How to Write a Short Story: Six Crucial Steps - DailyWritingTips |
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Posted: 24 Jul 2018 11:53 AM PDT
 Short stories are tricky to write well. Every word counts – and you don’t have long at all to establish characters and get the plot going. While most of my fiction-writing time goes into novels, I’ve written a bunch of short stories over the years (and even won an occasional prize). There’s plenty to like about the short story form:
These are the six steps you need to follow to complete a short story: #1: Decide How Long Your Story Will BeThis might seem like an odd place to begin – how can you know how long your story will be until you’ve written it? The length of your story, though, will make a big difference to how you plan and begin writing: a 800 word short story will be very different in nature from an 8,000 word short story.Depending on your aims with your short story, the length might be pre-determined for you. If you’re entering a competition, for instance, there’ll almost certainly be a minimum and/or maximum word count. If you’re not sure what sort of length to aim for, check out Maeve’s post How Short Is Short Fiction? to figure out what length your short fiction should be. Tip: If you’re new to writing short stories, around 2,000 words is a good length – long enough to give your story a bit of breathing room, but short enough that you only need to develop a couple of characters and a single plotline. #2: Come Up With Several IdeasUnless you already have a clear idea in mind for your short story, I’d suggest coming up with several different ideas. This is especially crucial if you’re entering a themed competition: chances are, the first idea that you have will be pretty similar to the first idea that pops into other people’s minds!In two decades of writing fiction, I’ve found that ideas can come at the oddest moments. You can definitely help the process along, though, by setting aside time to deliberately brainstorm. Write your topic, prompt or starting line on a piece of paper, and jot down anything that comes to mind. If you don’t have a particular topic for your story, you might want to use a prompt to help you. Tip: Don’t push yourself to write about an idea that doesn’t really interest you. Keep brainstorming until you hit on something you really want to write about … or step away altogether and wait to see if an idea comes to you out of the blue. #3: Pick a Couple of CharactersYour idea itself might have brought characters with it (e.g. if your idea was “a young colleague is promoted above his older, resentful co-worker”) … but if not, now’s the time to figure out the main characters for your short story.In a short story, there’s only space for a small cast of characters. While there’s no “rule”, I find it works best to have one protagonist and one other main character (who might be supporting or opposing the protagonist). If you try to have lots of characters, it’s tricky to introduce them quickly enough without confusing the reader – and continuing to follow several characters throughout can make your story seem muddled or slow. Focusing on two characters (even if other characters come in briefly) helps you to structure a satisfying story. Tip: Sometimes, a fairly “normal” idea can be made into a great short story by shifting the perspective. The story of a wedding, for instance, might not be especially interesting on the surface – but it could be far more fascinating told from the point of view of the lively five-year-old flower girl. #4: Plan Your Short StoryEvery story needs a beginning, middle and end – I’m sure you’ll have heard that before!There are two different ways to look at the beginning, middle and end though:
When you’re planning, think about the most effective way to tell your story. Chronological order will work well for many stories, but you still might want to bring in past information through summary, dialogue or even flashbacks. (Be careful with flashbacks, though; they can easily disrupt the pace of a short story.) Tip: You might not hit on the perfect structure for your story first time around. You might want to write a rough plan, draft out your story, then think again about the order in which you want to present your scenes. #5: Draft Your Short StoryThis is perhaps the trickiest step – because it’s time to sit down and actually write your short story.Hopefully, at this stage, you’ve got a clear idea in mind, plus a rough plan or outline for your story. That’ll make the writing much easier. Viewpoint and TenseYou may still face some decisions at this stage, though, particularly when it comes to viewpoint and tense. Sometimes, there’ll be a particular choice that just feels right for your story – maybe you have a central character with an unusual perspective and/or voice, and you want to write in the first person from their perspective.With viewpoint, you might write from:
With tense, you might write in the:
Writing the First Draft of Your StoryAs you write the story itself, try not to worry too much about getting every word right: you’ll have time to edit later.It’s usefully helpful to:
#6: Edit Your Short StoryFinally, it’s time to edit your short story. Depending on how your first draft worked out, you might end up doing a lot of rewriting at this point – perhaps you’ve realised that your characters weren’t quite right, or you’ve uncovered a whole new layer to your story, or you want to tell it in a completely different order.If you have major changes to make, get those done first before you start finalising word choices and sentence structures – there’s no point perfecting three paragraphs that you later cut completely. Once you’re happy that your short story is in reasonable shape, with no more big changes to come, you can go through it and edit on a sentence level. For me, this normally means cutting out unnecessary words and flabby sentences, and paring the story back a little, in order to make what remains even more powerful. Tip: However much editing you do, you’ll need to do a final pass through your story to look for typos and grammatical mistakes. It’s easy for these to creep in during editing – so it’s always good to do that final check. Many writers find it helpful to proofread on paper rather than on the screen. Short stories might look easy on the surface. They’re short, after all! But writing a good short story can be really tricky, because you don’t have long to make an impact on the reader … and every word needs to count. Best of luck with your short stories! And for lots more help with writing stories of all lengths, from flash fiction up to novels, check out our ‘Fiction Writing’ archives. |
