Can anyone give me story ideas for a short story and whats a outline?

Question

please help me because i dont have any ideas for it

Answer 1

I don't have any short ideas for you but i know what an outline is.
Here it is:


1.the line by which a figure or object is defined or bounded; contour.
2.a drawing or sketch restricted to line without shading or modeling of form.
3.a general sketch, account, or report, indicating only the main features, as of a book, subject, or project: an outline of medieval history; an outline of a speech.
4.outlines, the essential features or main aspects of something under discussion: At the first meeting, we gave her only the outlines of the project.
5.Printing. an ornamented type in which the outside contours of each character appear in black, with the inside left white.
–verb (used with object)
6.to draw the outline of, or draw in outline, as a figure or object.
7.to give an outline of; sketch the main features of: On the first day, the professor just outlined the course for us.

Answer 2

I don't either. All my short stories turn into unfinished novels.

The key element is an ending resolution.

One short story that sticks in my mind is "Father Teaches Me To Be Prompt" which was about the real family in the original Cheaper by the Dozen. It was about the youngest boy who is promised an old fashioned (at the time common) chain watch to tell time with but he has to learn to be on time for things, like breakfast and he's never on time. He goes into dispair over being the only son not to have a watch and his mother gives him her father's gold watch. Gold is soft, unlike the nickel watches his brothers had and its fragile and he's a boy. So naturally the watch face crystals breaks and his mother asks to see the watch so he works parttime and spends ALL his money putting new crystals into that watch. Eventually he gives in and starts begin on time and as a reward his father gives him a sturdy nickel watch that won't break as easily and no one will ask to see it, so he gives back the gold watch heirloom to his mother's care.

See, it has a resolutioni and a problem, a series of problems.

And it's short. Under 20 pages.

The outline, of course, was given here by me, but in paragraph form.

You state the main issues

D. Mother gives him gold watch
1. Watch is heirloom
2. Watch is her dead father's watch
3 Watch has memories for her
4. Watch is fragile
a. Watch crystal breaks easily
b. Gold shell bends easily