Short Story Tips
So you want to write a story, but you don’t know where to start?
There are as many ways of approaching this as there are writers. But below are a
few thoughts which may nudge you closer to putting pen to paper, if only because
they help you clarify how you don’t want to do it.
What To Write About?
What excites you? What makes you angry? What makes you emotional? What fills you
with awe? These will be good starting points. Choose what you want to write
about.
Do you have an idea which makes you feel embarrassed about revealing too much of
yourself? Go for it. Chances are this is where your best writing will lie.
Writers’ Block
Writers’ block is, for me at least, all about motivation and confidence. I don’t
believe I can write. I avoid writing, because I think what I produce will be crap. I
can’t be bothered.
Tips:
· Activity breeds activity. Write something. Anything. Stream of consciousness. Or
pick a character and describe them doing some mundane daily task. Get inside their world, inside their head.
Give yourself a pat on the back for having written something. This is a step
forward compared to nothing.
· Look over what you’ve written and force yourself to find something positive
about it. Don’t be critical at first. Self doubt is your enemy. Confidence is a
self fulfilling prophecy. You CAN do this. Obviously not everybody is
Shakespeare, but you can write something that will make YOU feel good, and that
should be your primary aim.
· Very important: The best writers are not writers, they are editors. They write
unadulterated shite, and then they edit it. First drafts are rarely any good.
They’re not supposed to be. That’s what editing is for.
A Strategy For Getting Started
I just read "Story" by Robert McKee. It’s a brilliant book; I recommend it. This
is where I got the basic material for the next pieces of advice:
A short piece of creative writing doesn’t have to be a structured story, with a
beginning, a middle and an end. It might just be a stream of consciousness, or
descriptive prose about a place, a thought or a moment that has particularly
moved you. But if you like structure, then the following might help. Even if you
don’t, you might find it more useful than you would think, if only to clarify
what you don’t want to do.
It’s really helpful if you have a broad idea of what direction you’re moving in
before you start. Don’t shy away from this. If you consider the following
choices carefully, you’ll be halfway there before you even start, and it’ll flow
much more easily:
Choices:
1. Choose a premise, i.e. a sentence that begins “What if...?”
2. Choose a protagonist. It doesn’t have to be you. Somebody who you find
interesting, and whose choices you find interesting. See notes 1 and 2
below.
3. Choose an inciting incident. Something (ideally a crisis of sorts) which
happens to your protagonist near the start of the story, and plants a desire
in their heart.
4. What is your protagonist’s desire? The spine of your story becomes your
protagonist’s quest to achieve their desire. Are there any unconscious desires
which contradict the main desire? See note 3.
5. What state is your protagonist in at the beginning, and the end of the story?
You’ll get good dramatic effect if these are polar opposites. From happy to
sad, cynical to in love, or walking the street to roof running.
6. Are you trying to say something? If so, what? Ideally this will be a statement
which can be described as “The final state is positive/negative because of
[cause]”. The final state is as described in number 6, above. The cause is
what brought them from the beginning to the end of the story, expressed in
abstract terms.
7. What world do your characters inhabit? What are the politics (small p),
rituals and values of that world?
8. What will happen at the end? How will your protagonist end up where/how they
do? See notes 4 and 5.
9. What are the forces of antagonism which stand between your character and their
desire?
Notes:
1. Characters can be defined by lists of characteristics (job, history,
temperament, looks), but what will really define your character is what
choices they make under pressure. When the shit hits the fan, what do they do?
And remember, they don’t need to be heroes.
2. Another way to distinguish people is to describe how they react to each other.
Don’t tell us what you think of them. Tell us what she thinks of them,
and now you’ve revealed something about two characters at once.
3. This is only a short story. The desire doesn’t have to be complicated, but
there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be extreme. Explore the outer limits, even
- or especially - if it’s only the outer limits of inner consciousness.
4. If your protagonist comes up against unexpected obstacles, the story will keep
its pace and the reader will stay interested as they wonder how your
protagonist will get over each hurdle. These hurdles can be as subtle as you
like. They can just boil down to your protagonist’s inner demons. But don’t
always give the reader what they expect. Don’t always let the protagonist have
the expected reaction to each of their actions. In each situation, think “What
does the protagonist expect will happen? What’s the opposite of that?”
5. Aim to culminate at a climax where your protagonist faces the biggest crisis
of all, and where the resolution is unexpected, but makes the reader have a
flash of insight, as everything falls into place.
6. Protagonist is a bloody hard word to type on an ergonomic keyboard.
An Example:
1. Premise: “What if a pylon fell on someone’s house in a storm, burning it to
the ground and destroying all their most treasured possessions?”
2. Protagonist: This is someone scatty and disorganised, a hoarder who lived
surrounded by piles of paper end electronic gadgetry, both new and old.
3. Inciting Incident: The pylon falling on the house. The fire. Everything is
lost.
4. The protagonist’s desire: To replace what was lost. Their home was their
rabbit hole. They felt secure surrounded by their own special chaos. They need
to accumulate more stuff, and fast. Unconscious desire: to become free of
clutter. To lose the dependence on stuff. To not need it so desperately.
5. Start and end states: At the start, protagonist is bereft, homeless,
despairing. At the end they are still homeless, but have freed themselves of
the need for possessions. They have become a Buddhist monk, wandering the
world saving small fluffy animals from desperate peril. Ironically their
homelessness has now become positive instead of negative. They are happy.
6. What are you trying to say? “My character is happy with nothing, because the
human spirit is purest white, and our deepest desire is to fly with the
eagles”
7. What world do your characters inhabit? My characters inhabit a cloistered
world of gadget freaks competing over who can build the cleverest robot.
8. At the end my character will stare into the distance, on a hilltop, cuddling a
rabbit. They will have tried and failed to get compensation to buy new stuff.
They will have tried and failed to hoard more clutter, but all their piles
blow away in the wind or are tidied away by an over-zealous landlady. They
will have fallen in love with a Buddhist monk who teaches them the meaning of
life. The final crisis will come when they build a giant robot which goes out
of control and kidnaps the neighbour’s bunny. They will have had to choose
between the bunny and the robot. They will choose the bunny, and renounce all
worldly goods. They will set up a bunny sanctuary.
9. The forces of antagonism: The local electricity company, who refuse to cough
up. The robot will have been designed in an attempt to sabotage power
stations. The electric company stand between the protagonist and their
conscious desire. But the most fundamental force of antagonism is the
protagonist themself, who is preventing them from achieving inner peace. These
inner demons must be overcome.
Another Example:
1. Premise: “What if someone felt imprisoned by the tall buildings of the city
street?”
2. Protagonist: A claustrophobic dreamer.
3. Inciting Incident: They are walking down the street. They look up. All they
can see is wall, wall and more wall. They feel panicked and hemmed in.
4. The protagonist’s desire: Conscious: To find the sky. To move upwards.
Unconscious: To be grounded.
5. Start and end states: At the start, protagonist is panicky. At the end, they
are calm.
6. What are you trying to say? “My character is high, because the only way is
up.”
7. What world do your characters inhabit? The city street.
8. At the end my character will be high above the city, running across the
rooves. They will have got there by gradually scaling the outside of a tower
block. Ironically their new desire is to stay in the city, because nowhere
else would such contrasts be possible.
9. The forces of antagonism: Gravity. Sanity. Fear.
Finally, below is a list of suggested elements, for you to choose or ignore, mix
or match at your leisure. If you want, you can stick a pin in each list and work
with whatever you end up with.
Alternatively, you could write a story in which this picture represents the
Inciting Incident, the final Crisis, or the final Climax.
Premises:
“What if I grew an extra leg?”
“What if the sky was really the white of somebody’s eye?”
“What if fingers have feelings?”
“What if I woke up next to a dead cat?”
“What if there was world peace?”
“What if the music in my head went away?”
“What if I didn’t care?”
Protagonists:
A claustrophobic dreamer
A man with a tin foil hat on the tube. He says he can read your mind.
A woman with a spade.
A man who never does what he says.
A woman who is always wrong.
An irritating whiner
Inciting Incidents:
The sky falls on her head
The leg is growing out of her ear
The pencil talks
The door opens
The book is closed
The sun stops shining
George Bush rings you up
Worlds to Inhabit:
The inside of a spacehopper
The back of a stamp
The top of the world
Next door
The corner shop
The other side of...
The White House
The internet
A molehill
Endings:
And she never once said please.
Everything comes to she who waits.
On the back of a lorry.
On top of the world.
With flowers in her pubic hair.
Did you really want to hurt me?
Twas ever thus.
And then I woke up.
Why not?
And that’s why the woman with the bone gave the hat to the man in red.
The cat did it.
Forces of Antagonism:
Jealousy
Gravity
The CIA
Jeffrey Archer
A lost soul
Computers. All of them.
A lady in red
Sex
Mary Whitehouse
Love
Death
Your body
There are as many ways of approaching this as there are writers. But below are a
few thoughts which may nudge you closer to putting pen to paper, if only because
they help you clarify how you don’t want to do it.
What To Write About?
What excites you? What makes you angry? What makes you emotional? What fills you
with awe? These will be good starting points. Choose what you want to write
about.
Do you have an idea which makes you feel embarrassed about revealing too much of
yourself? Go for it. Chances are this is where your best writing will lie.
Writers’ Block
Writers’ block is, for me at least, all about motivation and confidence. I don’t
believe I can write. I avoid writing, because I think what I produce will be crap. I
can’t be bothered.
Tips:
· Activity breeds activity. Write something. Anything. Stream of consciousness. Or
pick a character and describe them doing some mundane daily task. Get inside their world, inside their head.
Give yourself a pat on the back for having written something. This is a step
forward compared to nothing.
· Look over what you’ve written and force yourself to find something positive
about it. Don’t be critical at first. Self doubt is your enemy. Confidence is a
self fulfilling prophecy. You CAN do this. Obviously not everybody is
Shakespeare, but you can write something that will make YOU feel good, and that
should be your primary aim.
· Very important: The best writers are not writers, they are editors. They write
unadulterated shite, and then they edit it. First drafts are rarely any good.
They’re not supposed to be. That’s what editing is for.
A Strategy For Getting Started
I just read "Story" by Robert McKee. It’s a brilliant book; I recommend it. This
is where I got the basic material for the next pieces of advice:
A short piece of creative writing doesn’t have to be a structured story, with a
beginning, a middle and an end. It might just be a stream of consciousness, or
descriptive prose about a place, a thought or a moment that has particularly
moved you. But if you like structure, then the following might help. Even if you
don’t, you might find it more useful than you would think, if only to clarify
what you don’t want to do.
It’s really helpful if you have a broad idea of what direction you’re moving in
before you start. Don’t shy away from this. If you consider the following
choices carefully, you’ll be halfway there before you even start, and it’ll flow
much more easily:
Choices:
1. Choose a premise, i.e. a sentence that begins “What if...?”
2. Choose a protagonist. It doesn’t have to be you. Somebody who you find
interesting, and whose choices you find interesting. See notes 1 and 2
below.
3. Choose an inciting incident. Something (ideally a crisis of sorts) which
happens to your protagonist near the start of the story, and plants a desire
in their heart.
4. What is your protagonist’s desire? The spine of your story becomes your
protagonist’s quest to achieve their desire. Are there any unconscious desires
which contradict the main desire? See note 3.
5. What state is your protagonist in at the beginning, and the end of the story?
You’ll get good dramatic effect if these are polar opposites. From happy to
sad, cynical to in love, or walking the street to roof running.
6. Are you trying to say something? If so, what? Ideally this will be a statement
which can be described as “The final state is positive/negative because of
[cause]”. The final state is as described in number 6, above. The cause is
what brought them from the beginning to the end of the story, expressed in
abstract terms.
rituals and values of that world?
do? See notes 4 and 5.
desire?
Notes:
1. Characters can be defined by lists of characteristics (job, history,
temperament, looks), but what will really define your character is what
choices they make under pressure. When the shit hits the fan, what do they do?
And remember, they don’t need to be heroes.
2. Another way to distinguish people is to describe how they react to each other.
Don’t tell us what you think of them. Tell us what she thinks of them,
and now you’ve revealed something about two characters at once.
3. This is only a short story. The desire doesn’t have to be complicated, but
there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be extreme. Explore the outer limits, even
- or especially - if it’s only the outer limits of inner consciousness.
4. If your protagonist comes up against unexpected obstacles, the story will keep
its pace and the reader will stay interested as they wonder how your
protagonist will get over each hurdle. These hurdles can be as subtle as you
like. They can just boil down to your protagonist’s inner demons. But don’t
always give the reader what they expect. Don’t always let the protagonist have
the expected reaction to each of their actions. In each situation, think “What
does the protagonist expect will happen? What’s the opposite of that?”
5. Aim to culminate at a climax where your protagonist faces the biggest crisis
of all, and where the resolution is unexpected, but makes the reader have a
flash of insight, as everything falls into place.
6. Protagonist is a bloody hard word to type on an ergonomic keyboard.
An Example:
1. Premise: “What if a pylon fell on someone’s house in a storm, burning it to
the ground and destroying all their most treasured possessions?”
2. Protagonist: This is someone scatty and disorganised, a hoarder who lived
surrounded by piles of paper end electronic gadgetry, both new and old.
3. Inciting Incident: The pylon falling on the house. The fire. Everything is
lost.
4. The protagonist’s desire: To replace what was lost. Their home was their
rabbit hole. They felt secure surrounded by their own special chaos. They need
to accumulate more stuff, and fast. Unconscious desire: to become free of
clutter. To lose the dependence on stuff. To not need it so desperately.
5. Start and end states: At the start, protagonist is bereft, homeless,
despairing. At the end they are still homeless, but have freed themselves of
the need for possessions. They have become a Buddhist monk, wandering the
world saving small fluffy animals from desperate peril. Ironically their
homelessness has now become positive instead of negative. They are happy.
6. What are you trying to say? “My character is happy with nothing, because the
human spirit is purest white, and our deepest desire is to fly with the
eagles”
7. What world do your characters inhabit? My characters inhabit a cloistered
world of gadget freaks competing over who can build the cleverest robot.
8. At the end my character will stare into the distance, on a hilltop, cuddling a
rabbit. They will have tried and failed to get compensation to buy new stuff.
They will have tried and failed to hoard more clutter, but all their piles
blow away in the wind or are tidied away by an over-zealous landlady. They
will have fallen in love with a Buddhist monk who teaches them the meaning of
life. The final crisis will come when they build a giant robot which goes out
of control and kidnaps the neighbour’s bunny. They will have had to choose
between the bunny and the robot. They will choose the bunny, and renounce all
worldly goods. They will set up a bunny sanctuary.
9. The forces of antagonism: The local electricity company, who refuse to cough
up. The robot will have been designed in an attempt to sabotage power
stations. The electric company stand between the protagonist and their
conscious desire. But the most fundamental force of antagonism is the
protagonist themself, who is preventing them from achieving inner peace. These
inner demons must be overcome.
Another Example:
1. Premise: “What if someone felt imprisoned by the tall buildings of the city
street?”
2. Protagonist: A claustrophobic dreamer.
3. Inciting Incident: They are walking down the street. They look up. All they
can see is wall, wall and more wall. They feel panicked and hemmed in.
4. The protagonist’s desire: Conscious: To find the sky. To move upwards.
Unconscious: To be grounded.
5. Start and end states: At the start, protagonist is panicky. At the end, they
are calm.
6. What are you trying to say? “My character is high, because the only way is
up.”
7. What world do your characters inhabit? The city street.
8. At the end my character will be high above the city, running across the
rooves. They will have got there by gradually scaling the outside of a tower
block. Ironically their new desire is to stay in the city, because nowhere
else would such contrasts be possible.
9. The forces of antagonism: Gravity. Sanity. Fear.
Finally, below is a list of suggested elements, for you to choose or ignore, mix
or match at your leisure. If you want, you can stick a pin in each list and work
with whatever you end up with.
Alternatively, you could write a story in which this picture represents the
Inciting Incident, the final Crisis, or the final Climax.
Premises:
“What if I grew an extra leg?”
“What if the sky was really the white of somebody’s eye?”
“What if fingers have feelings?”
“What if I woke up next to a dead cat?”
“What if there was world peace?”
“What if the music in my head went away?”
“What if I didn’t care?”
Protagonists:
A claustrophobic dreamer
A man with a tin foil hat on the tube. He says he can read your mind.
A woman with a spade.
A man who never does what he says.
A woman who is always wrong.
An irritating whiner
Inciting Incidents:
The sky falls on her head
The leg is growing out of her ear
The pencil talks
The door opens
The book is closed
The sun stops shining
George Bush rings you up
Worlds to Inhabit:
The inside of a spacehopper
The back of a stamp
The top of the world
Next door
The corner shop
The other side of...
The White House
The internet
A molehill
Endings:
And she never once said please.
Everything comes to she who waits.
On the back of a lorry.
On top of the world.
With flowers in her pubic hair.
Did you really want to hurt me?
Twas ever thus.
And then I woke up.
Why not?
And that’s why the woman with the bone gave the hat to the man in red.
The cat did it.
Forces of Antagonism:
Jealousy
Gravity
The CIA
Jeffrey Archer
A lost soul
Computers. All of them.
A lady in red
Sex
Mary Whitehouse
Love
Death
Your body