Weekly short stories group

In another thread some of us expressed an interest in attempting to write a short story a week. If there are others who are interested in making the attempt, we could get a group going and give one another support, encouragement and feedback.

For the purposes of the group, a short story is defined as a self-contained story told in under 10,000 words. I won't put a lower limit on it because I think a story can be told in as few as 6 words (like "For sale: baby shoes, never worn", attributed to Hemmingway).

I also think it would be a good idea to have a weekly theme which writers can use to inspire their writing but don't have to, suggested by any member of the group or anyone else.

I think once we've got some members we can use this thread for discussion and use something like Pastebin or Google docs to share our writing, perhaps with some sort of password protection shared only with group members if there are concerns over who can read it (for example, if you plan on selling the story, you don't want it to be freely available to anyone on the internet because that could make trouble regarding first publication rights and exclusivity rights).

Who is interested?

And for anyone wanting to make an immediate start, I'd like to suggest a theme for this week:

Cold

(because the boiler at work has broken down and everyone in the office is sitting in coats and scarves and drinking vast quantities of tea.)

 

I think what I'd like to see is a format whereby encouragement and reporting progress is the core of the group, but with the ability to share stories and ask for feedback on an individual basis without reading and critiquing others' work being mandatory. How does that sound?

Perhaps every two or three months, each person in the group can put forward one of the short stories they've written in the previous 3 months for critique, with the understanding that those who chose to put something forward also commit to read and critique at least one other short story put forward, but no obligation to put anything forward and thus no obligation to critique.

 

Sounds good to me.

For my part, I'm still brainstorming for the "cold" theme. I'm realising how difficult it is to come up with a story arc that fits into a short. I've got some ideas but I'm not happy with any of them. They're just not clicking.

Edit: Further brainstorming paid off. I've got something I like now. A little more fleshing out - naming the character for a start - and I'll be able to start. I like this.

 

That's a good way of looking at things. Thanks.

 

So who else is in? How are we getting on? Do I need to create a better thread title to attract attention better like the Word Warriors? The Short Story Samuari? Or perhaps some sort of cool animal mascot style thing - the Short Story Salamanders? Sea Otters (otters are cute and awesome)? Swans? They look graceful on the surface but under the water they're paddingly away frantically. Or we could go with the Short Fiction Fennec Foxes. They have massive ears.

Suggestions welcome; they can't be much worse than my own.

In the mean time, I'll update: I now have a character, a plot, and some worldbuilding tie-in with my novella WIP. I'm gonna have a go at starting tonight. I reckon it'll be 5000ish words.

 

This is more a support group than a crit group, so no need to post it anywhere. We'll have weekly prompts and updates, and if you want to get feedback you can post it in the Showcase and ask in this thread for other group members to have a look.

 

I unfortunately have not yet finished last week's short story. Made some progress but didn't quite get all the way there. Gonna try and finish by tomorrow then start on this week's.

I suggest this week's prompt could be:

The wrong way up.