During the past couple of weeks I’ve been studying some aspects of the writing craft, especially openings. How you hook readers at the beginning of a story and keep them there until the end.

There are several types of opening, and they don’t all work in every type of fiction. Summary openings, for example, don’t work well in short stories, but are excellent openings for the right type of novel. Several people recommend not just study, but also typing the opening, as the physical action helps reinforce the technique and structure into your sub-conscious.

I was thinking about this as I read through some recent course notes, and started to cast around for stories to use as research. To my mind, there’s minimal benefit in studying writers at the same stage as me because none of us really know at this stage where we’re making mistakes. The writers to study are those who’ve been professional writers for many years.

People like Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, and Michael Connolly to name just three.

I have a lot of their novels. In this case, I was looking for short fiction, and prowling through the bookshelves, kindle, and Apple books (or whatever the current name happens to be), when I realized I have a treasure trove.

In the past year I obtained two extensive short story collections: When Worlds Collide and Crimes Collide. Each collection is a hundred short stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. Two hundred stories by two of the top writers currently working today.

If I don’t learn something from those stories, I should probably hang up my keyboard!