Tips on Short Story Writing

Since I made my New Year’s Resolution to write more (it was actually to write everyday, but that’s not happening…), I’ve been writing a lot of short stories. It’s kind of difficult, since I tend to focus more on longer works. Next thing you know, I’ll be writing poems (just kidding)!

Anyway, I’ve submitted five short stories to contests this year, so I think I’ve had a little bit of practice writing them. Since I’ve finished my homework for the night, I figured I’d take the time to dissect them and maybe give some tips I’ve discovered along the way.

My first story was for a flash fiction contest, and the maximum word count was 150. My first draft was about 450 words. The funny thing is, it was a lot easier to get rid of the unnecessary stuff than I thought. Though I doubt it was an amazing story, it was a very useful exercise in editing, which I’ve done a lot of recently.

The second was an entry in the Highlight’s Fiction Contest, which mostly just made me want to cry. I usually write in a pretty simple way, without a lot of description or excessive vocabulary words, so I expected it to be much easier to write for children. It wasn’t. After I spent days trying to figure out what I was going to write about, I spent a couple more trying to figure out how to write it. What I finally learned was to do what I had with the first story and just write it. Put it on paper, and then you can take out the parts that are bad and add in some good ones. It’s much easier than trying to make it perfect the first time.

The third story was actually one I wrote over Christmas break, and after I let my mom read it, I learned that sometimes what you write makes no sense to other people. I had written it, so of course I understood what was happening, even if I didn’t spell it out. People reading it were confused, so I realized that the story wasn’t clear enough. It was in my head, but I needed to put it on paper too. Even though short stories are short, you still need to include the essentials. There are many details that can be left out, of course (see story number 5), but there some that must be mentioned, or at least alluded to.

Unfortunately for the fourth story, I’m not sure if I did what I’m about to advise you to do: choose an original topic, even if the prompt is given to you. For example, the contest I entered yesterday was a short story with the theme “love is dangerous”. My story was about a thief who finds out that her ex is now a policeman. I’m not sure if that’s original enough, or if it will blend in with all the other good girl/boy falls for a bad boy/girl stories. Of course, I just had the idea to write about an interracial couple struggling to hide their love during the Civil Rights movement. Why didn’t I think about this three days ago, before I entered the other story?

The fifth and most recent story is possibly the best. It’s a little longer than the others, and it actually has a coherent theme. This is going to sound vague, but I’m going to go ahead and say it because it will become clearer as I continue: short stories are all around you. It started with a sci-fi short story contest. I decided to write a story to enter, even though I’m hopeless at writing sci-fi. This is unfortunate, because it’s the one thing that I really wish I could write. Life is so frustrating. Anyway, the story was making me angry, so I chopped off the first ten pages and pressed on. Then I got busy with school and forgot about it. A few weeks ago, I noticed a flyer on a door about a student literary contest, and guess where my mind went? Straight to the story that I had hopelessly tried to make work a month ago.

Of course, some editing was needed, but I had already given it a great beginning. All I had to do was find an ending and change a few of the more specific details. It’s perfect–well, not really, but it is quite perfect for the contest since I just had it lying around (on my computer). I just have to hope that the English professors don’t mind my random sci-fi elements.

So, last but not least, find motivation. My motivation is entering contests. As you probably noticed, I only wrote one of these stories for just for the heck of it. The other four I wrote specifically for contests. This may seem difficult, but I try to think about it in terms of the end result.

What I would have had: 1 mediocre story

What I had now: Five very different stories, experience, and the chance to win something (which ranges from money to publication).

 

Hopefully I’ll be able to post some of my short stories online later, but I have to wait until most of the contests end first. Also, I need to come up with something to write for that sci-fi contest….

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