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Tips for short story writing: Up to a challenge? Pull out your keyboard and give it a shot

All right, today's the big day. I'm offering you some information to work with and inviting you to write a short story. When you're done, put it on your blog or web site and link to it with a comment here. Or if you don't want to post a short story and link to it, simply write a comment here and include the opening sentence or paragraph to your completed story for us to read.

So, here we go. You're welcome to use any of the character sketch information I've put here under the "Short Stories" category. You're welcome to use the "hook" sentence I posted yesterday under "Short Stories." And I'll give you one more hook you're welcome to use if you'd like. Here it is:

""I didn't see that," she said softly. The stars were rising all around her and she was amazed that she'd missed such an obvious solution.

Focus your story on a single character, a single event, and a good hook. Keep it within our discussed length guidelines, 1,500-5,000 words. Remember, I said "focus" on short and sweet, but you can have secondary characters and some background incidents/information -- but keep the focus of the story on a single character and a single action or event.

I honestly have no prize I can offer you as incentive. Except this: I will be happy to read the complete story and offer a suggestion or two for the one I deem "the best" or "the winner."

Give it a shot. And, as I said before, you're welcome to use this exercise to write and sell a short story, using any of the characters, suggestions, hooks, anything else I've written about under this "Short Stories" category.

Let us see what you can do.

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February 6, 2008 | Filed Under Short Stories, Writing Tips | Leave a Comment 

Tips for writing short stories — Hooks: What are they and how do you use them?

I know it sounds obvious: The "hook" is the opening sentence or paragraph of your story and it is supposed to draw your reader's interest, get them reading and, hopefully, keep them reading.

Novel openings, or "hooks," might be a paragraph or two long and involve setting a scene and/or setting up the background to the story. But short stories are -- remember? -- SHORT, and have little time, space, or patience for lengthy scene setting or background information.

Here's an example of a short-story hook:

"She licked the sweat that was beading on his upper lip. He smiled again. It was another one of those days."

I'm not asking for feedback on this hook. But, as always, I welcome feedback on anything I writer here, or on comments anyone makes here. I simply offer that to let you think about what might be going on, what you might do with the two characters there, and how you would develop this into a story.

Most of all, I want you to see a couple of things about "the hook" and how to use it.

1. Some action or person involved paints an immediate picture. In this case, I intended to grab your interest with the verbs: licked and smiled. What pictures do those actions raise in your mind? What would you expect to happen next?

2. That immediate mental picture should be strong enough to stimulate the reader to further mental pictures. When you reader reaches the point of wondering what happens next, he will continue reading and your hook has worked.

3. The hook is ambiguous enough to allow for more than one story line. For example:

Story One: There is sexual tension in the scene and it turns into something about the relationship between the man and woman.

Story Two: The man is being held captive by the woman and the two turn out to be mortal enemies.

Story Three: The man is holding the woman captive and the two turn out to be mortal enemies.

Story Four: The two of them are actors in a school play. The man has hidden feelings for the woman which develop as the story goes on. It's sort of a romantic comedy.

Really, though, all that's pretty much off the cuff, so my ideas haven't really developed. But you get the picture: The hook grabs your reader without giving away anything, really, about the nature and purpose of the story.

One last thought about hooks: Finding the "real" hook for your story can be frustrating. One little trick I've used successfully is to try for my best "hook" sentence or paragraph, and write as tightly as possible a gripping, "grabber" scene or two. Then I pick the point of greatest action or tension in the scene, rewrite as necessary, and make THAT the opening sentence or paragraph of my story. Very often, starting your story in the middle of a scene or middle of the action, gives you the best hook.

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February 5, 2008 | Filed Under Short Stories, Writing and Life | Leave a Comment 

Tips for writing short stories — Focus on a single character

Jill is 21 years old, just over 5' 3" tall, 130 pounds, short blond hair, blue eyes, lopsided smile which she compensates for by leaning her head slightly to the right when she smiles. It's a pretty smile, made even more charming by a very slight but noticeable gap in her two front teeth. She was born with a club foot condition on her right foot, and is very self-conscious about the limp it gives her and the harassment she went through when she was a child. One week previously, she was brutally dumped by Andrew, a 23-year-old she was certain she would be marrying. He was extremely cruel and let her know that he'd been intimate with Jill's best friend for the six months or so before the dumping.

Think you could take that information and write a short story with Jill as the central character? Would you make mention of Andrew? How about Jill's nameless best friend?

What you have here is a character. Or rather, the beginnings of a character. You know something about how she looks and some of the circumstances which have shaped her life -- but very little else. In order to write a short story with the focus on Jill, you really need to know her better -- but you might not even use all of the information you have when you write the story. Much of what you would do has to do with the last post regarding short stories: You need to have a single incident or event happening to Jill or involving Jill in order to put together a story.

You also need a "hook," an opening that captures your readers, pulling them into the story from the first word and, hopefully, making them care enough to continue reading.

So coming up, before we put all these little exercises in short story writing together, we're going to think a little bit about hooks -- what they are and how to find them.

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February 4, 2008 | Filed Under Short Stories | Leave a Comment 

Tips for writing short stories: Focus on a single action or event

As part of the "short" in short stories, it's important to focus your story on a single action or event in a character's life. That doesn't mean you won't need background ("backfill") for your story -- it simply means making your entire story focus on one action or event and using the background material sparingly if at all.

If you know, for example, that your character happens to be partial to the color green, it may help you understand her better, or at least make her more human in your mind and therefore help you convey her "realness" to readers. In a novel, you might even find a way to make her preference for green into a significant plot twist or foreshadowing. But in a short-story, unless the tale involved something green, you probably wouldn't even tell or show your readers anything about the character's love of green.

So, focus entirely on a single circumstance, or even, or point of action when you build your short story. I'll have more to say about this in a future post.

What I'm planning to do regarding these posts on short stories is to cover a few tips -- some probably obvious, some hopefully not so obvious -- about the "how-tos" of doing short stories. Then I'm going to offer you a character or two, a situation, an opening sentence, and ask you to write an opening paragraph that you would come up with using those elements to create a short story.

Oh, and of course, you're welcome to use the results to write your own short story if you wish.

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February 4, 2008 | Filed Under Short Stories, Writing Tips | Leave a Comment 

Tips for writing short stories: ‘Short’ is the key word

By definition, short stories are, well, short. Most magazine writing guidelines or anthology editors I'm acquainted with would consider a short story to be no longer than 1,500-5,000 words (that would be perhaps 5-20 manuscript pages). I have seen what I would consider to be "novellas" running to maybe 40,000-50,000 words referred to as "short stories." For our purposes I'll be discussing stories which run no more than 5,000 words.

(I've never tried it, but I've heard of online "flash fiction" markets out there which publish well-crafted, single paragraphs. That's intriguing, but I don't know whether I would spend much time on it, so I probably won't discuss it here unless you express special interest.)

The key word, as I've suggested in my title and opening sentence is "short." Short stories must by nature be extremely focused. The setting, action, conflicts, and characters demand brevity. So my number one "tip" for writing short stories is this: Focus on a single situation or story element.

By contrast, a novel lets you explore major themes in a broad way. There's a danger, of course, that you'll ramble and get "off topic" in a novel. But that can work. You have room and reason to roam in a novel.

Not in a short story. You must focus on a single point in time or event in a character's life. Put your character into the situation, show the conflict, and resolve it. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Next, I'll suggest some ways you can do that. Briefly. It's about short stories.

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February 3, 2008 | Filed Under Short Stories, Writing Tips | Leave a Comment