Pre-Thinking Your Short Story

Novels give you a lot of latitude. Think about it: you have time to develop characters, describe places, elaborate on plots and subplots, and explore philosophical questions. There’s a lot of luxury there: luxury of time, luxury of space.

Generally when you’re writing a novel, you’re not aware of the luxury you’re experiencing. It comes home to you, though, when you start thinking about writing shorter fiction. Suddenly you have to telescope everything: plot, drama, characters, background … and still make it sound good!

There are plenty of directions online for how to write a short story, some of them better than others. I’ll leave you to sort through them. In the meantime, though, here are some things to think about before you start writing:

• What is the point? Short stories have this in common with other pieces of writing — the eternal question is, so what? You may have great characters and a fabulous story arc, but unless there’s a compelling point, some sort of moral imperative, a point the reader will take away, the story won’t work.
• Focus on your opening line(s). Readers are less invested at the beginning of a short story — and are far more easily distracted — than they are once they’ve committed to a novel, so you need to grab them right away with a really riveting opening line.