Short Stories are a deceptive medium.

Why?

It’s because it’s short that you need to write with intense focus. Your goal is to capture the audience and tell a story that evokes a range of emotions. In novels, this task is easier due to a larger word limit that allows for more detailed descriptions. However, in short stories, it becomes a challenge.

It is commonly believed that writing short stories is easy. However, when people write without careful thought, short stories often end up feeling empty and poorly executed.

This is why we have put together a guide that provides useful advice to make your short story more captivating, from finding the best short story ideas to refining your final version. Whether you’re new to writing or looking to enhance your skills, these tips can help make your story memorable. So, let’s get started!

Key Takeaways

• Begin with a strong idea that sparks interest and develops into a captivating plot.
• Create characters with relatable emotions, flaws, and experiences, using imperfect characters with specific goals to make them immortal in readers’ minds.
• Define the setting of the story to add life, realism, and character emotions, enhancing the tone and evoking real feelings in readers.
• Create conflicts and problems in a short story to keep readers engaged, as they may seem too good to be true without them.
• Decide the right point of view (POV) of a storyline to influence the reader’s experience with the story’s events and characters, thereby influencing the overall narrative.
• Using dialogue in short stories creates a realistic image of characters, revealing their personality, relationships, and feelings, aiding readers in understanding their feelings, desires, and interrelations.
• Build tension through rising conflict, which refers to events preceding the main story’s main conflict, ensuring they eagerly anticipate the next action.
• Edit your first draft and polish it by being precise, simplifying, clarifying, and being more descriptive.

1. Begin it with a Strong Idea

If you want your short story to turn out powerful and imprint in readers’ minds, always begin with an impactful and strong idea. Choose a simple and effective idea that people relate to, or that ignites their interest in something big that may be related to that. However, the idea doesn’t have to be complex as it may not catch the attention of potential readers.

Keep your ideas simple. Try to make them powerful with everyday moments or use emotions like hope, love, fear, and more. In short, the main concept of your short story has to be interesting and should develop the plot into something captivating.

For Example, in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”:

“They passed by an old family graveyard, the long fingers of the dead clawing through the soil in the grandmother’s imagination. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if that fellow, The Misfit, caught us?’ she said, mostly to herself.”

The story begins with a simple concept about the family road trip. However, the grandmother’s casual remark about the criminal, The Misfit, changes the narrative. This shows the smooth shift from a simple beginning transforming into something horrific. By using everyday scenarios, this story revolves around fate, morality, and human nature.

To build a strong idea for your short story, start by thinking of a character, situation, or moment that (you think) can attract readers’ attention. It can be a regret, a victory, a childhood flashback, or an overheard conversation.

Remember: your idea should give you some feelings while reading. It must spark your curiosity, cause you to feel uneasy, or excite you.

2. Build Simple and Relatable Characters

Do you know how readers connect with your short story? Or if you are wondering how to write a story that stays in the minds of people – the answer is strong characters.

When readers encounter a character sharing their emotions, flaws, and experiences, if you want your characters to be immortal in readers’ minds, try to make it a little imperfect (as heroic and ordinary characters don’t engage readers). Characters with little imperfections and concerns are likely to stick in people’s minds. To make your character more relatable to the audience, you must write his flaws and specific goals.

We can take an example from “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, one of the best short stories of all time, where the main character finds it awkward to spend time with his wife’s blind friend.

“I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I wanted to know… But my wife told me I’d be rude if I didn’t sit and chat with him for a while.”

In this passage, the writer captures the anxiety and social awkwardness of the main character. The unease and hesitation make the character realistic as it is normal for (all of) us to experience hesitancy with few individuals in social situations.

Here’s how you can add the element of relatability to your characters in your short story:

• Add clear desires with achievable goals to promote motivation.
• Discuss the flaws and fears of making it natural, just like real life.
• Incorporate events, gestures, or conversations to show their struggles.

3. Describe the Surrounding

A well-defined setting gives the short story life and draws readers into the action. The story’s environment enhances its tone and lends it a hint of realism. You may use it to convey the feelings of your characters instead of just stating where the event takes place.

For example, to convey a character’s work routine, describing a small town with bustling highways can effectively evoke genuine emotions in readers.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman used an isolated home to reflect the main character’s loneliness. He added details of the wallpaper in her room that show the troubled mind state of the character. Have a look!

“The wallpaper, in fact, was a shade of sickly yellow. It wasn’t just ugly; it seemed alive, bulging and twisting around her, tightening its hold.”

Here, the sickly yellow wallpaper describes two things: her unsettled psyche and her growing nervousness. At one moment, the writer captures the character’s feeling of isolation. However, the detailed description of the wallpaper shows how the surrounding impacts a character.

Here are a few tips to make your setting work in your short story:

• Give an eye to detail on small and simple things like colors or sound to make the place feel real.
• Add sensory elements to make the reader feel (as if) they are there with the character.
• Align the setting and the character’s mood in the story. For example:

1. You can talk about busy roads to reflect the chaotic life.
2. The dark and empty spaces are perfect for defining isolation and loneliness (just like we discussed above).
3. Talking about stormy and thunder weather symbolizes the character’s inner traumas and emotional state.

4. Add an Engaging Conflict

What if you read a short story with nothing wrong in it, just happy, smooth characters? How would you find it? Boring, right? Without problems, your story may appear too good to be true, which may feel flat to the readers.

This is why creating challenges and problems in a short story is important to keep the readers hooked. However, it’s not necessary to add conflicts in terms of fighting instead, you can use it in many forms:

• Personal Regret (Guilt)
• Internal Struggles
• A dispute between characters
• Confrontation with societal standards
• The disasters of nature
• Battle with Fate

No matter how and what type of conflict you add to your short story, it must be engaging enough to keep the reader glued (with curiosity) to the outcome.

A good example from a short story is:

“Harrison tore the handicaps off his body, breaking free of the chains and weights they used to keep him ‘equal’ to everyone else.”

This passage is from “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, in which he describes the clash of an individual with society. In this story, the main character, Harrison, is forced to be restrained with weight and shackles as the government assigns handicaps for everyone to appear the same.

However, the act of disobedience is the conflict in the story that reflects Harrison’s desire for freedom. The story revolves around the need for freedom and the clash of controlling society. However, this message makes the readers tense, adds weight to the story, and drives the plot, which takes the reader to the end.

Always remember that conflict is known as the heart of every story.

Struggling to create a captivating conflict in your short story? Here is what you should do:

• Force difficult situations and decisions that challenge the personal beliefs of your characters.
• Drag the conflict a little so that it could lead to an end where the character overcomes the problem.
• Ensure that your conflict has meaning, as it must make outcomes.

5. Decide the POV of Your Short Story

The point of view is important in any narrative as it determines how it appears to the reader. The POV of your storyline will decide the reader’s experience with the story events and characters. This lets you decide. To master this, the professional book writing services suggests to work on these questions:

• How much information do you want to share?
• Whose (character’s) thought readers can access?
• How do you want to present the events in the story?

For example, in J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” he uses first-person POV to convey the characters’ inner thoughts directly.

“I’m not going to tell you my whole life story or anything, but I’ll start with the part where things went wrong.”

The story begins with these lines holding a glimpse of Holden’s voice in the reader’s mind from the start.

This first-person narrative adds a personal touch that strengthens the bond between the readers and Holden (the character). This direct convey of emotions makes the story more authentic and relatable. The lines are a bit casual and sarcastic, establishing the tone of the remaining story. Since the readers are seeing everything from Holden’s perspective, they can feel the thoughts and frustrations of the character closely.

Here are different perspectives you can add to your short story:

• First-Person POV

Narrator is the main character who expresses his/her thoughts to the readers via dialogue.

• Second-Person POV

In this narrator talks to the reader and uses “you” to involve the reader in the story directly.

• Third-Person Limited POV

Narrator knows only one character’s thoughts and feelings to create a close and focused connection to it.

• Third-Person Objective POV

The narrator talks about events without sharing the inner thoughts of the characters, creating a detached tone.

Selecting the appropriate point of view helps you better direct your reader’s experience. This can help your narrative stick in their memories and increase their sense of connection to it.

6. Revel Personality with Dialogues

Dialogues are an important short story element. You can create a real image of your characters in the reader’s mind without direct description. Their personality, relationships, and feelings are disclosed during the conversation between characters.

The dialogue in conversations in a short story helps the readers to understand the characters better: how they feel, what they want, and their interrelations.

In “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, he clears the relationship between two characters.

“‘Tell me about the rabbits, George.’

‘We’ll have a little house and a couple of acres,’ George said. ‘And you’ll get to tend the rabbits.’”

In these words, the simple words of Lennie reveals his innocent personality, while George’s responses show his protective role.

Through this exchange of words, readers can feel the warmth of their bond without any direct explanation.

Here’s how you can use dialogue effectively in your short story:

• Write Realistic conversations: Add dialogues that people naturally speak to avoid formal language with a nod to your character.
• Add Emotions: Use dialogue to reveal the inner life of characters. Rather than stating that the character is angry, illustrate it by using brief and blunt sentences and circumstances.
• Maintain Contrasting Element: Different characters should have different ways of talking. A shy character can talk in a few words, while a confident one, on the other hand, can spin things out of his speech and make it very detailed.

Through genuine and lively dialogue, characters get to be themselves for readers who peek into their personalities and relationships. It helps to bring your short story to life and allows readers to connect with the characters on an emotional level.

7. Build Curiosity that Leads to Unforgettable Climax

You must build up a little tension before concluding to keep the reader hooked till the end. The rising conflict is the collective term for the conflicts and events that come before the primary conflict of the tale. This movement keeps readers interested as they wait for the next thing to happen in the short story.

In “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry, the writer lets the tension grow as Della is in a dilemma about whether to sell her hair or buy her husband a gift.

“She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present.”

This gift, on the one hand, shows her love for her husband, but on the other hand, it imposes serious doubts. These sentences convey Della’s hopelessness and show how she is wrestling with her choices. Moreover, it creates a sense of suspense for the readers and makes them emotionally involved; they want Della’s sacrifice to be worth it.

Then comes the climax, an endpoint of all scenes, which has been building pressure in the short story.

In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the climax of the story shocks the readers as they become aware of the nature of the lottery.

“‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”

This intense line leaves a lasting impact on readers by revealing the dark twist.

Here are a few tips that will help you drag tension with a solid climax in your short story:

• Introduce little obstacles that drive characters to the limit by using little conflicts.
• As the story progresses, make the decisions or events seem more important than the last one.
• Keep the readers guessing by making it seem like certain endings may be achieved but also remain unsettled.

8. Edit your Draft and Get it Proofread

Once you finish your first draft, make sure you go through it and do some editing and polishing. Editing means making your short story

shine by being precise in every word, Simplifying, clarifying, and trying to be more descriptive. For example, if your draft has a line like:

Your Sentence: She walked very slowly across the dark and empty room.

Improvised Sentence: She crept across the dark room.

The revised sentence is more concise yet reflects the same feeling of suspense but has a bigger impact. During this process, ensure that each phrase and paragraph advances the storyline or strengthens the story’s tone.

When editing, minimize complex words and ask yourself if each line conveys what you want. For example, change “She felt very sad and disappointed” to “She slumped, feeling empty.”

Little changes like these can make your story livelier and holding. Don’t forget to seek feedback on your final draft. Through sharing your short story with family and friends, you can get fresh eyes on your work. Other people may find out if there is any plot hole, unclear description, or parts or whether the story slows down. It is also useful to ask specific questions like “Did you feel connected to the main character?” or “Was the ending satisfying?” to get real feedback.

• Start by dealing with the structure and the main ideas. Then, go on to sentence-level editing.
• Feedback from other people sometimes addresses those points that you may miss.
• Read your story aloud so you can notice the blunders and improve its readability.

The process of editing and receiving feedback takes your story to the next level. This process makes your story clear, strong, and more engaging to the readers.

Wrap up

To sum up, writing a short story is simpler when you understand how to organize it. By selecting the right viewpoint, including believable conversations, and creating tension, you can keep readers engaged until the very end. Making final adjustments and getting feedback can greatly improve how smoothly your story reads.

These basic methods help create stories that are easy to relate to and leave readers eager for more. With practice and focus on details, you can make your ideas come to life in a way that really resonates with readers. Enjoy the writing journey and see your stories come to life!

FAQs

How do you make your characters real?

Write your characters by describing clear personality, past traumas, and future goals. Show their emotions through their actions and dialogue rather than just describing.

How do you make your dialogue sound natural?

Professional ebook writing services suggest writing dialogue just like you speak naturally. Keep it a bit informal but true to the character’s personality. It is best practice to use dialogue to reveal the character’s personality and emotions without description.

What’s the best way to convey a character’s emotions?

Make use of complex gestures, body language, and speech. For example, instead of writing “She was nervous,” write it like “show was trapping her feet while looking away.”

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Meet the Author

Hi My name is Micheal Adams, When I am not watching horror movies and helping my kids with homework or reading my favorite fantasy/supernatural novels – I’m writing to guide aspiring authors. I focus on exploring and simplifying both the technical aspects and the often-overlooked details of book writing and publishing so I can empower new writers to climb the Amazon bestseller list and connect with more readers.