How to write short stories : (with samples) by Ring Lardner (1924) Free Book





A glimpse at the advertising columns of our leading magazines shows that whatever else this the country may be shy of, there is certainly no lack of correspondence schools that learn you the art of short-story writing. The most notorious of these schools make the boast that one of their pupils cleaned up $5000.00 and no hundreds of dollars writing short stories according to the system learned in their course, though it doesn't say if that the amount was cleaned up in one year or fifty.However, for some reason another when your skin through the pages of high-class periodicals, you don't very often find them cluttered up with stories that were written by boys or gals who had to win their phi beta skeleton keys at this or that story-writing college. In fact, most of the successful authors of the short fiction of to-day never went to no kind of a college, or if they did, they studied piano tuning or the barber trade. They could have got just as far in what I call the literary game if they had of stayed home those four years and helped mother carry out the empty bottles.The facts -- Some like them cold -- Alibi Ike -- The golden honeymoon -- Champion -- My roomy -- A caddy's diary -- A frame-up -- Harmony -- Horseshoes