Beginnings and Endings: Starting on the Right Foot and Leaving ’em Satisfied

Guest: NAIWE’s Short Story Expert Patrick Barb

In this webinar, we’ll focus on two of the most important elements in a successful short story: the opening and the conclusion. For the opening: we’ll cover the importance of a good title, good first sentence, good paragraph; effective openings; setting the scene/tone/characters with the opening; establishing stakes and genre. For endings: we’ll cover paying off the promise of the beginning, tying the ending to the beginning formally, leaving the reader satisfied but wanting more.

Here’s what you can expect to learn in this class:

• The importance of the title of a short story

• Word choice when the word count matters

• What a satisfying ending means

Duration: 1 hour, 5 minutes

Patrick Barb is an author of weird, dark, and spooky stories, hailing from the southern United States and currently living (and trying not to freeze to death) with his wife, two kids, and a naughty (but lovable) puppy in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As a writer, his short fiction appears in Best Horror of the Year Vol. 16, Nightscript, Diabolical Plots, and Cosmic Horror Monthly, among other publications. His longer works include the novellas Gargantuana’s Ghost, Turn, and The Nut House, the novelettes Helicopter Parenting in the Age of Drone Warfare and “So Quiet, So White” in Split Scream Vol. 3, and his dark fiction collections The Children’s Horror and Pre-Approved for Haunting. Barb is an active member and trustee of the Horror Writers Association and a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.