Today we have a very fundamental but also a very important blog for you because we are going to talk about writing short stories.
We are going to bring you the 10 best tips you will ever get for writing great short stories that will leave an impact in the minds of your readers.
These are going to be easy tips created in such a way as to help anyone utilise them.
If you are a writer starting out or if you are not a writer and planning on writing your first book then this blog is going to be very helpful for you.
Let us start this blog from the very basics by understanding what is a short story, we can then move on to the other pressing needs.
This Is What a Short Story Is
The simplest way to define a short story is that it is a work of fiction and it is about one or more incidents that happen to a single or multiple characters and follow a single or multiple themes.
The thing that separates a short story from any other kind of story is that a short story is usually a few thousand words in length.
If we talk about the average then it is somewhere between 1,000 to 8,000 words and it is the kind of story that can be finished within a single hour and definitely a single day.
They are very much shorter than novels and they are of course shorter than novellas.
These Are the Key Elements of Short Stories
Plot
The first and most important element of any short story is the plot and it is the sequence of events that moves the story forward and it contains different sub-elements in the form of exposition, rising action as well as the climax and falling action and resolution.
You can call the plot the backbone of the story because it carries that entire story and it is all about the events that take place with the character as well as their efforts to solve them.
Setting
A plot cannot exist in a vacuum and there needs to be a time and place for the story and that is exactly what the setting of the story is.
While we do not really see a lot of detail in the setting in short stories but it can be seen in much more vivid detail when it comes to novels.
However, having a properly created setting is important to any kind of story and that is also the case with a short story where setting helps create the entire mode and theme of the story.
Characters
You can’t have a story without characters and that is exactly why this element of a short story is very important.
When it comes to characters, you are always going to have a primary character or a few primary characters with supporting characters that are there to provide structure to the main character.
The plot is going to revolve around the protagonist and there are also going to be antagonists as well as secondary characters and even background characters.
Theme
After we figure out everything about the plot and the setting and the characters, we must understand that every story follows a theme.
The theme is basically what the story is about and the theme can be about success and failure and it can be about human conditions and society or it can even be about very specific things like the great depression etc.
When we talk about a theme it is what the story is about and how the topic is developed. In order to convey the theme, you can maintain a theme and the characters are going to be associated with the theme and be influenced by the theme.
10 Best Tips for Writing Great Short Stories
Be An Expert at The Story
The first and most important tip about great short stories is that you need to write something that you are very acquainted with.
You need to create a story about something that is very common in your life or something that you are an expert at.
For example, if you are an expert at history then you can write a story that is set in historical times for example if you are highly interested in World War 2 then you can write a story about that.
This is the only way you can convincingly write a story by being involved in it yourself in some capacity or another and that is only possible if that story is in daily part of your life.
If you have a great story in mind and you are not sure whether you are going to pull it off then the only thing you can do is research the topic as much as possible.
Maintain A Daily Routine
The key to writing a good short story and in fact any kind of writing exercise is discipline because discipline is going to help you reach the end of the story.
If you are planning on writing your first short story and ultimately publishing it then you might not be a professional author.
This also means that you might have a different kind of job that is not related to writing and that is where we encounter a big problem.
A lot of talented people start their work very inspired and passionate but since they have other things to do in life, they completely put the story in backfoot.
This ultimately leads to negligence and this means the story never gets completed.
The way to solve this is to create a daily routine with a few hours completely dedicated to short story writing. Even if you do not come up with good ideas for the story, you should just sit down and think about the story and not do anything else at that time.
If you keep on practising this daily and pen down at least a few sentences or paragraphs, this will be the start of a routine that you can customise according to your needs and increase the time you delegate to story writing daily.
Always Follow the Theme
The thing about creating something out of our imagination is that it is very easy to get distracted from that primary idea and get into other ideas, the mind is like a tree with multiple branches.
That is why you must write down the central theme of the story somewhere near the writing desk so that you can focus on that singular theme all the time.
This is because unless you are willing to explore a story that is all about the human train of thought, it does not make sense to deviate from a singular theme.
You can of course expand that theme into different aspects of the story but you must make sure the story never gets derailed from the central theme.
You can also make sure that this does not happen with the help of a story outline and that is usually done with the case of longer stories like novels.
However, if you do not want to create an outline and just write down what comes to your mind, you must write down the central theme so that you can stick to those ideas throughout the story.
Work Towards the Underlying Message
Working towards the underlined message is similar to the theme but it is all about utilising all the multiple ideas of the story into a single point.
For example, your theme can be about poverty but the underlying message can be something completely different like working towards wealth or understanding those who are also poor.
In order to do that you must keep the theme or themes in mind and you must ensure those themes intersect with each other in the best web possible.
In addition to that, you must always keep your audience in mind so that when you write something you understand how it is going to be accepted by the audience.
The audience has no way to understand your train of thought and they are not able to look at your mind. The only way to ensure you are able to convey your message is to write it down.
That is why you must keep the central theme in mind when you start the work.
Don’t Forget the Hook
One of the most difficult things to do in a story is to keep the readers motivated and interested in the story.
This is much more difficult than people understand and it is actually very mathematical if done correctly and logically.
Your first hook starts with the title of the story and it should be something that should simply hook the audience into reading the story.
The second hook can be in the form of the first sentence of the story which should begin with something that makes people want to keep on reading.
You must follow that hook throughout the story so that the audience never loses interest because if they start to lose interest then that is the end of your writing career.
Strive For Realistic Dialogue
If you remember the first point then you are also going to remember that the best thing to do is to get inspired by things from your life.
That is also the case when you want to write realistic dialogue.
If you want your dialogue to be realistic then you must not try copying things you have read but instead, you must utilise the dialogues and tonality you encounter daily.
You can get inspiration from the people who are close to your life for example your friends or your family members and how they speak and you can get inspired from that tone of speaking.
One of the techniques you can utilise in this regard is to take some acting classes online and understand how actors deal with dialogue delivery.
If you try and grasp the idea of how actors say dialogues realistically then you can also get to the source of these dialogues so that you can create your own realistic dialogues.
Spend Good Time on Editing
You must spend as much time on writing as you do on editing because editing is where everything comes together.
If the writing is the preparation of a meal, then the editing is the actual cooking of that meal and you can go crazy during editing.
You can change anything you want and you can also keep things you might have planned to remove during the editing process.
If you are not confident about editing the manuscript you can also hire a professional to help you with the editing process.
The thing about editing is that people can choose to follow whatever technique they want during editing or they can follow traditional techniques like creating multiple drafts.
Start With a Few Characters
If this is your first time creating a short story then we would recommend you not to start with a lot of characters.
If you watch interviews of some of the most critically acclaimed writers in the world then they are also going to tell you the same thing.
It is that you need to start somewhere and then expand things from that point because if you start your short story with multiple characters then things can become confusing very soon.
Instead of doing that you can start with the protagonist and the antagonist and build your story around them.
We would even recommend you keep the final count of characters small so that your first experiment with a short story is successful.
The goal here is to write a short story and complete writing that short story instead of creating a masterpiece.
Always Show, Don’t Tell
If you are writing a story then you need to understand the journey of the reader because the reader does not know what is going to happen at the end of the story.
You can choose to have the reader go along with the story slow and steady and reveal things to the reader one by one at the right time.
Or you can make the mistake of telling them everything in the form of narration but that will defeat the whole purpose of the story.
That is why instead of telling them things, you need to show them things in the form of action as well as dialogue and changes in the story and even things like sensory changes.
Always Experiment
The last and most important thing to understand is to have fun with the story-writing experience and there are reasons for that.
If this is your first short story then this is something your family does not depend on and if you are a new author then you probably haven’t invested all your life’s worth into the publication of this story.
Since you have not taken any financial risks since you do not really have to create a masterpiece and you do not have fans that depend on you to create something amazing, you can do whatever you want.
That is why we always tell new writers to have fun with the story and to experiment with things.
This is something that you cannot really do once you become critically acclaimed and famous because once you start to feel the weight of expectations, experimentation goes out the window.
That is why we always are going to tell you to try out new things and to challenge yourself and see if it is working.
We hope this blog as my helpful for you to understand how to write a great short story and if you are still not sure how you can write it, we are here for you.
We are Ghostwriting India and we are one of the fastest-growing ghostwriters for hire agency in India and we will help you with all your writing needs.
All you need to do is to simply convey your vision and ideas to us and we will create a complete story out of it.
We welcome you to visit our website and check out everything we do because we do all kinds of content whether it is short stories or anything else related to creativity and writing.
