Short Story Writing

Where to begin?  Where do you start? 

Firstly, every short story is about a life changing moment in your character’s life.  It’s usually a significant event or thing that the character must overcome or solve, and it’s how they achieve this that forms the arc of the story.  Every story has a beginning, middle and an end and therefore it reveals itself logically.

Start the story right at a crucial point in your character’s life.  Don’t
bother with large sections of narrative explaining things first because this will slow the story down and won’t make an interesting read.  You can start with action, or dialogue or description, but it needs to grab the reader from the outset.  Beginnings that get right into the action keep the reader interested enough to want to keep reading.   You can start a story any way you like as long as it grabs the reader’s attention.  Don’t be afraid to be daring, provocative, mysterious, exciting.  It is advisable to read some short stories to see how this strategy works.

The aim is to introduce your character and set the tone of the story, and with a bit of practice this can be achieved in only a few sentences.  The story should pull the reader in and not let go until the end.

Mastering the Middle

Once you have mastered the opening of a story, you can concentrate on the middle section.  This part will concern the motivation for the character’s actions.  The reader needs to understand the reason a character is trying to solve a problem and how they go about reaching this ultimate goal.  This is the plot of the story.  In doing so, the character must come up against problems that complicate his or her efforts.  They overcome the problem, and another crops up to thwart them.  This is an effective way of varying tension, loosening and tightening the grip until the story reaches its conclusion.

Know exactly what your story is about and whose story is it. Plan your story, ask lots of questions and think of the kind of barriers your character might have to face before they reach their goal.  With so many obstacles to overcome, this is bound to create some conflict.  This is an important element in fiction and this is the fuel that powers your story.  Think of the age old ‘good versus the bad’.  Most stories have a hero and a villain of sorts, and these elements are the basic building blocks of conflict.

Endings

The ending can be daunting, because while it answers many questions raised throughout the story, it has to close in a way that leaves the reader satisfied, and isn’t always as easy as it sounds.  Having the right ending means you shouldn’t short change the reader in any way with a clichéd ‘hero saved the world and they lived happily ever after’ ending.  It means the story will conclude logically, it will tie up loose ends, and it will happen swiftly without dragging on and forcing an anticlimax. 

Contrary to belief, the ending doesn’t have to be a twist in the tail.  They are always good to read, and need clever execution for it to work well, but most stories are just as enjoyable if the ending is satisfactory to the reader and they feel it was the right conclusion.

Study some short stories to see how different endings work, and why.   Endings should right, swift and leave your audience satisfied.