Feisty Deeds II is underway!

We are so excited to begin to see FD “Batches & Brews” underway. We are so curious to see what submissions we will receive!

This newsletter has a call to action, so if you are a writer be sure to reply. If you are a reader, there are some tidbits for you, too, but this newsletter is focused a little more on writing craft.

1. Our top tips for writing a short story
2. Short story resources
3. Writers, please respond
4. Don't forget to grab these books!
5. FD II Call for Submission

Our personal top tips for writing a short story

Last week, we were the guests at the WFWA Historical Fiction meeting. (Members, check your emails for the 1/7 meeting recording.) 

(Reminder: Feisty Deeds was born out of the WFWA Historical Fiction Focus Group, and our Call for Submissions is only for members of the WFWA Hist-fic group. These members are dedicated to both women's fiction and historical writing.)

We answered many questions from members, and several asked for our advice in writing a short story, so here are our personal top tips for writing a 3k word story. Even if you're experienced with stories, it's always interesting to hear from other writers — even we have different approaches for writing short!

Carolyn: 

I found the shift from novel to story writing to be a bit challenging. Since plot is bound to be short, I really need to care about characters, and 3,000 words isn’t much space to develop a character and her arc. If you find yourself with, say, more than five speaking characters, see if you can eliminate one. One of the good things about FD #1 is that in most of the stories, one gets to know the main character right away.

Christy:

I think the biggest challenge to “writing short” is to come up with the right size idea for the story length. When there is too much plot packed in, it’s hard to get into the rhythm of writing or reading. When I look at my own writing and how much space I need to create a scene, I knew that I could use approximately three scenes for this story. (I also used a couple of transitions, only a paragraph or two each.) So in testing ideas, I make sure that it can be explored properly in 3 scenes, and that I could give the most room to the third one to leave room for a plot twist. Mine came out: desire; complication; action leading to solution— which is a pretty good nutshell of story arc!

Kay:

A well-developed main character arc is the key to a good short story, IMHO. I work to get an exciting/inciting incident to draw the reader in at the very beginning. I make sure to show the stakes in the first 500 words - if not the first 250 😊 Using action verbs builds tension and showing rather than telling is crucial in a short story format where every word is precious. Snappy dialogue is a great tool for character development as well as delivering plot points.

Elaine: 

If you're having trouble coming up with a story idea, think about what you've already written - is there a companion/adjacent story you could write? For example, is there a minor character in your story who could become the star of their own story?

Kimberly:

I had published many short stories before Feisty Deeds, but I'd never written a historical short story, so this was a welcome challenge for me. My historical novels are mostly 19th and 20th century, but an historical short story provided me greater freedom to explore an earlier period, and I decided to write about a 1480 event in our anthology. I felt a short story was the perfect opportunity to dip my toe into the late medieval/early Renaissance period. Who knows, maybe I'll even be drawn into setting a future novel in this fascinating era, but for now, short stories in this earlier time period allow me to test it out - and keeps things fun!

These tips are ways that we, as writers, help test our ideas and get into the flow of writing short. If you look at the stories we selected in FD, including our own stories, you can see that they don’t all follow all of these tips. Kimberly and Elaine have opposite starting points, and if everyone followed Christy’s structure, the stories would quickly get repetitive! But perhaps some of these approaches will help clarify your own process as you approach writing short.

Story Writing Resources

The most important skill for writing short stories is to read short stories, but they can be hard to find. Here are some of our favorites and tips:

• Fantasy, sci-fi, and romance have a long and active tradition of short stories.
• Amazon has categories for shorts. Search “Best Sellers in 15-minute Literature & Fiction Short Reads,” and the same thing with 30-minute.
• Literary magazines and e-zines are often good places to find short stories.

If you are looking for more articles, contributor Beth Anne Hill shared her starting suggestions.

Writer's Digest: 7 Tips for Starting to Write a Short Story

WD: How to Let Plot Drive Your Short Story

WD: 5 Tips for Crafting the Perfect Short Story

Over the next few weeks, keep an eye on our Feisty.Women.Authors Instagram and Facebook page. We’ll have posts asking about your suggestions for articles, tips, and reading suggestions, and we'll share more community ideas in our upcoming newsletters.

Writers, please respond

FD II submissions will be open during the month of March, but it will help us enormously to have an approximate idea of what we will be reading. Then we will be able to schedule out our working timeline and come up with the most important information for readers — when we might be able to release Batches and Brews!

Writers, please fill out this super-short form. If you are not planning to submit this time, that would be helpful to know too. You are not committing to anything, but it would really help us to have a general, approximate idea of:

• How many story submissions we might receive
• What periods/styles will be covered

Are you going to submit to FD II?

Tech problems -- does the form not load for you? Just reply to this email with your story period/place/idea.

We’ve had a few concerns, so let’s clarify: We can take questions about your story. Feel free to ask us anything or chat with us, individually or as a group. The change this year is that we are asking you to not send us your complete story before the submission period. If you want to ask us questions about what topics or periods are already covered, to give yourself a better chance at writing a unique story, you are more than welcome!

Thank you for reading! 

Meanwhile, make sure you’ve gotten your copy of these December releases by our authors — Ashley Sweeney, Kay Smith-Blum, Kimberly Sullivan, Carolyn Korsmeyer, & Christy Matheson.

Below we have copied and pasted the complete “Call for Submissions.” This is the same as previous newsletters; if you already have it, you do not need it again.

The Feisty Deeds Committee: 

Carolyn Korsmeyer, Christy Matheson, Elaine Schroller, Kay Smith-Blum, & Kimberly Sullivan

Call for Submissions: Feisty Deeds II

Feisty Deeds II: Historical Tales of Batches and Brews

Dear Members of the WFWA Historical Fiction Focus Group,

Our first volume of Feisty Deeds met with such enthusiasm that we decided put together a second one. So here we go again! This collection will focus on themes of eating, drinking, cooking, brewing, concocting—but with a twist (or twists), as described below.

Throughout history, women have spent a lot of their precious time and energy preparing batches and brews. We envision an anthology that approaches this central aspect of women’s lives from a wide-angle lens. We don’t want stories that just wax poetic about olives and sunsets or interrupt the plot with recipes; we want to surprise and intrigue our readers.

To get your minds rolling, we would like to read about feisty women who might:

• address problems related to hunger: scarcities in war, famine, sieges, food shortages due to winter/drought/blight 
• deal with food allergies, illness (gastritis, scurvy, gout), food poisoning…
• concoct potions in the stillroom: perfumes, medicines, poisons
• practice medicine as midwifes or herbalists
• experiment with forbidden food or magical potions
• twist kitchen experiments into scientific innovation
• invent tastes beyond the ordinary

Our selection process will prioritize variety across many periods, countries, ages of protagonists, subgenres, and types of struggles—stories set firmly in a specific place and time. Surprise us with your creativity so we can put together an intriguing anthology that would never belong in the cookbook section!

Other requirements:

• Main character must be female, although a second main character or narrator can be any gender.
• Not biographical fiction; main character must be fictional.
• Word count: maximum 3,000 words.
• “Historical” is defined as taking place 50 years or more in the past.
• Stories need a beginning, rising action, and conclusion. They do not have to be happy endings but must have a clear story structure.
• Chapters from novels are not acceptable. 
• Your story should begin with (a) the title (b) author’s name (c) time and place of setting.
• Please affirm that no portion of your story was generated by AI.
• We recommend you send your story to one or two beta readers for feedback before submitting. 

►In the interest of fairness, please do not ask any of the editors to act as beta readers. We need to approach final versions with fresh eyes.

Note: As before, we plan to self-publish the volume via PubShare and to distribute all profits from sales to the WFWA Scholarship Fund. Therefore, all authors will be required to contribute to production and promotion costs, including cover design, graphic art for promotion, editorial reviews, contest submissions, etc. Based on our experience with Feisty Deeds I, we anticipate the cost will be between $120-150 per participant.

Submissions process:

We will set up an email account for submissions three weeks before they are due.

Stories must be cleanly formatted and, in your own opinion, in final, publishable form.

• Submissions are open only to members of the hisfic affinity group of WFWA.
• Submissions will open on March 1, 2025 and close on March 31, 2025. 
• Prepare the story in Word in standard manuscript form: 12 point font and double-spaced.
• Please proofread carefully and correct typos and grammatical errors before submitting.

More information will follow, but for now, we hope that you will begin thinking about the story you might write!

We look forward to hearing from you,

The editorial committee: (Elaine Schroller, Kimberly Sullivan, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Christy Matheson, Kay Smith-Blum)