There are two goals to a 1000 Word Sprint Contest. You will be creating a short story or story segment, sure, but also something else.

The first goal is: Get your story up and running as quickly as possible.

The 1000 word limit will force you to be thrifty with your verbiage.

The second goal is to make it as complete as possible within those 1000 words.

In George RR Martin’s prologue to the first book of Game of Thrones, within 200 words you have a very good feel for the setting and the characters.

200 words, and the guy writes stories the size of phone books.

How was that done?

your humble host

First, as always, you put down whatever your idea is. Get it out of your head and into the computer or onto the page. Then you go back and you analyze each sentence to make…