Tying Everything Up for the Short Run

Greetings, hobby writers, and welcome to the first of two advanced-level lessons. This first writing assignment is one which I admittedly still struggle with, so aside from offering a few general pointers, I'm sorry, but you're on your own. So I start off this writing guide on the topic of short stories with a warning: be prepared to fail at this stage of your studies many times before you get it right.

This should not cause you to panic, though. If you've followed the other seven writing guides in this series, then you've already got most of the basic tools to craft a proper short story. You know how to describe characters, locations, and objects in a meaningful way. You've honed your ability to describe action, and you've tightened up your dialogue to produce more natural conversations.

But the short story takes all of these tools and taxes them to their very limits. In writing in the short form, you have to be frugal with every aspect of the writing. You cannot be too purple in describing the scenes or the characters, and your dialogue must get to the point more quickly. You aren't allowed as many tangents for subplots, and for the most part, you want to avoid subplots altogether in the short form.

What should your word count be like? That depends a lot on you, but to help guide your work, I should mention how most publications prefer short fiction to be around 5,000 to 6,000 words. After that, your choices of where to submit drop quite a bit, and then there's a virtual dead zone for stories at 10,000 to 25,000. Then you find publishers who publish novelettes and novellas after that point. Ideally, you should aim for stories under 5K, as these stand the best chance of finding a home. Of course, all of this is moot if you just write as a hobby, but it is something to keep in mind while you practice.

On a side note, there is a shorter form of fiction than the short story. Flash fiction is any story between 100 to 1,000 words. This is a true challenge that I've not yet been able to make any progress on, as my shortest story ever was still 1,010 words. But I was so close!

Here at the short story level, you are going to take one of your victims and follow a short investigation to capture the killer. That can either be the fall guy you set up, or you can get your fictional self captured. That's up to you, and so is the path you take to get there.

At this level, there's usually no need for an outline. This lesson will probably be frustrating since there's no map, and I'm not giving much advice on what makes for a strong short story. The only advice I will give is to write what pleases you. If you write something and find you don't like it during the first reading, ask if it's a complete failure, or if there is something you can tweak to improve your enjoyment of it.

Be picky in this assessment phase. Nag on yourself about the things you don't like, and be just as unfair to yourself as you would be for someone else's stories. Never ever accept a scene as being good enough if you don't like it. Because if you as the writer don't care for a scene, then you can be sure it won't work for anyone else either.

And that's it for this writing guide. In the next, final lesson, we will be taking all of the lessons together to tackle the ultimate writing project: the novel.