Hi, Lynn.

--- lynn.mundy{at}btopenworld.com wrote:

> I am in the middle of writing my first spooky.  

Ah, . . . a Stephen King in the budding? :-)

> What constitutes a
> short story?  Is it a certain amount of words or is there a limit
> to the number of pages?  

A general rule of thumb is the number or words involved.  A short
story goes up to 20,000 words.  20,000 to 40,000 are novellas and
40,000 plus are considered novels.  That's the rule of thumb for the
publishing industry, however.  From an artistic point of view those
numbers are rather fluid.  

> I have been told in the past that I should
> limit my "inner thoughts."  

Who told you that and what authoity was he, she, or (most likely), it
quoting?

One of the difficult issues with which we grapple is: the first rule
of writing is that there are no rules.

Of course, there is grammar, and syntax, and all other rubbishy
gobbledegook, but even those rules can be seriously bent out of shape
of simple shattered and swept aside where doing so serves an artistic
purpose.  Just try to picture Yoda talking in Noam Chomsky's
grammatical form. You can't just do bend or break such arbitarily,
however.

In matters of artistic style, though, nothing is hard and fast.  I'm
assuming "inner thoughts" means internal dialogue.  If that's case,
then you need as much as it takes to get the story across to the
reader.  If your character is an iconoclast who doesn't like speaking
at all a great deal of his thinking can be internalized.

> I can go along with that most of the
> time, but when confronted with the "presence" there doesn't seem to
> be away around it to make it work.  Any advise would be greatly
> appreciated.

Same advice we usually give in here: write your stories your way; in
your own voice and style and let the Dimbulbs(tm)(r) who insist on
spouting useless rules out of ignorance go hang.

You've got to keep in mind, Lynn, that when someone says "This thou
shalt not do in thine writing" they are usually making a Grand
Proclamation based solely on their prejudices.  When some dolt says
"your writing sucks" it's not that your writing sucks: it's that he
doesn't get the point of the story and such a one never assumes
that's because he's too dense to get it.

=====
Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be 
banned because I might read it and it might be very 
damaging to me"? --Joseph Henry Jackson

>From the Lair of Fang-Face DreamWeaver
and The Encyclopedia Michael Nellis
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/dreamweaver/index.html

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