Tips: Writing Short Stories

As you're thinking about penning your American folk tales, you might take a moment to read through this tip sheet from Seton Hill on crafting short stories. Here are some salient excerpts:

What Is a Short Story?
A short story begins as close to the conclusion as possible, and grabs the reader from the very first line. It conserves character and scenes, typically focuses on just one problem, and drives towards a sudden, unexpected revelation.

Write a Catchy First Paragraph
In today's fast-moving world, the first sentence of your short story 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.

Choose a Point-of-View
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.

Set Up the Plot
Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.

• Explosion or "Hook." A thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that grabs the reader's attention right away.
• Conflict. A character versus the internal self or an external something or someone.
• Exposition. Background information required for seeing the characters in context.
• Complication. One or more problems that keep a character from their intended goal.
• Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue, that joins paragraphs and scenes together.
• Flashback. Remembering something that happened before the short story takes place.
• Climax. When the rising action of the story reaches the peak.
• Falling Action. Releasing the action of the story after the climax.
• Resolution. When the internal or external conflict is resolve.

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.

• Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.
• Empowerment. Give both sides options.
• Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.
• Causality. Hold fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks often reap rewards.
• Surprise. Provide sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in advance.
• Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).
• Insight. Reveal something about human nature.
• Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.
• High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction.

Build a Crisis or Climax
This 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").

Find a Resolution
This is 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.

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