Writing a Short Story

chillibreeze writer — Gautham Manohar

Stories are beautiful things. Man has been telling stories since the time he learnt to communicate and to this day, our fascination with stories, long and short and whatever size in-between, continues. It has the power to sweep you away to a place where the world is just you, the story in front of you and the thought of what the next page will bring. Also short stories are so easily read. On the way to work, your lunch break, waiting in line somewhere. Our lives are filled with these little breaks. Why spend them starting blank out of the window when you could fly away for a little while?

Writing and finishing a short story is a similar, but even more special feeling. It’s wonderful to put in the final lines of your story, knowing that it has turned out just right. It’s wonderful when someone comes up to you and tells you that they loved your story. It’s wonderful when you go to sleep at night smiling about something a character in your story did. Your story – I think it really is about that. A writer painstakingly builds a world for the reader and there is no greater accolade the writer can get, when the reader accepts that world, immerses himself in it and thinks about it long after he puts the story down.

What is it about a good story that is so magical? Aren’t they just words strung into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages? Sounds deceptively simple doesn’t it? Well, yes and no. On an impulse, I checked the Internet for articles that tell you how to write a short story.

Surprisingly, a large majority of them have formulized the short story to an extent to which it seemed quite plausible that I could get a computer to write one! It is quite possible for the novice writer to follow all these formulae diligently and come up with a story that’s been published a thousand times before.

So here’s my take on the elements that go into a good short story. Remember, it’s not the ultimate formula and I sincerely hope that there never is. For writing truly is about experimenting, like any other form of art and the moment art becomes a pure science, some of the magic that surrounds this wonderful form of expression will fade.

1) The idea: No matter how anyone tries to convince you otherwise, this is the fundamental of a good short story. An idea does not have to be completely unique or something that’s never been done before, but neither can it be something you read off the Internet. A lot of people tend to get discouraged at this stage, because it isn’t as easy as starting at your blank notepad or computer screen. In fact, this is probably the worst place to think of ideas. Ideas are a little uncooperative that way. You can’t set the stage for it and expect it to show up on time. The easiest way really is to keep looking for ideas all the time. Ideas sometimes come as the smallest flicker of thought and must be pampered until they become full fledged.

An idea for a short story could stem from anything – that person you see everyday at work, a conversation you overhear at the coffee machine, a scene you observe at the supermarket checkout counter or something you read in the newspaper. It really doesn’t matter where it comes from, as long as it’s something that you can adapt for your story.

I find it useful to write down ideas or the beginnings of it somewhere convenient and accessible. Don’t postpone crystallizing the idea - it can fade away very easily. However it’s okay to put it aside once you’ve got it down, because you can build your story block by block around it, changing it however many times you wish to.

2) Harness Emotion: The world that surrounds us is frantic with energy, bursting with emotions and is a place where the most beautiful of dreams are achieved and the worst nightmares relived. Keep your eyes and ears open and allow yourself an open mind. You will see things that make you laugh; you will see things that make you angry, sad or even cry. Harness these emotions and don’t be afraid to put them down on paper. This is sometimes easier said than done, because every time you write something, you’re putting a little bit of yourself in there and it will seem like you’re baring yourself before the unknown eyes of a reader. But a story without emotion is like a reading a recipe book. You read all the ingredients, but you don’t really taste the dish.

3) Make your characters alive: Your characters may only exist in a world that is six thousand words long, but in that world they must be believable. Your reader must be convinced to share their joy, pain and fear. He must be able to relate to a character’s actions in the story. It does seem like a challenge, given the confines of a short story, but the results are rewarding. The method I follow is to build a profile for the character, so that in my eyes, the character is alive. Once you feel the emotional connect with the character, it is only a matter of conveying this to the reader. You will rarely use the additional information you built into the profile of the character in the story itself.

4) Understand perspective: It is sometimes easy to get swept away by the story you’re writing that you stop worrying about how it is being narrated. A story can be told primarily from three perspectives.

a. First person – where a character in the story narrates it
b. Second person – where the reader is made a character in the story
c. Third person – where an outside person, unrelated to the story, relates it.

I’ve often discovered that after a bout of inspired writing, I find I’ve switched perspective from first to second or third quiet unknowingly. It’s important to catch these as you write, because it saves you a lot of editing work later on. As a rule of thumb, stick to one style of narrative, though as with all rules, sometimes bending or breaking them can give unique and desirable results.

5) Controlling complexity: Refrain from adding too many main characters. How many is too many? Well, for a short story I would say not more than three – four main characters. This is only a thumb rule again, but if you choose add more characters, you risk the danger of two dimensionalising your characters and make them seem hollow, since you’re working within a limited number of words. Your story will also tend to ramble along if you’re wasting too much time on describing characters. Similarly, the plot itself should not be divided into too many subplots, which will either confuse the reader or put in too many loopholes in the plot.

6) Timeframes: The power of a short story is that it can cover a moment in time or a lifespan with equal alacrity. It is however, advisable to keep the main plot strung together without suddenly rushing back and forth over a vast number of years. Changing the pace of the short story in the middle can disconnect the reader immediately and unlike a like a novel, which has time to recover, a short story can deflate completely over the space of a few lines.

7) Using stereotypes: A stereotype can be a character stereotype (For example: the slick, smooth talking car salesman) or a situation stereotype (For example: boy meets girl). A Stereotype can be a double-edged sword – the advantage is that you can throw a stereotype into a story and your reader is immediately able to connect, without you having to waste precious words. On the other hand, throw in too many stereotypes and the reader has already figured out how the story is going to end halfway through.

So don’t overburden the story with multiple stereotypes and always try to add your own flavor to it.

8) Retain a theme: Short stories usually have a dominant theme or an outlook. They can be funny, sad, scary or happy. They can be uplifting and positive or they could be dark and depressing. All these themes work and work well. What you should avoid doing is try and create a blend. It is absolutely disastrous for a short story to try and be everything. You could of course carefully mix just a couple of themes together (For example, a story could be both funny and sad), but you must remember that you are serving the reader a single dish to enjoy and not the whole buffet. Decide on a theme or mood, and retain it though the story.

9) The ending: It is important to end a short story with a sense of finality. An ending that has the reader frantically checking if the last pages have fallen out is most definitely not recommended. However, finality is not to be confused with tying up every single loose end. It is quite all right, even desirable, to leave the reader guessing a few aspects about the story. The ending is really the climax of the story and should address the main plot. It should ideally never be more than a paragraph or two.

There is also the aspect of the much-touted ‘twist in the tale’. It basically refers to an unexpected ending, something that catches the reader off guard. Most good short stories have this twist, which have readers going back to them again and again and are the subject of numerous coffee table discussions. Try to work in an ending that surprises and you will not go wrong.

10) Keep things tight: Like I’ve mentioned before, you do not have the luxury of space in a short story. Neither can you place unreasonable demands on the reader’s attention and time – remember he chose to read a short story, not a novel. If you’ve followed all the above steps, you really shouldn’t have a problem in packaging your story nicely. A simple check is not to use extremely verbose language (which can look extremely put on and fake if it is not used in the right context) and to convey dialogue and action crisply. If you’re typing the story on a computer, use a word count tool frequently to make sure you’re pacing the story well.

11) Editing: If you are using a computer, keep a spell check program running in the background. Make sure that you’re saving frequently. There’s nothing as frustrating as having to rewrite a brilliant paragraph because your computer hung. I usually keep two copies of the story while I’m writing, just in case one of the files gets corrupted.

Once you’re done with the story, it is a good idea to send it out to your friends for feedback. Make sure that you send them only to people who like to read. There really is no point in sending it out to people whose reading habits don’t go beyond reading the menu cards at Pizza Hut and checking out the TV program listings. You’ve spent a lot of time working on your story and you owe it to yourself to get it evaluated fairly.

Never send a story out until you’ve deemed it complete – people will have their own opinions on it and while their feedback is essential, trying to incorporate it before you complete your story can be very confusing and could kill the story. Send it out once you’re done and evaluate feedback with an open mind. Incorporate only what you feel will enhance the story.

12) Letting go: While this may sound funny, once you’re done with your story, you might to get a little overprotective about it. This is harmful for both you and the story. When this happens, you don’t take feedback constructively. You must remember that the reader has not lived and breathed your story like you have. So plots, characters and implied subtleties that are perfectly clear to you might not be apparent to them. So here’s another thumb rule, if the majority of your friends don’t get your treasured twist in the tale, change it.

Finally, just because you’re writing now, it doesn’t mean you can stop reading. People are coming up with captivating stories around the world, as we speak. Books being read by our children and taught in their schools are written by authors who lived in an age where a motorcar was a frivolous invention, when airplanes were the exclusive fantasy of the eccentric -or the insane.

Our times have changed around us and will continue to do so, but the beauty of words and their magical ability to make minds soar and sprits rise, remain unchanged. Immerse yourself in this world, and care not if no one but you enjoys your stories, for you have what so many people lose without knowing – the power to dream.

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—About our writer:

Gautham is a MBA graduate from IIT Chennai. He is an avid reader and is also a passionate writer and photographer. He currently works for Wipro as a business development manager, and has over five years of experience in the area of IT sales and marketing. He is currently based out of Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

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