The Short Story Workshop

This is one of the first stories to feature the character of Solomon Kane, and one of the first in the sword and sorcery subgenre of fantasy. We discuss the evolution of the genre, tips for writing a story with a good pace, the rise of pulp fiction and how markets and reader demographics have changed. 

This story follows a flawless kidnapping plot cooked up by two bumbling criminals. We discuss grounding the absurd with truthful writing and the difficulties of writing humourously. 

In this mysterious tale from ghost aficionado Algernon Blackwood, a fork in the road is not as it seems. We talk about building intrigue and suspense in stories, managing the passage of time, and Blackwood's interest in a certain ghost club.

This week we look at another sci-fi story, this time from Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury. We talk about genre writing and how genres change reader's expectations, and how to manage this. We also talk about setting up characters and settings for the story ahead.

The last of our sequel challenge stories - Mel's sequel to The Little Mermaid. We discuss descriptions, fantasy settings and more!

If you'd like to take part in the challenge and write a sequel to a story we discussed on the podcast, we'd love to see it!

This humorous story starts with the understated conflict of a girl just trying to brush her hair, but moves onto something meaningful. We discuss how to introduce conflict to a story without recruiting gun-blazing action heroes, and how to plan character arcs that won't fall flat.

This week's story is Simone's sequel to The Vampire Maid by Hume Nesbit. We discuss first person perspective, writing dialogue and the popularity of vampire stories.

What's a wub? I bet you'd wub to find out! We look at this short story from one of the best classic sci-fi authors and discuss the use of dialogue and morality.

(Apologies for the slightly worse audio quality during the discussion this week - we had some technical trouble and had to use a backup recording. Will be back to normal for the next episode).

Matt has challenged each of our hosts to write their own sequel to a story from a previous episode. First up is Matt's follow-up to The Mask by Robert W Chambers. We talk about what it means to have a style, definitions of weird fiction, and stories that resonated with us.

We'd love you hear your feedback - leave a review or a comment on our website at www.theshortstoryworkshop.com. And if you're a writer, we'd love to read your attempts at the sequel challenge!