Book Review: How to Write a Short Story in Five Days

Learn how to write a compelling short story in just five days! This step-by-step guide includes tips for planning, writing, revising, and publishing. With this book, you'll have everything you need to start crafting engaging short stories today.

How to Write a Short Story in Five Days offers a practical and effective guide to crafting compelling short stories in a short amount of time. With detailed instruction and expert advice, this book will guide you through each step of the writing process, from planning and outlining to refining and polishing. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced writer, this book offers valuable insights and techniques to help you bring your unique voice and vision to the page.

Jason Fink's guide to writers was released on March 9, 2023. BooksGoSocial provided a galley for review.

I have always been an amateur dabbler in writing. Around 2000, I was part of a Yahoo Group for DC Comics fanfiction; over three years I wrote over 150 short stories - about one a week. I remember how disciplened I had to be to generate that kind of output on a steady basis.

Overall, this guide is very straightforward with very little fluff. Fink outlines a five-day approach and clearly, concisely expands upon each item. While this book is indeed a short read, it is definitely designed as something to be referred back too often for writers as they grow their abilities. And though the title emphasizes short stories, much of this advice is very practical in any writing of any length.

I connected to several of the Day 1 brainstorming techniques. We use freewriting (writing for a fixed time period) in the monthly writing group I lead at the library. Visualizing and outlining are also things I have used a lot over the years. I had not considered using predictive AI like ChatGPT as an option.