This was touched on earlier but I think it is worth expounding upon.
This is a short story. In short stories it is important to get right to
the meat of the story. You pretty much have to start as close to the
climax is possible. This may mean you have to cut out some of the back
story.
In our short story class, Chester stipulated that our story had to take
place in a 24 hour period. This really forces you to focus on what is
important and makes the action more intense. You can't really afford
big time jumps in a suspenseful short story. It dissipates a lot of
tension.
Anyway enough of my ramblings. Hope this helps.

Good luck
Josh Freeman

-----Original Message-----
From: canadianokie <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:59:57 -0600
Subject: [PWA-L] Ideas needed

  Hi everybody!

 I'll break the silence on this board.

 I'm taking the Short Story class and I'm stuck for an ending. Or at
 least my daughter tells me my ending "sucks" so I'm needing some help
 to revamp.

 I'm writing a story about a home invasion. The villain comes to the
 door--he is expected b/c he works with the husband. The son and wife
 are home, they get tied up, yadda, yadda, dad comes home and gets
 popped on the noggin' and tied up, yadda, yadda. The son is tied and
 left at home to be dealt with later when the villain comes back for
 anything he wants to steal. Meanwhile the parents are carted off to
 be killed. They attempt to escape and fail, but try again and
 succeed. The bad guys go to jail and the family moves away.* They
 are so traumatized by what has happened that they don't want any ID
 trails, so they don't have a bank account, they only use Virgin
 phones, etc. The villain gets out of jail and finds them. How?
 Well, it seems that the son is in cahoots with the villain all
 along. The Dad made a fortune in business and the villain and the
 son want to kill mom and dad and get their money.

 How do I end that? Be brutal about the story line, too.

 OK, fellow writers, let me hear from you!

 Thanks,

 Jocelyn

 *Actually, this actually happened to a friend of mine. Scary, huh?