New Month, New Project

It’s a new month and so far I’m still on track with my writing goals (yay!).  So I’ll be starting a new short-story this month.  It is a Fantasy story set in a made up secondary world based on the time period of the “Conquistadors.”

I think I have a title for it, but for now I’m calling it “Project Monster.”  It is an entirely new story inspired by a book that is on my Goodreads Currently Reading Shelf: The Men-At-Arms Series #101: The Conquistadores by Terence Wise and Angus McBride.

I’ve already done the “rough outline” for it and will begin the “rough draft” after I submit Skin Deep.  I have the theme, characters and plot fleshed out in my mind, so I’m hopeful that the creation of the story will be strong.

New Story, New Style

I’m noticing a new trend.  It is much harder to sell longer stories.  Many sites have a firm word limit and these word limits tend to be shrinking.  I know of at least 3 markets that will not take stories over 3,000 words long.  For me, 2,500 words is about the bare limit that I can do.  About half of the markets are about 5,000 words firm and then the other half let you go up to 7,500.  I can only think of a few that will allow 10,000 words or more (and they are very slow responding markets, some take as much 9-10 months to respond).

I normally write stories in 5 scenes (kinda’ like a 5 act play).  With “Project Monster,” I’m going to shorten my scenes to 3 (beginning, middle, end).  I don’t intend to be locked into this; I’ll let the story dictate the ultimate form of the story, but “Project Monster” definitely lends itself to this form.  I want to experiment to see what the word count is on this story because if it is under 4,000 – 5,000 words, I may find myself gravitating to projects that lend themselves to 3 parts to maximize my chances of selling them to markets.