Clever Dick's Tips For Short Stories

 

1) Setting

2) Introducing the hook

3) Pacing

4) Introducing characters (optional)

 

Setting:

When writing a short story, words are obviously at a premium. You don't have much room to work in, and you need to get your points across efficiently because of this fact. To that end, the first priority is to set the scene. This can be achieved through a simple description that tells the reader where the events are taking place and what it looks like. This is doubly efficient as it counts as description and exposition!

 

>The filtered sunlight fell onto the mossy forest floor, coloured wonderful shades of orange by the autumn leaves.

 

This one sentence achieves three things: description, setting time and setting location. This is what you should endeavour to do in most, if not all of your sentences. Try to hit as many points as possible at once for maximum efficiency.

 

Introducing the hook:

People aren't machines. They use their own time and effort to read these things, and so their readership is valuable. To that end, you need to tell them VERY quickly why they should care about your story. It's not enough to love your story and pour your heart and soul into it. You can waffle on at length and not interest a single person with it. The true way to get people to read is to ask yourself this question:

 

>"What makes my story different?"

 

This is actually quite a big question in and of itself. To answer it you need various pieces of information. This requires asking more questions:

 

>"What has already been done?"

>"What is different?"

>"Is my story therefore innovative?"

>"Have I shown my innovation in my introduction?"

 

This is the key point that I see a lot of new writers fail to understand or consider, and why I try to direct writers away from using clichés and backstory. If it's been done before, you won't attract people.

 

At the same time as trying to convince people that you are worth their time, you also have to make sure that you are concise. People don't like to filter through massive amounts of backstory that possibly don't amount to anything. The best thing to do is to introduce information when it is actually relevant. Sure, some worldbuilding needs to be done whenever you have a new story, but feeding all the required information to a reader at the start of the story is really off-putting. Often new writers will start telling their story while Anon is on Earth, where none of the information is actually relevant to character building or explaining Anon's actions. Don't do that.

 

In addition to that, sometimes in short stories being vague is a strength. For example, in most of these stories we never say what Anon looks like. That may be a special case example, since the real purpose of leaving out Anon's looks is to let the reader relate to him more, but it goes to show that sometimes details are simply best left out. You need to basically give the reader the real meat of the story and leave out some of the extra garnish until it's relevant. Some of the best short stories are the ones where no information is given about superfluous details like looks, or even names!

 

But all that brevity needs to be tempered with wisdom. You need to actually feed the reader some information, and that is where character attachment and goal introduction comes in.

 

In addition to your innovative concept that you have for your brand new short story, you need to introduce characters that have depth and goals for them. These goals can come from the conflict of the story. The default goal in Flutterrape is that Anon wants to avoid getting raped. That assumption works well for the short story format here. If you're working away from the archetype, you need to actually state these goals.

 

Pacing:

I've already talked about some of this in the last part, but this is the real section for it. Pacing is a big part of writing short stories. Being concise is a definite skill that will help you write better.

 

One of the big errors that I see new writers make is that they dump exposition. I talked about this in the previous part, but I'll reiterate it here. Introduce information when it is relevant. Don't dump exposition in large chunks. If you do, try to do it through plot devices or dialogue so that the reader learns things at the same time as the main character.

 

The difference between short stories and long stories is obviously the length, so that is why you need to cut out the fluff. You can't waffle on in a short story. Flowery language is NOT your friend. Your aim is to deliver information in a natural but efficient way. You need to keep that in mind.

 

Be precise. Be concise. [spoiler]And have a plan to kill everyone you meet.[/spoiler]

 

Introducing Characters:

Characters are tricky to fit in short stories. Good characters have depth to them, which takes a while to actually express. With the premium on words, you need to decide how much information the reader NEEDS; Not how much you want to give, but how much is necessary. You need to introduce it in a way that makes it relevant to the storyline too. I mark this optional due to what I said earlier. Some short stories are massive successes despite very little character elucidation. It's a matter of knowing what to give and what to hold back.

 

That's my advice. This is what I learned at school and learned through my writing and reading in these threads. I hope you find it useful.