How to Breathe New Life into Your Short Fiction: 3 Simple Tips

In my humble opinion, the art of writing fiction is made up of the writer's passion, the writer's creative practice, and the writer's story to tell. I've been writing short fiction since 1993, and although I enjoy writing from my imagination, I've found the best way to make my short stories come alive is through using my own personal experiences and observations from real life.

The best fiction novels I've ever read always had a feeling of being a slice of the author's life or at least a slice of real life the author has observed at some time or another. When I can feel the life of the characters and their storylines lifting up off the pages into reality right in front of my eyes that's when I know I've stumbled onto a very well-written story. It's a feeling like you're wondering what the characters are doing long after the story has ended.

If you've been looking for new ways to jazz up your short fiction, here are a few tips I'd like to share that I've used in my fictional creations, I hope you find them helpful as well.

Tip #1: Turn yourself into a character. Whether you use your real name or not, turn yourself into one of your fictional characters with his or her own storyline or perhaps you could be the central character in the story. The key is making yourself fictional, even though you're very real. Do little things like change your name (first name or last name), change your birthplace, give yourself a distinguishing facial or emotional feature that you may not have in real life. For instance, you may give yourself a heart-shaped birthmark on your left thigh in the story, but in real life you don't have a birthmark like that at all. Just small things like that. I've always believed one of the best tricks of the trade a fiction writer can use is to write what you know. And if you're using yourself as a character in the story, then that's half the battle of writing your story. Because who knows you better than you - the fiction comes in through using your imagination and make sure you give yourself as a character a storyline that may be reminiscent of your real life, but be sure to add a few fictional elements to the 'real' story to make truly fiction.

Tip #2: Jazz up your setting. The setting has been the bane of my fictional writing experience for many years. However, I've found that using a place I know very well like my hometown where I live and just adding fictional places in the hometown or creating a fictional setting based off of the real town is an excellent way to jazz things up a bit. Here again, we're using what we know already and adding or taking away certain elements to make it a true fiction piece. In some stories, the setting is everything for its symbolism, for its meaning to the characters, and for its ability to drive along the plot as the characters go from one place to the other living out the conflicts, struggles, and resolutions. If you have a character who's spent most of his time in his bedroom because he can't face the world due to his fear of rejection, then you wouldn't put him in the living room or on the front porch. You would do the best you can to describe as much of the bedroom where he lives and make sure the bedroom truly speaks to his emotions and feelings. The setting can even be a character in the story as well. Be creative when thinking of the elements you will add to your story to breathe new life into them.

Tip #3: Breathe real life into an inanimate object. I have to admit this is one of my favorite ways to breathe new life into my short fiction. I love using inanimate objects in my stories and giving them a voice and a story. It's fun. It's great for the imagination as well. In addition, it's good food for your inner child's thoughts and soul. For instance, let's say you have a character who is battling a weight problem. She's been on a weight loss program for about six weeks and has been doing great until one day, her husband leaves her, she's turned down for a promotion at work, and her sister's gotten into a car accident and is in the hospital. She immediately runs for the box of Lil Debbie cakes that are in her pantry as a 'just in case' snack. She opens the box, then one of the packages of cakes, and suddenly the Lil Debbie cake starts talking to her just like a human being would be talking to her. This is an example of how much life you can breathe into your short fiction, if you remember to keep an open mind while writing.

There are plenty of resources out here in the world that will tell you that short fiction has a specific formula to it, which is true in some cases, but if you're desire and passion is to truly put new life into your short fiction and be as creative as possible, you have to keep an open mind and erase the boundary lines that are around the structure of fiction from time to time. Some times you'll hit the mark, and some time you won't, but it's worth the try. It's a learning experience. It's a process.

I've realized that fiction is a process that teaches us how to be patient with ourselves, open up to new ways of thinking, and finding solutions to life's challenges. I wish you all the best in your fiction writing endeavors.