Article written by Rory Hawkins.
Listening to or reading anything about how to write a good short story and you’re bound to be going over the same information over and over again. No surprise: SHORT stories are SHORT. With any limit on word-count or reading time, a writer needs to consider where they put the focus in their writing.
Over time, this has led to a general consensus on “what makes a good short story” – and it’s not wrong. Finding a balance between exposition and action within something so short is hard. Making it seem meaningful is even harder.
That said, the general rules for short stories can be found anywhere on the internet – it’s any of the finer details that get glossed over. So I’d like to go over my personal bugbears with short stories and what can be done to counteract them. A lot of the mistakes we make when writing short fiction can simply come down to forgetting what works for a much longer piece over just a few pages.
First up: how to start writing it out. Looked up “short story tips” before? You’ve probably been told to “start as close to the action as possible”. Unlike a novel, there’s no room in a short story for a preamble. I’d actually go one step further: start writing in action.
One of your very first sentences needs to be your protagonist physically doing something, an action that is progressing towards their immediate goal, be that slowly opening a door or punching someone in the face. It’s a short story – you’re pressed for words – so this action/goal needs to directly link to their character arc.
Are they going to succeed at this or not? What does that mean to them? Even in just setting up simple action, we’re moved on to the reasons behind it and to where it could possibly go. That where just needs to be reached a lot sooner than in a novel.
Another tip: the plot for your SHORT story should generally take place in a SHORT space of time. 1) It’s a lot easier to follow in a small amount of writing – there’s no need to write “And then three months later…” or essentially turn the story into a montage sequence.
A short conflict leads to 2) an immediate payoff to the situation, an action and reaction. Make no mistake, this doesn’t mean the story should feel so self-contained – you can still present it as a snippet from your characters’ lives. But remember, even a small victory needs a resolution in that moment of time.
More than a few short stories try to bypass being contained in small periods of time by using flashbacks to pad out character backstory. In longer pieces of fiction, flashbacks can reasonably present exposition or context by taking a chapter away from the main plot’s progression, maybe even switching between past and present for an interplay between the two.
However in short fiction, I think flashbacks only take up space that could be used to better develop what’s currently happening. I particularly dislike reading flashback sequences because most of the time the information within could be introduced organically through dialogue or characters. Even though it’s a lot more direct (which keeps to the methodology of short stories), I think it’s too easy an option to use.
The details of any lead up should be mentioned in reference rather than just cycled back to. It defeats the objective of having started “in the action” if you’re going to cut between when it happened rather than the emotional impact of now.
Speaking of which, when thinking of your short story’s scenario, try to actually put your characters through the wringer. Because we reach the conclusion so much sooner, the conflict actually needs to feel as such: explosive and conflicting. We see what people are really like in moments of pressure; the same should go for the fictional people too.
Which leads me to this: whatever emotions your characters are feeling, amp them up to the highest setting (within believability, of course). To establish any strong relationship between your characters in a short amount of time, they need to be pushed to their worst. If they’re questioning the strength of a relationship, we get to see what it actually means to them.
If you want to keep away from flashbacks, this is best done through descriptive action. Not just “what should they do under those circumstances” but what is holding them back from doing what they want? Remember, everything has to be presented quickly so there’s enough to actually develop it.
Internal conflict is all well and good – we explore more of a character’s personality and find out what truly motivates them – but if it’s all about what coffee they should order, it falls flat. In a novel, internal conflict takes up the time before the climax; in a short story, the characters still need to be dealing with it – like you, they don’t have the time.
Psychological pressure is best justified through the physical. Something of importance needs to be at stake for the last moments of this character’s struggle to be genuinely interesting to the reader.
And that’s all I have to say on short stories. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the Internet, as well as the short stories of our own on the blog. There’s also plenty of articles in how to write convincing characters and keeping away from story tropes.
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