Judy Kiehart
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Author & Playwright
Judy's Jermyn
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Coming Summer 2025
Mixed Shorts
Brace yourself for some fun reading!
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"Listen the Board is Talking," and "Girl Crushes" will be among those featured in my second book. Also included will be the stories that inspired the short plays in Mixed Shorts.
And some fun free verse to complete the reading experience!
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Short Stories
Whenever someone read a short story I wrote, it was guaranteed they'd ask, "How do you know how many words for your story?"
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I suppose my best answer was, "When the story is finished, you count the words. And that would be the number you needed for your story." Now, however, I understand that there are more than one 'kind' of short story.
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One of my favorite sites, in the New York Times, , manages to lighten our hearts, with 100 word or less love stories.
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2,500 - 5,000 words
Definitions for the SHORT STORY
A story with a fully developed theme but significantly shorter and
less elaborate than a novel - Oxford Dictionary
An invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters
and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of
mood rather than plot - Merriam-Webster
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500 - 2,500 words
Definition for a SHORT-SHORT STORY
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A very short piece of prose fiction, much more condensed than the average short story.
Contests are held for stories with as little as two words.
A well-known two-word story: Jesus wept.
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Many contests have asked for submissions for four-or five-word stories. Each has a subject, an object, a verb and maybe one description or refining notion.
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My favorites (authors unknown) include
a sad story:
We all die someday.
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and,
a horror story:
Just saw my reflection blink.
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There's not much that compare with the feeling you have when seeing your words in print
or hearing a recording of a poem you've written,
or watching the characters you've created on paper come alive on stage.
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That's magic.
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"Writing is the only thing, that, when I do it,
I don't feel I should be doing something else." - Gloria Steinem