How to Write an Effective Short Story
Your readers should feel satisfied by the closure of your story – which is not to say “happy.” You’ve encapsulated an experience, tension has arced and ebbed… | An 8-minute read.
Hello and Salam my friends,
A few weeks ago, I was lamenting the lack of concrete resources on how to write short stories. There is so much to do with the novel but when it comes to the short story craft, it’s made to seem like something elusive. It’s difficult, the more you do it the better you hopefully get, but beyond that, there isn’t much applicable advice. You can imagine my surprise and joy when
sent across this wonderfully crafted, beneficial essay to share with the Qalb community. As someone who’s working on short stories for my thesis and have had a few frustrating experiences, I found myself nodding along as I read every sentence. I also devoured the short stories Ambata so gracefully and generously shared with us, stories I’m certain I’ll be returning to often.I hope you find this as beneficial as I have, and you leave inspired to chisel at a story idea of yours.
In my Master of Fine Arts program, I developed my skills as a writer by writing short stories. I suspect it is the same with most MFA programs, at least in the U.S. It’s a lament sometimes shared, that we in these fiction programs with our aspirations to become novelists aren’t able to pursue those longform projects while in creative community. (It’s not impossible, but unless your chapters can stand alone as short stories, i.e. you don’t have to summarize what happened before the piece you shared, it’s difficult.)
I do however think writing so many short stories helped prepare me to write a novel. I built stamina to write a longer work. I practiced and learned craft. I published many of the short stories that began in those workshops and the one that flopped in class became the seed of my first novel. And if you can write and publish short stories, you have a profile that makes you more alluring for publishers. It shows you take your craft seriously and you make the effort to get your work out in the world.
So how can you write an effective short story, and what do I mean by that? Let’s start with “effective.” What makes a short story effective? It’s a feeling, I think.
Your readers should feel satisfied by the closure of your story – which is not to say “happy.” You’ve encapsulated an experience, tension has arced and ebbed, your main character/s have experienced a significant change, your reader has been pulled into the story world through your vivid descriptions, and your character development has invested them in the characters struggle(s). They have walked side by side with the characters and experienced the change with them, whether positive or negative. Your reader has changed too, they have a new way of seeing the world that may make them feel more connected with humanity. That feeling you’ve successfully evoked came about through a lot of behind-the-scenes skillful effort.
There is no one set formula that makes for a good short story, but thanks to my teachers and my time spent writing short stories, I have picked up a few certain elements that make the process less daunting, and that’s what I’ll share with you.
An idea is not a story.
You have to plan a story, whether that’s a vision in your head or an outline on paper. A story begins as an idea or an image, but it needs a lot more to become a fully fleshed story with realistic characters, a vivid story world, action that grabs the reader’s attention, and a satisfying conclusion.
Your character has to want something.
Desire/want drives the story, builds tension, and invests readers. Ask yourself, what does my character want? What is driving them forward? You may not know this when you start writing. That’s okay. But keep those questions in mind as you write. When you know your character’s main want or desire, you can then consider how they’ll act or react in certain situations.
Consider, for example, an orphaned adolescent who desperately wants to reunite with his deceased family. How will this intense, unreasonable desire affect him when he’s adopted by a family in a foreign country that are less than welcoming? What could his desire make him do? How could it inform his interactions with his adopted family and in his new environment? This was the premise of my short story, “Swim,” about a Somali refugee adopted by a white family. I didn’t know that was his desire when I started writing the story, all I saw was a boy visiting the beach who was scared of the water. I didn’t know why he was so scared to swim and in developing his character and considering his internal thoughts and feelings it came to me that he’d lost his family in a drowning at sea.
Something has to happen i.e. your story needs a plot.
This is a somewhat controversial assertion. Some writers disagree. Teju Cole once said, “the best stories don’t have a plot,” but his stories have experience, things happen, characters process, react and grow. When I say plot I mean action, regardless of how high or low the stakes may be. As one of my writing teachers explained it, a story is simply: something happens, the character reacts, something else happens, the character reacts, and on and on until the story's conclusion.
The action could be going grocery shopping or walking a dog. Your character might just walk and pick flowers; they might stop and chat with a neighbor. Small, everyday actions can reveal a lot about a character’s inner life and experiences, and those inner workings may be what drives the story more than the action. In two of my short stories, “Apples and Oranges” and “Glad Tidings to the Strangers,” the majority of the “action” takes place in a grocery store. Much of the main characters’ inner lives and struggles are revealed as they browse items and interact with employees. Nothing major happens. Throughout the course of the story though, they react to their struggles internally and by the conclusion they have changed in small but significant ways
The more you know before you write, the better.
Start where you are, write whatever you have in mind - this is a good exercise for character and world building, determining character motivations, desires, wants, etc - but keep in mind the story as a whole. What’s the bigger picture? What’s the plot (or will be the plot)? What’s driving the character? What are the plot points (or what can they be)? What is or will be the story’s arc - where will it start and where will it end? This can all be vague and tenuous when you begin, in time it will begin to take on a more definite, solid shape.
Writing is a craft.
Read books and essays on elements of craft like tone, setting, voice, establishing and sustaining tension, etc. Those craft essays and books you read will likely give examples from short stories and books. Read them closely or re-read the stories and books you love. Look for the ways they use craft and study how they use those elements effectively. How do they use dialogue to develop characters and reveal their inner desires? How do they establish tone? Where do you feel tension in the story? How does the writer build it? Etc etc.. One of the things we want to avoid in our fiction writing is relying on exposition to explain something about the story, whether it’s the characters motivations or their background, etc. Elements of craft offer creative ways to tell stories without telling.
Lastly, short stories are short
Meaning they are compact depictions of an imagined world and can only reveal so much. However, while short stories are short, the time period they cover can be anywhere from a few minutes to an entire lifetime and beyond. It’s more so about the compression of details. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the story you are writing, you might be trying to show too much. In teaching us how to give effective critique, one of my writing teachers would always ask, how is it serving the story? In other words, what are the essential details and what’s just extra fluffing? Every sentence, every line of dialogue, all the sensory details and the characters observations – everything must serve some function of the story (plot or character development, most often) and it must do it as succinctly as possible to keep the story moving at a good pace. You want to keep your readers interested and invested in the story, and satisfied by the end. I love to wander through long, whimsical side roads in my writing, and I wouldn’t discourage any writer from doing so – that’s often the most fun part of writing – but in the editing stage those winding, wandering passages can be condensed or cut all together if they don’t truly serve the story. Their purpose may be just to get you where you need to be in your writing. You will still have a solid story without them.
My best advice though to writers who want to write effective short stories is to not give up. You’re going to get stuck at points and feel like you’ve lost the plot or purpose of the story. Always, always start where you are. If you have an idea for a short story, start writing from that idea. Write everything that comes to mind. That’s a first step in creating a rough draft. Stories don’t live in our head. Stories begin on the page. Take your idea and keep building it until you have a story. It may take several drafts, and that’s okay. With every draft, your story takes on more shape and becomes clearer and more coherent. The bumps and hiccups you noticed but skipped (yep, we all do it) will become more evident and easier to fix. Know that you are building your craft and with every attempt you will become a better writer. The writing life is a marathon, not a sprint. Keep going, keep writing, keep growing.
If you enjoyed Ambata’s piece and would love to contribute to the newsletter, kindly reach out at qalbwriterscollective@gmail.com.
As usual, if you found this beneficial at all, share with friends, colleagues and anyone else who may also benefit from it.
Till next time,
Suad
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This was a wonderfully helpful article!!
Amazing jzk for sharing!