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.
Do 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’ll never forget how heart-broken I felt,” “I miss her so much I’ll never the same without her”) 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 a LOT of Chekhov. Then re-read it. Read Raymond Carver, Earnest Hemingway, Alice Munro, and Tobias Wolff. If you don’t have time to read all of these authors, stick to Chekhov. He will teach you more than any writing teacher or workshop ever could.
-Allyson Goldin, UWEC Asst. Professor of Creative Writing
In 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.
I heard my neighbor through the wall. | |
Dry. Nothing sparks the reader’s imagination. | |
The neighbor behind us practiced scream therapy in his shower almost every day. | |
Catches the reader’s attention. Who is this guy who goes in his shower every day and screams? Why does he do that? What, exactly, is“scream therapy”? Let’s keep reading… | |
The first time I heard him, I stood in the bathroom listening at our shared wall for ten minutes, debating the wisdom of calling the police. It was very different from living in the duplex over middle-aged Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their two young sons in Duluth. | |
The rest of the paragraph introduces I and an internal conflict as the protagonist debates a course of action and introduces an intriguing contrast of past and present setting. |
“It is important to understand the basic elements of fiction writing before you consider how to put everything together. This process is comparable to producing something delectable in the kitchen–any ingredient that you put into your bowl of dough impacts your finished loaf of bread. To create a perfect loaf, you must balance ingredients baked for the correct amount of time and enhanced with the right polishing glaze.” -Laurel Yourke
Your job, as a writer of short fiction–whatever your beliefs–is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value–that will, in Chekhov’s words, “make [man] see what he is like.” –Rick Demarnus
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.
- Name
- Age
- Job
- Ethnicity
- Appearance
- Residence
- Pets
- Religion
- Hobbies
- Single or married?
- Children?
- Temperament
- Favorite color
- Friends
- Favorite foods
- Drinking patterns
- Phobias
- Faults
- Something hated?
- Secrets?
- Strong memories?
- Any illnesses?
- Nervous gestures?
- Sleep patterns
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?
Her name is Jen, short for Jennifer Mary Johnson. She is 21 years old. She is a fair-skinned Norwegian with blue eyes, long, curly red hair, and is 5 feet 6 inches tall. Contrary to the stereotype about redheads, she is actually easygoing and rather shy. She loves cats and has two of them named Bailey and Allie. She is a technical writing major with a minor in biology. Jen plays the piano and is an amateur photographer. She lives in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She eats pizza every day for lunch and loves Red Rose tea. She cracks her knuckles when she is nervous. Her mother just committed suicide.
Point 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.
| I saw a tear roll down his cheek. I had never seen my father cry before. I looked away while he brushed the offending cheek with his hand. |
This is a good choice for beginning writers because it is the easiest to write. (But if your viewpoint character is too much like you, a first-person story might end up being a too-transparent exercise in wish-fulfillment, or score-settling.) |
| You laughed loudly at the antics of the clown. You clapped your hands with joy. |
(See also Jerz on interactive fiction.) |
| He ran to the big yellow loader sitting on the other side of the gravel pit shack. |
Your narrator might take sides in the conflict you present, might be as transparent as possible, or might advocate a position that you want your reader to challenge (this is the “unreliable narrator” strategy). |
Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. –Jerome Stern
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“.)
Where are you going?” John cracked his knuckles while he looked at the floor. “To the racetrack.” Mary edged toward the door, keeping her eyes on John’s bent head. “Not again,” John stood up, flexing his fingers. “We are already maxed out on our credit cards.” | |
The above paragraph is confusing, because it is not clear when one speech stops and the other starts. |
“Where are you going?” John asked nervously. “To the racetrack,” Mary said, trying to figure out whether John was too upset to let her get away with it this time. “Not again,” said John, wondering how they would make that month’s rent. “We are already maxed out on our credit cards.” | |
The second example is mechanically correct, since it uses a separate paragraph to present each speaker’s turn advancing the conversation. But the narrative material between the direct quotes is mostly useless. |
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.
| |
Any of the above would work. |
John sat up and took a deep breath, knowing that his confrontation with Mary had to come now, or it would never come at all. “Wh– where are you going?” he stammered haltingly, staring vulnerably at the tattered Thomas the Tank Engine slippers Mary had given him so many years ago, in happier times. | |
Beware — a little detail goes a long way. Why would your reader bother to engage with the story, if the author carefully explains what each and every line means? |
Setting moves readers most when it contributes to an organic whole. So close your eyes and picture your characters within desert, jungle, or suburb–whichever setting shaped them. Imagining this helps balance location and characterization. Right from the start, view your characters inhabiting a distinct place. –– Laurel Yourke
Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.
| Our sojourn in the desert was an educational contrast with its parched heat, dust storms, and cloudless blue sky filled with the blinding hot sun. The rare thunderstorm was a cause for celebration as the dry cement tunnels of the aqueducts filled rapidly with rushing water. Great rivers of sand flowed around and through the metropolitan inroads of man’s progress in the greater Phoenix area, forcefully moved aside for concrete and steel structures. Palm trees hovered over our heads and saguaro cactuses saluted us with their thorny arms. |
Plot 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.
Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting. It takes trouble to turn the great themes of life into a story: birth, love, sex, work, and death. –Janet Burroway
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.
This is the turning point of the story–the most exciting or dramatic moment.
The crisis may be a recognition, a decision, or a resolution. The character understands what hasn’t been seen before, or realizes what must be done, or finally decides to do it. It’s when the worm turns. Timing is crucial. If the crisis occurs too early, readers will expect still another turning point. If it occurs too late, readers will get impatient–the character will seem rather thick.-Jerome Stern
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“).
The 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.
The Writer’s Block
Comprehensive Web site that offers solutions to beating writer’s block such as various exercises (not necessarily physical), advice from prolific writers, and how to know if you really have writer’s block.
Overcoming Writer’s Block
Precise, short list of ways to start writing again.
Learn through Schooling
Some online colleges and universities offer creative writing courses. Look for ones that offer creative writing courses that cover the plot and structure of short stories.
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 University
Jan 2007 — ongoing edits by Jerz
May 2008 — reformatted
Sep 2010 — tweaked Writer’s Block section
Mar 2011 — reformatted and further tweaked
Jun 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.
Archived discussion of “Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers”
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Thank you SO much! This is very helpful! Keep up the good work!
hi im gina and i just want to talk about my father he died when i was 16 months and i miss him alot everyday i wake up sad but then i say it alright i have a great family now that loves me see me and my mom lived in my grandfathers house (my dads dad) when i was very little and then my mom went to go buy a new car and thats when she feel in love with my step dad and when they got married i was happy for them but now as the years go by i think that ill just never forgive her for ruining the rest of my life and she didn't even ask me if i was ok with her marryinng him so she didn't only charge her life she also changed mine without my own permission and i can never forgive her for that and 2 years after they were married he told my mom that he has a daughter in louisianna and i HATE her she acts all prissy because her moms rich and stuff also she acts like shes the boss of my little half brother and sister she maybe older than them but not me one time i was so mad at her i pushed into the wall it felt so good another time was when i made her sleep in a chair sweet but i got in trouble for it but it was worth it totally but anyway i really wish i had my real dad oh and sorry there is no punction in here bye
so sad Gina
Why did you post that here??
Sorry, but the suggestion that "it’s much better to say “bubbled” or “smirked” or “chortled" is a poor one. Maybe these words will pass muster in certain genres (horror, perhaps). But why write down to your audience, in any case?
Thanks for your comment. My overall point is that something bland like "said happily" is a waste of words, when it's possible to choose a single, more precise word. I'm not sure that "chortled" is a step down from "said happily," but if any of the words I suggested don't fit the tone of your story, I'm sure you can come up with something better.
This was super helpful, and i am i game art and design student and am try to build my own game on the side, i have wonderful ideas, a setting and such, ust kinda need help starting the story off and building characters any help??
In creative writing, the general advice is that showing is more engaging than telling (but of course you have to focus on the most important stuff). In gaming, the general advice would be to make the player DO something (choose a weapon rather than a shield, sell a quest item rather than turn it in) rather than SHOW the player a cut scene or TELL a player through dialogue or text.
There's lots of scholarship on the role of story in video games. You might look up what Emily Short has to say on the topic.
omg this really helped me to write a short storie. i finally was able to write an interesting storie
HAHAHAHAHA irony much?
Seriously! I am so astonished at how many people can be so..dumb. I mean, if you want to write a story you have to learn basic grammar and English first.
Writing stories is a great way to stretch your skills. Serious writers will find out for themselves soon enough just how much grammar and spelling matter.
and others
thanks alot for making this website i think its really going to benifit me in the future
Thaxs so much Im 11 and this helped so much Im thiking of being a author!!!!Wish me luck!
kayla are u studying in P.Z.E.S
this really helped meh a lot with my assignment i am only 12 years old and i got a a+ on my history assignment thanks to this website thanks!
Thanx for ur help.
i have a school project to write a part of the play 'The Dear Departed' by Stanley Houghton in third person. I am a bit confused as I am not being able to innovate. The stuf s mostly like she said, he said etc. Please help.
Can you write the story from the point of view of a minor character, or describe in detail something the author only mentions briefly? See Matt Madden's Exercises in Style, a collection of comic pages that take a perfectly ordinary conversation between two people, and explores dozens of different ways to depict the same words. As you can see, it's possible to innovate a great deal even when some parts of the story are fixed. http://www.artbabe.com/exercises/exercises/
I couldn't write from the point of view of a minor as I had to write in third person. Yeah, but I mentioned in detail the small things, expanding situations and also introducing thoughts of the speakers a few times. Thnx a tonne for ypur help!!