How to write a short story?

Question

Is a short story just a short version of a novel? Is it more complex than that? How do you write one?

Answer 1

How to Write a Short Story

The model described here is the pyramid plot: The upward slope establishes setting and characters and builds tension; the tip is the climax; and the downward slope is the resolution.

Steps:
1. Choose a narrative point of view. You can write your story as if you were one of the characters (first person), as a detached narrator who presents just one character's thoughts and observations (third-person limited), or as a detached narrator who presents the thoughts and observations of several characters (third-person omniscient). A first-person point of view will refer to the central character as 'I' instead of 'he' or 'she.'

2. Create a protagonist, or main character. This should be the most developed and usually the most sympathetic character in your story.

3. Create a problem, or conflict, for your protagonist. The conflict of your story should take one of five basic forms: person vs. person, person vs. himself or herself, person vs. nature, person vs. society, or person vs. God or fate. If you choose a person vs. person conflict, create an antagonist to serve as the person your protagonist must contend with.

4. Establish believable characters and settings, with vivid descriptions and dialogue, to create a story that your readers will care about.

5. Build the story's tension by having the protagonist make several failed attempts to solve or overcome the problem. (You may want to skip this step for shorter stories.)

6. Create a crisis that serves as the last chance for the protagonist to solve his or her problem.

7. Resolve the tension by having the protagonist succeed through his or her own intelligence, creativity, courage or other positive attributes. This is usually referred to as the story's climax.

8. Extend this resolution phase, if you like, by reflecting on the action of the story and its significance to the characters or society.

Tips:
There are many possible variations of this model, all of which allow for perfectly good short stories.

Keep your diction concise, specific and active. For example, say "Steve ate the apple" instead of "The fruit was eaten by someone."

http://www.ehow.com/how_3337_write-short-story.html

Answer 2

The best subject to write about is one that you are familiar with and some times ones from personal experiences.

Think about a story you would like to share with others. Maybe some thing that happened to you one day. Write an outline. Put in a few words or sentences the main character, what happened before the event, during, and after. Then start adding to each one of those points. Before you know it, the story will have written itself.

Set it aside for a few days or even a week or more. Then take it up and reread it. See how you could make it better. Never throw out your copies, but save them in case you need to reference them.

Have other people you trust read the story and give their opinions.

If you want to try to publish, find out what the publisher you wish to try with requires when a writer presents a manuscript to them. Some publishers will not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Keep trying with others. Many well known writers suffer many rejections before getting published. You must be thick-skinned and persevere.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Writing a short story is a whole other ball game than writing a novel.
You have to develop your plot and characters without additional detail. This doesn't mean you need to compromise on the plot unravelling though.
Otherwise you can start off ambiguously and elaborate rather vaguely on the twists at the conclusion.
Most importantly no one can actually tell you 'how' to write it, that would dampen your creativity, just let your mind roam and know that your talent as a writer is not about how well you can imagine but rather how well you can translate your ideas into words.
Good luck!

Answer 4

Short stories don't go into as much detail on characters. They don't have the space for nice but unnecesairy details or scenes, either, and don't usually have secondary plots.

To write one, just come up with good characters, their quirks and all. You may not (and probably won't) tell everything about them to the reader, but you need to know them to determine how they would act.

Then, come up with a good story idea, one that won't take 20,000 pages to finish properly. Stories are usualy character-driven, which is one reason why you need good characters.

Then you need to find the time to write it, ask people's opinions so you can make it as good as possible, and then send it off into the world with your well-wishes.

Answer 5

The first way you write a short story is by reading one--rather, lots of them. And writers can't commit to writing only what they know. The writer must have empathy, must be able to write from the perspective of people they are not, and about events through which they've never lived.

Answer 6

The site below clearly labels and explains all the steps of writing a short story. Hope it helps you.

Answer 7

A short story usually focuses on one major event in time and goes into detail on it or it may span a long period of time but only highlights the major points in the character(s) life whereas a novel usually always spans a long period of time in the character(s) life and goes into detail on many points in time.

Answer 8

write using short easy words & should be of only 2 or 3 pages.

Answer 9

Ur question reminds me of my school and college days when we were assigned by the teachers to write short stories on different topics. Sometimes it could be written successfully and sometimes we had to seek the help of seniors, elders and teachers. These days Internet is rich source of information. Internet was not available at my time. So it was a very time consuming job to look for the relevant source for writing story. I suggest u to visit the following links. Here u will not only find short stories on different topics but u will also find tips of how to write good story and be a good story writer too if u wish to be. U shall be able to meet ur requirement if u surf these links thoroughly and consciously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story
http://www.shortstorygroup.com/
http://titan.iwu.edu/~jplath/sschron.html
http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/
http://www.short-stories.co.uk/
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1983/3/83.03.09.x.html
http://www.storybytes.com/
http://www.shortstorygroup.com/storytips.htm
http://www.fdg.aranea.de/faecher/ZK_Arb_Englisch/seite7.htm
http://www.shortshortshort.com/
http://www.memoware.com/?screen=search_results&DirectSearch=Y&p=category^!Short~!
http://www.eternalnight.co.uk/short/r/reynoldsalastair.html
Please visit the above links. I hope, it helps u.

Answer 10

no it is not