10 Tips for Short Stories

"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."

Contents

Get Started: Emergency Tips
Write a Catchy First Paragraph
Develop Your Characters
Choose a Point of View
Write Meaningful Dialogue
Use Setting and Context
Set up the Plot
Create Conflict and Tension
Build to a Crisis or a Climax
Deliver a Resolution

The above is the intro and contents taken directly from the article. You can click any of the links and be transported to the corresponding section, or you can CLICK HERE to start from the beginning!

So this article is freaking AWESOME. It gives great advice for full-length novels as well; all in all it is so detailed that it can be used in multiple formats...one of the commenters even mentioned that she got a good grade on a class paper!

There's not much I can really say about this, not because I'm at a loss for words...it is just such a complete guide that I can't do it justice. You just need to go there and discover it for yourself.  What I can say is that it's not just a paragraph of advice. It has EXAMPLES! Check out the slice below and you'll see what I mean.

2. Write a Catchy First Paragraph

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 and uninteresting.
The neighbor behind us practiced scream therapy in his shower almost every day.
The second sentence 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

Now...Stop reading this and go read THAT!!