The Challenge of Writing Short Fiction

Having put a few dozen short stories under my name, and wondering more than a few times why I put my name to them, the next progression is to highlight why writing short stories is so hard. The basics sound easy: create a shorter form story rather than a novel, focus on one character, and try to slant it towards publication. There are hard parts: many write short stories, many cannot write both a good novel and a good short story, and some of the rules will have to be broken in a story.

We begin on the page. A short story outline can be found initially just by thinking of a title. Perhaps we loathe outlines and jump onto the story without them. There is a hope in the beginning of expressing ourselves on the page. We may not lose this hope, but in time, as in any art, we will. The challenge of writing a short story has nothing to do with the length or the rules. We find that writing into the void can be hard. We hear those voices telling us that short stories make no money and a novel should be attempted.

Most successful fiction writers at least attempt short stories. Some even become addicted to this shorter form, but even they know the money is not in short fiction.

The challenge for each of us is combining that important event with the interesting character. Some stories have one or the other, but the best, especially in genre fiction, combine an event with a character. The character reacts to the event, perhaps solving a problem, and that makes for a story.

But, so much can be done in the short form. The possibilities could give us a headache. We could have the character speaking to a therapist the entire time, telling a story within a story. We could have the character jump from a cliff in the beginning and time all of a sudden stops, we jump back, and we find out why they jumped off the cliff.

Short fiction is also about a character changing. We can't just have them in the coffee shop or at the cliff without a change in the character. We can work this out in the editing process, but having a general idea of the character and his or her evolution could help. We begin on the page and find we were either meant for the short story or doomed to it. But, as long as we follow where the story and character takes us, we are in good shape.