Skip to main content Show No matter how difficult it is to stay in a course in which the professor has accused you of dishonesty, you must continue to attend class and fulfill all class obligations. Jerz > Writing > General Creative Writing Tips [ Poetry | Fiction ] Writing short stories means beginning as close to the climax as possible — everything else is a distraction. A novel can take a more meandering path, but should still start with a scene that sets the tone for the whole book. A short story conserves characters and scenes, typically by focusing on just one conflict, and drives towards a sudden, unexpected revelation. Go easy on the exposition and talky backstory — your reader doesn’t need to know everything that you know about your characters. ContentsDo you have a short story assignment due tomorrow morning? The rest of this document covers longer-term strategies, but if you are in a pinch, these emergency tips should help. Good luck!
An effective short story (or poem) does not simply record or express the author’s feelings; rather, it generates feelings in the reader. (See “Show, Don’t (Just) Tell.”) Drawing on your own real-life experiences, such as winning the big game, bouncing back after an illness or injury, or dealing with the death of a loved one, are attractive choices for students who are looking for a “personal essay” topic. But simply listing the emotions you experienced (“It was exciting” “I’ve never been so scared in all my life” “I miss her so much”) is not the same thing as generating emotions for your readers to experience. For those of you who are looking for more long-term writing strategies, here are some additional ideas.
Read, Read, Read
2. Write a Catchy First ParagraphIn today’s fast-moving world, the first sentence of your narrative should catch your reader’s attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict. Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.
3. Developing Characters
In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story. Here is a partial list of character details to help you get started.
Imagining all these details will help you get to know your character, but your reader probably won’t need to know much more than the most important things in four areas:
For example, let’s say I want to develop a college student persona for a short story that I am writing. What do I know about her?
4. Choose a Point of ViewPoint of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the action objectively.
Yourke on point of view:
5. Write Meaningful Dialogue
Dialogue is what your characters say to each other (or to themselves). Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is doing when speaking. (See: “Quotation Marks: Using Them in Dialogue“.)
Write Meaningful Dialogue Labels “John asked nervously” is an example of “telling.” The author could write “John asked very nervously” or “John asked so nervously that his voice was shaking,” and it still wouldn’t make the story any more effective. How can the author convey John’s state of mind, without coming right out and telling the reader about it? By inference. That is, mention a detail that conjures up in the reader’s mind the image of a nervous person.
6. Use Setting and Context
Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.
7. Set Up the PlotPlot is what happens, the storyline, the action. Jerome Stern says it is how you set up the situation, where the turning points of the story are, and what the characters do at the end of the story. A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. –Janet Burroway Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.
Brainstorming. If you are having trouble deciding on a plot, try brainstorming. Suppose you have a protagonist whose husband comes home one day and says he doesn’t love her any more and he is leaving. What are actions that can result from this situation?
The next step is to select one action from the list and brainstorm another list from that particular action. 8. Create Conflict and Tension
Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end. Possible Conflicts Include:
Yourke’s Conflict Checklist
9. Build to a Crisis or ClimaxThis is the turning point of the story–the most exciting or dramatic moment.
Jane Burroway says that the crisis “must always be presented as a scene. It is “the moment” the reader has been waiting for. In Cinderella’s case, “the payoff is when the slipper fits.” While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a sudden illness is simply an emergency –unless it somehow involves a conflict that makes the reader care about the characters (see: “Crisis vs. Conflict“). 10. Find a ResolutionThe solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently. Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.
Got Writer’s Block?The Writer’s Block Overcoming Writer’s Block Learn through Schooling
Dec. 2002 — submitted by Kathy Kennedy, UWEC Senior(for Jerz’s Advanced Technical Writing class)Jan 2003 — edited by Jamie Dalbesio, UWEC Senior(for an independent study project with Jerz)May 2003 — edited by Jerz and posted at Seton Hill UniversityJan 2007 — ongoing edits by JerzMay 2008 — reformattedSep 2010 — tweaked Writer’s Block sectionMar 2011 — reformatted and further tweakedJun 2017 — minor editing. Are “Keds” still a recognizable brand of kids shoes? Feb 2019 — Removed “Keds” reference, beefed up the “bad” shoes example; tweaked formatting. |