Writing Blog

20211218 anatomy of a short story

December 18, 2021, 9:30pm

So yesterday morning’s blog post did it – it broke the impasse in my head. I managed to get the short story written.

So, let’s look at how I put together this first draft. First, though, you need to remember, I am a pantser – I do not plot or plan what I write. This demonstrates how I work; it will not work for everyone.

To start with, the theme of the anthology is “Gods Today”. Take ancient gods and depict how they would be manifesting in this day and age. Not humour, play it straight. The idea I had was, as is usual, predicated by a “What if…?” statement.

What if Zeus lived on in the online space?

Next, I needed a character. A man is confronted by a friend who he hasn’t seen for many years. Why should this be significant? That stumped me briefly. Then, for some reason, what I realised was this friend knows all about the MC’s wife, who is in hospital. Still wasn’t sure how this was going to relate. Zeus, a sick woman… It came to me – the reason the friendship fell apart was that the sick woman is Christian and rejected the friend because he worships pagan gods. This is where the Zeus thing comes in.

That was how the story started to finally coalesce. The what if statement, a main character, a secondary character, put the two together. Where to start next? In a short story, beginning in media res is often handy. The opening wrote itself: the MC gets home from hospital and is confronted by this friend.

Unfortunately, I knew I needed to pad it out because the word count for the anthology is 4000-7500 words. So I looked at the legends of the ancients. I needed an Oracle of Delphi to tell the Hero what to do and demand a payment. Perfect.

So, the secondary character tells the MC he can help the sick wife. The MC is at such a low ebb in his life that he agrees. They go to visit the Oracle. The payment is a renewed friendship. They conduct a ritual. The proof given is that electricity, like little lightning bolts, come from appliances to secondary character. And, yes, the woman is saved. Writing the story, I wasn’t sure if she would, to be honest. But it worked that way as the story went on. I was almost inclined to do an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling, but that is a trope that has been done to death. I wanted a happy ending, I guess.

It ended up being 6000 words. Took me a day and a half to put together.

Reading that overview, it doesn’t seem like much, I do know that, but we’ll see what the editor thinks. I’ll let it sit for a few days, then do some edits, find a beta reader, and then send it off.

So… that’s pretty much how I write a short story. The topics and themes might be different, but I start with a “what if…?” and a character and then see how they fit and then write. It’s the character’s story and I let them take me on the journey and where it ends up, it ends up.