Helpful Hints for Writing a Good Short Story

Sometimes I like to write short stories. In fact, when I young and discovered the joy of stringing words together, short stories and poems became a mainstay.

Having taken short story writing classes and after reading a multitude of books on the subject over the years, I learned all the technical aspects. I know about beginning, conflict and ending, and yeah, I know about creating strong characters and using dialogue.

My favorite short stories to write are those that put the reader in the moment with the characters. I like dialogue and use it frequently, mainly because I feel dialogue gives a lot of insight into the characters. In fact, to me dialogue is better than any long descriptive passage for the reader.

I live in the South, and contrary to what many people who cast movies and write stories think, all Southern accents are not the same. For instance, Georgia accents differ distinctly from Arkansas accents. Even here in Mississippi, people from the Delta region part of the state use different phrases and pronounce their words with emphasis on different syllables than people in the northern part would do.

Nothing irritates me more than to read a line of dialogue from a character and realize it sounds nothing like the person I've been reading about. To prevent this in my own writing, I actually read some of my own dialogue aloud just to make sure it sounds like someone I know.

Word phrasing and slang are some of my pet peeves, too. An illustration of that would be that you seldom hear a true Southerner use the phrase "you guys." Whenever I hear this from someone around me, I feel pretty sure they were raised somewhere besides here. In my neck of the woods, there's a lot of "going to" do something and "fixing to" do something.

Occasionally, I like to write stories where there is no dialogue at all, such as in The Deafening Silence of Solitary Confinement. My desire was to have the reader experience the ordeal of being in a controlled environment and the despair of the situation.

I also like the idea that short stories can be centered around anything the writer fancies. It can be funny, sad, scary or serious. Readers seem to like all kinds. My favorites to write and to read are the moments in time that cause the reader to think. In The Suitcase, the reader is never quite sure which decision the character will make. This causes the reader to be a part of the story more so than if I just describe her action. I always enjoy a story that refreshes itself in my mind later, causing me to think about the characters.

Of course, I am definitely not an expert in the art of short story writing, and I would never make such a claim. I'm like a lot of people who just enjoys telling an occasional story. After all, we in the South have been doing it for years.