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Okay, so these are a couple of questions I've been thinking about asking but didn't really get around to until now.

My first question is about whether or not an entirely anthropomorphic cast of characters, human like animals, is a good choice or not. I've been working with these types of characters for nearly 8 or 9 years now and I was wondering if this was a good or viable choice considering that I'm not only writing online stories, but am working on an unfinished novel as well featuring an entirely anthropomorphic cast. It's a mature novel, though not the sort you're thinking of but it is fairly violent with a fair bit of swearing in it and mature themes, would the chances of it being published publicly on store shelves on average with non-anthropomorphic novels, or would they be lower considering there's a bit of a stigma against "Furries"?

My second question concerns short stories. I normally work with chapters or write stories that usually go over 5,000, sometimes even 10,000 words but I've tried to enter a contest around 3 or so years ago that required stories to be under 700 words and this is when I noticed that... I can't do that. It was impossible for me to write at my full potential in ONLY 700 words, and sadly to say, the story I wrote was complete trash in my eyes and I absolutely loath it. What I want to do now is write shorter stories and one-offs to try and be a better all-around author, unfortunately I don't even know what to do or where to begin as I have never, NEVER, in all my years written a single one-off or short story.

So my question is; What can I do to improve writing shorter stories and one-offs? Also, is there any sort of advice or suggestions anyone can offer to help me improve?

I should add for this that I actually have something that I wrote as just a practice that I've been meaning to clean up and polish, I can post that in the Original Stories/Prose sub-forum if anyone would like to see it, though I'm not entirely proud of it and am somewhat doubtful of it as it uses anthropomorphic characters, hence my first question.

I apologize if my post has made little sense or if I've repeated words too much, it is actually very late and I'm beginning to feel tired, so my apologies in advance.

Quotable Streaker

JadeFyr
Okay, so these are a couple of questions I've been thinking about asking but didn't really get around to until now.

My first question is about whether or not an entirely anthropomorphic cast of characters, human like animals, is a good choice or not. I've been working with these types of characters for nearly 8 or 9 years now and I was wondering if this was a good or viable choice considering that I'm not only writing online stories, but am working on an unfinished novel as well featuring an entirely anthropomorphic cast. It's a mature novel, though not the sort you're thinking of but it is fairly violent with a fair bit of swearing in it and mature themes, would the chances of it being published publicly on store shelves on average with non-anthropomorphic novels, or would they be lower considering there's a bit of a stigma against "Furries"?

My second question concerns short stories. I normally work with chapters or write stories that usually go over 5,000, sometimes even 10,000 words but I've tried to enter a contest around 3 or so years ago that required stories to be under 700 words and this is when I noticed that... I can't do that. It was impossible for me to write at my full potential in ONLY 700 words, and sadly to say, the story I wrote was complete trash in my eyes and I absolutely loath it. What I want to do now is write shorter stories and one-offs to try and be a better all-around author, unfortunately I don't even know what to do or where to begin as I have never, NEVER, in all my years written a single one-off or short story.

So my question is; What can I do to improve writing shorter stories and one-offs? Also, is there any sort of advice or suggestions anyone can offer to help me improve?

I should add for this that I actually have something that I wrote as just a practice that I've been meaning to clean up and polish, I can post that in the Original Stories/Prose sub-forum if anyone would like to see it, though I'm not entirely proud of it and am somewhat doubtful of it as it uses anthropomorphic characters, hence my first question.

I apologize if my post has made little sense or if I've repeated words too much, it is actually very late and I'm beginning to feel tired, so my apologies in advance.


Unfortunately, your chances of getting published will most likely be lower with a cast of anthropomorphic characters, which is actually more due to the fact that people have a tendency to assume that if it has talking animals (even with humanoid shapes) then it should be for kids, which is a false stereotype your book wouldn't fit into. Don't get immediately discouraged though; if you can come up with a good way to present it to sell your idea anyway, you still have a chance. The real problem is getting published in general, regardless of the characters. You aren't likely to get published if you don't have an agent and you aren't likely to get an agent if you aren't a published author. If your goal is more about getting your idea out there then self-publishing is still a viable option and can be done cheaply if not for free (aside from a tax taken off the book price depending on who you sell it through). Just make sure you edit it extensively (or find someone who's willing) and ask many people- not just friends, but also strangers who may know what they're talking about- for opinions since it's all up to you otherwise. If your end goal is to actually make a lot of money though, traditional publishing will in fact be the best route. I can give advice with self-publishing since I've done a lot of research on it myself and just need to get a book written for it, but for help with traditional publishing you'll have to ask someone with more experience. I'll just say right now that it's a long process and most people who try to traditionally publish will fail.

As for your second question, part of the key there is to keep in mind that you only want one central conflict. Short stories don't have subplots and are generally rather simple in their concepts. Once you're sure you can have a single plot over a short period of time, you just write your first draft however the hell you want. Too many people worry about length when they write short stories and it drags them down. That's where editing comes in. Every single word has to progress the plot or character development, no exceptions. This means cut back on description if you need to. In the case of short stories, it's perfectly fine to leave a majority of the scenery to the reader's imagination. Same with character appearance and voices. For instance, that character didn't ask a question angrily. They just asked it or, if you must have the reader know how the question was asked, demanded. Also watch out for redundancy. If you said something once in a short story, it can be assumed that the reader remembers and it doesn't have to be mentioned again unless it's practically the main point of your story.

I hope this was helpful and good luck! smile

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Given how successful Redwall has been, I would have to say that anthropomorphic stories definitely have a niche market. That said, I have to agree with Confuser in that I've never seen an adult story that focused upon them. I've heard of one, with dragons, but ... can't say I have any idea what the name is.

I think, the key to pulling it off right is probably creating a world in which you've build upon the cultures and creatures enough that it feels like the form you've chosen is the only one that will work correctly. I'm not sure short stories are such a good medium for that, honestly. In your short over in OS/P we kinda jump right into the fact that you've got a wolf and coyote fighter, and from what I read, you've got a story that would work exactly the same if you changed their species to human. There's no mention of size differences, no incorporation of animalistic smell or sight ... nothing that makes me feel like your main character needs to be a wolf or your secondary character a coyote. I write vampires and ... while it's a very different genre, I try to make my stories something where being what they are is very much a part of the world and it can drive the plot.

Have you done much research on this niche? Are there successful books out there at the adult level? If you can find them, read them and see if you can break them down and see what bits and pieces enabled them to do as well as they did. If you can't find them at the adult level, take a good, hard look at Redwall. It's not for adults really, but it's a really good series, and I think it has a lot to offer in regards to how to run an anthro world well.

In regards to short stories -- have you attempted to write specific short story challenges? There are an awful lot of short story prompts and the like out there, and they do tend to lead one pretty hard towards a short story. Looking at that sort of exercise might help you create a decent short story. Though I do feel the need to point out many groups consider a 700 word story too short to be a short story. The Nebula Awards use the benchmark of under 7,500 as a short story, with anything on above that (and under 17,500) to be a novelette, though different groups consider the cutoff for a short to fall at different lengths. Under 1,000 is often termed flash fiction though. Try looking for flash fiction prompts or advice and you may find suggestions that work for you. Everyone is different though and it may take some fiddling around before you find a system or method that really works well for you.

I'm willing to look over and review your story if you'd like, but I'd prefer it if you give me an idea of the sort of critique you're looking for. I will say that I see a lot of room for improvement, especially with your opening -- again, going back to introducing your world and building things up properly. I started with the assumption that the Wolf was a part of the group that ransacked your Coyote's village. I still don't know how the two really fit in their world. Is my guess correct? Why is a bandit close enough to be a third player in this story if there's a war going on? You have to remember that your audience knows nothing at all about your world. Bring them into it.

You also need to start a new line each time you have a new speaker. That's standard formatting, and you're not following it. To make your story read a bit easier I'd suggest ditching the quotes around your story altogether and simply bolding or italicizing (or coloring, whatever works for you) your introduction. The intro is a very small thing. Easier to do that in non-standard format than to do your entire story in a quote box. Makes it a bit harder to read.

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