Best of Week: The Short Story Writing Process

This week in class, Mr. Allen talked about the process of writing a short story. I was very nervous that we were going to be expected to just sit down and write a whole short story very quickly. However, I really liked the process he that explained to us. I thought that it was very helpful and reasonable. We were not expected to write a whole story just off the top of our heads. We were going to take steps that would help us fully develop our idea for our story. I especially liked the Story Fragment step. As Mr. Allen called it, it was a "brain dump". We just wrote down all our thoughts for our story so that it helped us dig deeper into the story. Sometimes when I have to write a story, I can get writer's block because it seems so overwhelming to write a whole story at once. The story fragment helped me focus in on a couple of ideas so that it wasn't too overwhelming. Now that I see that we will be taking this project in steps, I am much less overwhelmed. I think this process will help me with future writing assignments, especially now that I have done it once. The idea of breaking up a large assignment/project into smaller steps is very useful and will help me create a better story than if I had felt the pressure to do the whole, large project at once. I am in full support of this idea, and am glad that we will be able to work on these stories and perfect them until May. I get writer's block when I am stressed about finding the perfect idea because I think that none of my ideas are good enough. This long period of time will help me perfect my story, and I believe that the steps along the way will guide my classmates and me to writing a great short story!