Creative-writing-type stories are not a primary interest here at A Storied Career, but I bring you an entry about WEbook because it’s an interesting site that includes all kinds of stories and lots of other goodies. Short stories are apparently one of the top genres at WeBook, and topics include JFK Conspiracy Stories, Biographies and Memoirs (those are more A Storied Career’s speed, and they’re subdivided into numerous other categories), tales of intoxication, and New York stories, just to name a very few.
One intriguing type of story that’s good for a story prompt is “Stories written in nothing but dialogue,” the instructions for which read:
Write a story. No limits to the length but keep it in the realm of short story. The only requirement is that the story must be pure dialogue. No exposition blocks in the intro — you have to have all clues to the setting inferred in the text itself.
I am reminded of someone I know whose unpublished novel was criticized as having unrealistic dialog, so he started saving the transcripts of instant-messaging conversations. (Isn’t it interesting how hardly anyone IMs anymore? And how realistic as dialog are IM conversations?) Unfortunately, many of these conversations were with young women and ranged from flirtatious to emotional-affair-ish. He was married, and his wife found the transcripts, causing her great pain.
WEbook describes itself like this:
WEbook is a revolutionary online book publishing company, which does for the industry what American Idol did for music. (Modestly speaking, of course.) Welcome to the home of groundbreaking User-Generated Books. WEbook is the vision of a few occasionally erudite people who believe there are millions of talented writers whose work is ignored by the staid and exclusive world of book publishing. It just makes logical sense that if you create a dynamic, irreverent, and open place for writers and people who like reading to meet, write, react, and think together, the results are bound to be extraordinary. Cue WEbook.com, an online publishing platform that allows writers, editors, reviewers, illustrators and others to join forces to create great works of fiction and non-fiction, thrillers and essays, short stories, children’s books and more.