knowledge and the last of their resources to build a time machine to sendsomeone back to tell us we need to change the path we’re on.  Not a terribly original idea – I think I’vealready written four or five stories like that – but the way

Random Writing Tips – You’re allowed “sick” days

 It was probably overtwenty years ago I read the advice that if you wanted to be a capital W Writer,you needed to write every day.  I thoughtthat was a great idea, and so I started keeping track of how many days in a rowI wrote.  At first, hitting a milestone,like 30 days, or 100 days, or 365 days, was great.  But after a while, there aren’t that manymilestones. 

Election Day Sale

This election is almostover!  In a matter of days we’ll know ifAmerica will remain a land of democracy, or if it wall fall into fascism.  That’s assuming in the months after theelection the fascists don’t burn the country down in their attempts to stealthe election.  But that’s Big ChallengeNumber 2.  Big Challenge Number 1 isgetting out and voting to show that the