Short stories

[sarillia]

Anyone have any tips for writing short stories that may be different from tips for writing longer forms? I'm much more familiar with novels but I'd like to try to submit some short stories for open calls that look interesting.

Comments

[inkdust]

I'd love some short story tips too. Any idea I have, my brain automatically starts envisioning the long run.

[agilebrit]

Basically, what I do is concentrate on one character with one problem and keep side plots and characters to a minimum.

The basic formula goes: Each character adds at least 500 words to the story, merely by existing. The thing I'm working on right now originally had seven characters running around in it--it's part of a series of stories and all those characters exist in the series, though they're not usually all in every story. That was completely untenable, so I excised two of them by the simple expedient of sending them out of town for the duration.

One of the remaining five is minor to this one, but I don't really have a good way of getting rid of him. The villain is, of course, necessary. And the two other characters have significant roles to play.

It comes down to paring out extraneous characters and situations, in the end. I also keep description to a minimum.

[serria]

That's a good question. As already said, I'd imagine that a short story should be more narrow in scope. But you don't want it to feel like a weaker story, either. I think the world, the atmosphere and the characters should be just as developed, but you have to use fewer words to express them to the audience.

I would probably recommend having an idea of what you want to happen in your story before you write, just to have a rough plan of how long it will be. You'll probably not want to have more than two or three "real" leading characters, depending on the length.

Maybe look at your favorite short stories and see what they do that you like, how many characters they have, what kind of detail they use and how long they are?

[caecilia]

In addition to what everyone else said, read a lot of short stories. Get some anthologies. There are some free magazines online like dailysciencefiction.com, Nightmare and Lightspeed. There are probably ones for literary fiction too. I'm kind of a visual person so reading short comics before I start writing helps. I think the short story is closer to poetry than to a novel (I think some famous writer said this actually). You don't have room for any filler or sidestories. Everything has to count and there should be a sense of rhythm to it.

Can I ask what open calls you've been considering?