One Shot - question (Read 119 times)

[Kpatch]

What elements need to be included in a one-shot story? Does it have to come to a conclusion? Or can it be left up in the air? Thinking about posting something.

Thanks!

[heroicmuse]

To me a one shot is like a short story in that it is self contained. One post for the whole story.

You can leave some things up in the air but there should be a resolution to the story of some sort by the end of the post.

[André DiMera]

I find one-shots to be very situational. It depends on what characters you're using, what the context is, and what you're trying to say, or have those characters say within the space of the story. A one-shot is quite literally a story in one chapter. I don't know that it necessarily needs to have a conclusion, so long as you feel satisfied with the story you've told.

For example, one of the 1-shots that I wrote is My Dinner with André. At the time, Chad and André hadn't officially met, but André was very close to returning on the real show. I wanted to write a story in which they met, established that André had arrived to take care of an ailing Stefano (as well as ascend to his rightful place as head of the family), reintroduce some mystery about whether André had inherited Stefano's ability to rise from the grave (which had previously been hinted at), as well as throw in a few allusions to the fact that Thaao Penghlis had recently (at the time of writing) released a book about food. It didn't have a concrete end, except that André decided that Chad needed more training if he was to become a "true DiMera", and taking it upon himself to provide that training. And although elements of that story would later be either referenced or reused in a later story, that was, for all intents and purposes, the end. It was a complete story in one chapter.

And that's really what a one-shot is: a complete story in one chapter. It doesn't have to be big, it could be something as simple as a conversation. So long as you have an idea about what you want your characters to do, and you think you can achieve that within one chapter, go for it!

[Kpatch]

Thank you for the great explanation heroicmuse and André DiMera. Very helpful.

Andre, I reread your Dinner With Andre. Excellent story and a good example of what you were describing.