Going Pro Newsletter on Short Stories

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Helpful Tips for Writing Short Stories

         Covering everything there is to know about writing short stories would require a book; therefore, I will just give the components of a short story and a few helpful tips for writing one.

         The components of any story (including novels) include characters (characterization), conflict, theme, setting, dialogue, and plot. Coherence, clarity, and comprehension hold a story together.

         Characters are the people and/or animals or objects that take part in the action of the story. The story centers on the main character or characters, even if others are included.

         An important job for us as writers is to make the reader care about our characters. We should make them believable, human (even if nonhuman) by revealing each character as fully as possible.

         Due to the fact that short stories are short, writers can't create as detailed a character as can be accomplished in a novel. Dialogue and interactions can reveal the personality of a character where brevity doesn't allow long character exposition.

         A story needs conflict, at least one problem that the protagonist (hero, main character) faces, struggles with, and either wins or loses at the climax.

         Conlfict places obstacles in the main character's way. The conflict can be external, caused by another person or by nature ( such as climbing a mountain or a wild animal). Conflict can also be internal: overcoming an emotional trauma, fears, struggle with evil.

         One way to provide conflict and interest in your main character at the same time would be to put him/her in danger.

         Since short stories require brevity, usually a writer only creates one conflict for the protagonist, while a novel may contain several for the main characters and other characters in the story.

         The main idea a writer wants to share with readers often is called the theme. The theme is rarely directly stated, but a reader should be able to understand the main idea by the time he finishes reading the story.

         The theme could be as simple as love conquers all or as deep as the need to exorcise one's internal deamons.

         Where and when a story takes place is the setting. In some stories, setting takes an important role. In others, it isn't much more than background. However, the reader should have an idea of whether the story takes place in historical times or in modern, in the country or in the city. The information can be inferred by what characters say and do.

         Dialogue, whether internal or external, moves the story along, showing information rather than telling it. Dialogue is part of the action needed to create an interesting story.

         Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet, in the October The Writer, stated, "Use dialogue." Of course they were discussing how to open a story, but that's good advice - to use dialogue all through a story.

         Good dialogue advances the action and presents the interplay of ideas and personalities. It also can give relief from passages which otherwise would be long expository passages.

         Plot is the chain of related events that create the story and is made up of at least one major problem, known as conflict. The plot has a beginning, the rising action, the climax, and the ending.

         Without a plot, a story doesn't exist. A writer might have a character study or a narrative without a plot, but not a story.

         The beginning sets the stage and catches the reader's attention. Through thoughts and dialogue, sometimes exposition, the background needed to understand what is happening unfolds. The conflict may be introduced.

         The rising action takes the protagonist through the conflict to the turning point or climax. Keeping the interest of the reader is essential during this portion of the story.

         The climax either shows the protagonist wins or loses the battle or that he just finds a way to accept.

         The resolution or ending of the story is necessary to allow the reader to know what happens after the climax. It may consist of just one paragraph after the climax, or it may be several. The reader should know the story is over without seeing "the end."

         However, a work of fiction shouldn't end with a summary, nor should it trivialize the story and its characters. Perhaps, the ending needs to be a part of the story that is revised until it simply meets the need. Everything I've read seems to say that a good ending is almost harder to attain that the rest of the story.

         A story should make sense, be coherent. The writing should be clear. The reader should be able to understand. Coherency, clarity, and comprehension are the glue that holds a story together.

Sources for information for this editorial:
A Handbook to Literature by C. Hugh Holman
Literature & Language: 10 Blue Level McDugal Littell
The Writer, October, 2005
         "10 ways TO BEGIN" by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet
         "Get rid of those POKY MIDDLES" by Anne Panning
         "The challenge of short STORY ENDINGS" by Sharon Oard Warner

NOTE: An article that every aspiring author should read is found in the October 2005 The Writer, one about book contracts:
"Watch that language!" by Andrew Zack, pages 45 through 47.

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Vivian