Writing Tips

Getting Started: Discovering a Subject

First, brainstorm possible ideas for what the story will be about and what it will explore. You might want to begin by considering the types of stories you enjoy most. By doing so, you are also considering how those stories are structured in terms of conflict, as well as the types of characters that draw your attention. You may also consider what ideas, experiences, or beliefs matter to you. What incites anger? What experience or which person changed you, for better or worse? What memory still causes pain? What word of advice has been meaningful? Such questions can be great launching points for other brainstorming methods, such as free writing or web diagrams.

One final element to consider during this first step is theme. What kind of message would you like your story to convey? You may find during the later stages of the writing process that the intended theme might change, or an entirely different theme might reveal itself. This shift in direction is natural and acceptable. However, it is important to keep a theme in mind from the first brainstorming session. This focus ultimately will aid in shaping other story elements such as setting, conflict, character, and plot.

Developing Elements in Short Fiction

Conflict and Plot

After you have chosen a general idea and focus, decide how that idea or theme will be illustrated through conflict. Many writers and readers agree that tension is engaging, so the structure of a story often revolves around a specific plotline where tension and resolution play a central role. A compelling story is often one in which the protagonist is immersed in some form of trouble. This predicament may be internal or external.

You may find that your brainstorming has already produced a framework for a possible conflict, which places you one step ahead. If not, focus on the theme and the possible ways that it may emerge through a personal dilemma or a struggle with someone or something else.

Then, the selected conflict must play out in a plotline composed of five defining parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. While this sequence makes up a traditional plot structure, feel free to explore nontraditional structures. For example, a writer may wish to forego exposition and immediately launch readers into attention-grabbing rising action, as seen in the plot diagram in Figure 1.

Figure 1

To simplify, consider this interpretation of the plot diagram: first, introduce your protagonist in normal life; second, chase your protagonist up a tree; then, throw rocks at your protagonist; and finally, bring the character down from the tree. This metaphor paints a vivid image of a conflict-resolution plot structure.

A writer may also choose a plot structure in which the climax appears earlier and allows more exploration of the resulting falling action and resolution as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Still, another plot structure is one in which the story omits a resolution to urge readers to make their own predictions about the conclusion as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Explore nontraditional plot structures to make your short fiction more engaging for yourself and your readers.

Main and Supporting Characters

Your protagonist should be an interesting and authentic character. One way to establish this authenticity is through unique character traits illustrating the protagonist's physical features, personality, and actions. First, imagine what your protagonist might look like. From there, create both positive and negative character traits that define that character's individuality and establish the protagonist as a rounded character. Avoid mundane characteristics that any person could have. Instead, create characteristics that make the protagonist distinct.

In addition to having a protagonist, a story should contain at least one supporting character that the protagonist interacts with or confronts. This character might be an antagonist providing opposition for the protagonist. This character could also be a foil that accentuates or highlights certain characteristics of the protagonist. In whatever way you choose to develop your major and minor characters, keep in mind how these characters contribute to the story's theme.

Dialogue

Effective dialogue in short fiction expresses meaning either overtly or implicitly. Characters express overt meaning when they directly communicate information that helps readers better understand some aspect of the story. But dialogue can also implicitly convey aspects of the story’s meaning, leaving readers to analyze what is not being said when characters speak or what deeper meaning may lie beneath their words. Keep your dialogue engaging and effective so that it contributes to various elements of your story, such as the resolution of its conflict or a discovery that is revealed.

Read the following dialogue from Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome and consider how the dialogue provides insight into both past and current circumstances surrounding the character Ethan Frome, the subject of discussion between the narrator and a town resident:

"It was a pretty bad smash-up?" I questioned Harmon, looking after Frome's retreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean brown head, with its shock of light hair, must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent out of shape.

"Wust kind," my informant assented. "More'n enough to kill most men. But the Fromes are tough. Ethan'll likely touch a hundred."

"Good God!" I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan Frome, after climbing to his seat, had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden box--also with a druggist's label on it—which he had placed in the back of the buggy, and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought himself alone. "That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!"

In addition to furthering the progression of the plot and characterization, this example of dialogue also demonstrates regional dialect. This language variation improves readers' ability to envision the characters and the setting from which they originated or in which they reside. When creating dialogue, make every word count in terms of what your characters say, how they say it, and what insight readers will gain from it.

Imagery

Use of imagery is one way you can follow the advice for storytelling often heard by others: "show, don't tell." As you write the rough draft, be sure it contains imagery that invites readers to imagine the characters and scenarios you have created for them. Incorporate figurative language, such as metaphors or personification. Also implement details that evoke all the senses to enhance the effect of the image or description.

Describing the setting can be a helpful starting point for effective descriptions of characters, objects, and events. Where and when does the story take place? What are the social and historical conditions of this period? By establishing this context, writers can more realistically describe the backdrop of a story, its characters, and events in the plot.

Consider how John Updike uses imagery to develop setting in this excerpt from "The Brown Chest":

Outside the guest-bedroom door, the upstairs hall, having narrowly sneaked past his grandparents' bedroom's door, broadened to be almost a room, with a window all its own, and a geranium on the sill shedding brown leaves when the women of the house forgot to water it, and curtains of dotted swiss¹ he could see the telephone wires through, and a rug of braided rags shaped like the oval tracks his Lionel train² went around and around the Christmas tree on, and, to one side, its front feet planted on the rag rug, with just enough space left for the attic door to swing open, the chest.

¹ sheer fabric covered in woven dots

² a model train by popular manufacturer The Lionel Company

As with this excerpt, your story should provide details that are like vivid, concrete snapshots for readers. Do not simply tell an audience about the setting, the protagonist, or the events that unfold. Show them through imagery and sensory language that captures their imaginations and holds their interest.