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1. Get Started: Emergency Tips

Is your short story assignment due tomorrow morning? These emergency tips may help. Good luck!

1. Who      is your protagonist, and what      does he or she want?
        (The athlete who wants her team to win the big game and the car crash      victim who wants to survive are not unique or interesting enough.)
2. When      the story begins, what morally      significant actions has he or she already taken towards that goal?
        (“Morally significant” doesn’t mean your protagonist has to be      conventionally “good”; rather, he or she should already have made a      conscious choice, with repercussions that drive the rest of the story.)
3. What unexpected consequences      — directly related to the protagonist’s efforts to achieve the goal — ramp up the emotional energy      of the story?
        (Will the unexpected consequences force your protagonist to make yet      another choice, leading to still more consequences?)
4. What details from the      setting, dialog, and tone help      you tell the story?
        (Things to cut: travel scenes, character A telling character B about      something we just saw happening to character A, and phrases like “said      happily” — it’s much better to say “bubbled” or “smirked” or “chortled.”)
5. What morally significant choice      does your protagonist make at the climax of the story?
        (Your reader should care about the protagonist’s decision. Ideally, the      reader shouldn’t see it coming.)

More Detailed Tips

Drawing on real-life experiences, such as winning the big game, bouncing back after an illness or injury, or dealing with the death of a loved one, are attractive choices for students who are looking for a “personal essay” topic. But simply describing powerful emotional experiences is not the same thing as generating emotional responses in the reader. (See “Show, Don’t (Just) Tell.”)

For those of you who are looking for more long-term writing strategies, here are some additional ideas.

If you are having trouble getting started, look out the window. The whole world is a story, and every moment is a miracle.
-Bruce Taylor, UWEC Professor of Creative Writing

• Keep      a notebook. To      R. V. Cassill, notebooks are “incubators,” a place to begin with overheard      conversation, expressive phrases, images, ideas, and interpretations on      the world around you.
• Write      on a regular, daily basis.      Sit down and compose sentences for a couple of hours every day — even if      you don’t feel like it.
• Collect      stories from everyone you meet. Keep the amazing, the unusual, the strange, the      irrational stories you hear and use them for your own purposes. Study them      for the underlying meaning and apply them to your understanding of the      human condition.

Read, Read, Read

Read a LOT of Chekhov. Then re-read it. Read Raymond Carver, Earnest Hemingway, Alice Munro, and Tobias Wolff. If you don’t have time to read all of these authors, stick to Chekhov. He will teach you more than any writing teacher or workshop ever could.
-Allyson Goldin, UWEC Asst. Professor of Creative Writing

2. Write a Catchy First Paragraph

In today’s fast-moving world, the first sentence of your short story should catch your reader’s attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict. Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.

The rest of the paragraph introduces I and an internal conflict as the protagonist debates a course of action and introduces an intriguing contrast of past and present setting.

“It is important to understand the basic elements of fiction writing before you consider how to put everything together. This process is comparable to producing something delectable in the kitchen–any ingredient that you put into your bowl of dough impacts your finished loaf of bread. To create a perfect loaf, you must balance ingredients baked for the correct amount of time and enhanced with the right polishing glaze.” -Laurel Yourke

3. Developing Characters

Your job, as a writer of short fiction–whatever your beliefs–is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value–that will, in Chekhov’s words, “make [man] see what he is like.” -Rick Demarnus

In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story. Here is a partial list of character details to help you get started.

Imagining all these details will help you get to know your character, but your reader probably won’t need to know much more than the most important things in four areas:

• Appearance.      Gives your      reader a visual understanding of the character.
• Action.      Show the      reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather      than simply listing adjectives.
• Speech. Develop the character as a      person — don’t merely have your character announce important plot details.
• Thought.      Bring the      reader into your character’s mind, to show them your character’s      unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

For example, let’s say I want to develop a college student persona for a short story that I am writing. What do I know about her?

Her name is Jen, short for Jennifer Mary Johnson. She is 21 years old. She is a fair-skinned Norwegian with blue eyes, long, curly red hair, and is 5 feet 6 inches tall. Contrary to typical redheads, she is actually easygoing and rather shy. She loves cats and has two of them named Bailey and Allie. She is atechnical writing major with a minor in biology. Jen plays the piano and is an amateur photographer. She lives in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She eats pizza every day for lunch and loves Red Rose tea. She cracks her knuckles when she is nervous. Her mother just committed suicide.

4. Choose a Point of View

Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the actionobjectively.

• First      Person.      The story is told from the view of “I.”      The narrator is either theprotagonist      (main character) and directly affected by unfolding events, or the      narrator is a      secondary character telling the story revolving around the      protagonist. This is a good choice for beginning writers because it is the      easiest to write.

• Second      Person. The      story is told directly to “you”,      with the reader as a participant in the action.

• Third      Person. The      story tells what “he”,      “she,” or “it”      does. The third-person narrator’s perspective can be limited (telling      the story from one character’s viewpoint) or omniscient      (where the narrator knows everything about all of the characters).

• Your narrator might take sides in the conflict you present, might be as transparent as possible, or might advocate a position that you want your reader to challenge (this is the “unreliable narrator” strategy).

Yourke on point of view:

• First      Person. “Unites      narrator and reader through a series of secrets” when they enter one      character’s perceptions. However, it can “lead to telling”      and limits readers connections to other characters in the short story.
• Second      Person. “Puts      readers within the actual scene so that readers confront possibilities      directly.” However, it is important to place your characters “in a      tangible environment” so you don’t “omit the details readers need for      clarity.”
• Third      Person Omniscient. Allows      you to explore all of the characters’ thoughts and motivations.      Transitions are extremely important as you move from character to      character.
• Third      Person Limited. “Offers      the intimacy of one character’s perceptions.” However, the writer must      “deal with character absence from particular scenes.”

5. Write Meaningful Dialogue

Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. -Jerome Stern

Dialogue is what your characters say to each other (or to themselves).

Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is doing when speaking. (See: “Quotation Marks: Using Them in Dialogue“.)

Write Meaningful Dialogue Labels

“John asked nervously” is an example of “telling.” The author could write “John asked very nervously” or “John asked so nervously that his voice was shaking,” and it still wouldn’t make the story any more effective.

How can the author convey John’s state of mind, without coming right out and tellinig the reader about it? By inference. That is, mention a detail that conjures up in the reader’s mind the image of a nervous person.

Let’s return to the first example, and show how dialogue labels can affect the meaning of a passage.

6. Use Setting and Context

Setting moves readers most when it contributes to an organic whole. So close your eyes and picture your characters within desert, jungle, or suburb–whichever setting shaped them. Imagining this helps balance location and characterization. Right from the start, view your characters inhabiting a distinct place. -- Laurel Yourke

Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.

• Remember      to combine setting      with characterization and plot.

• Include      enough detail      to let your readers picture the scene but only details that actually add      something to the story. (For example, do not describe Mary locking the      front door, walking across the yard, opening the garage door, putting air      in her bicycle tires, getting on her bicycle–none of these details matter      except that she rode out of the driveway without looking down the street.)

• Use two or more senses      in your descriptions of setting.

• Rather      than feed your readers information about the weather, population      statistics, or how far it is to the grocery store, substitute descriptive details      so your reader can experience the location the way your characters do.

7. Set Up the Plot

Plot is what happens, the storyline, the action. Jerome Stern says it is how you set up the situation, where the turning points of the story are, and what the characters do at the end of the story.

A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. -Jane Burroway

Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.

• Explosion      or “Hook.” A      thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that grabs the reader’s      attention right away.
• Conflict. A character versus the internal self or an external something      or someone.
• Exposition.      Background information required for seeing the characters in context.
• Complication. One or more problems that keep      a character from their intended goal.
• Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue, that      joins paragraphs and scenes together.
• Flashback. Remembering something that      happened before the short story takes place.
• Climax. When the rising action of the      story reaches the peak.
• Falling      Action. Releasing      the action of the story after the climax.
• Resolution. When the internal or external      conflict is resolve.

Brainstorming. If you are having trouble deciding on a plot, try brainstorming. Suppose you have a protagonist whose husband comes home one day and says he doesn’t love her any more and he is leaving. What are actions that can result from this situation?

1. She      becomes a workaholic.
2. Their      children are unhappy.
3. Their      children want to live with their dad.
4. She      moves to another city.
5. She      gets a new job.
6. They      sell the house.
7. She      meets a psychiatrist and falls in love.
8. He      comes back and she accepts him.
9. He      comes back and she doesn’t accept him.
10. She      commits suicide.
11. He      commits suicide.
12. She      moves in with her parents.

The next step is to select one action from the list and brainstorm another list from that particular action.

8. Create Conflict and Tension

Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting. It takes trouble to turn the great themes of life into a story: birth, love, sex, work, and death. -Janet Burroway

Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end.

Possible Conflicts Include:

• The      protagonist against another individual
• The      protagonist against nature (or technology)
• The      protagonist against society
• The      protagonist against God
• The      protagonist against himself or herself.

Yourke’s Conflict Checklist

• Mystery.      Explain      just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.
• Empowerment. Give both sides options.
• Progression.      Keep      intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.
• Causality.      Hold      fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who      make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks      often reap rewards.
• Surprise.      Provide      sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in      advance.
• Empathy.      Encourage      reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or      (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).
• Insight.      Reveal      something about human nature.
• Universality.      Present a      struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that      struggle reflect a unique place and time.
• High      Stakes. Convince      readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could      lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction.

9. Build to a Crisis or Climax

This is the turning point of the story–the most exciting or dramatic moment.

The crisis may be a recognition, a decision, or a resolution. The character understands what hasn’t been seen before, or realizes what must be done, or finally decides to do it. It’s when the worm turns. Timing is crucial. If the crisis occurs too early, readers will expect still another turning point. If it occurs too late, readers will get impatient–the character will seem rather thick. -Jerome Stern

Jane Burroway says that the crisis “must always be presented as a scene. It is “the moment” the reader has been waiting for. In Cinderella’s case, “the payoff is when the slipper fits.”

While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a sudden illness is simply an emergency –unless it somehow involves a conflict that makes the reader care about the characters (see: “Crisis vs. Conflict“).

10. Find a Resolution

The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.

• Open. Readers determine the meaning.

Brendan’s eyes looked away from the priest and up to the mountains.

• Resolved. Clear-cut outcome.

While John watched in despair, Helen loaded up the car with her belongings and drove away.

• Parallel      to Beginning.      Similar to beginning situation or image.

They were driving their 1964 Chevrolet Impala down the highway while the wind blew through their hair.

Her father drove up in a new 1964 Chevrolet Impala, a replacement for the one that burned up.

• Monologue.      Character      comments.

I wish Tom could have known Sister Dalbec’s prickly guidance before the dust devils of Sin City battered his soul.

• Dialogue.      Characters      converse.

• Literal      Image. Setting      or aspect of setting resolves the plot.

The aqueducts were empty now and the sun was shining once more.

• Symbolic      Image. Details      represent a meaning beyond the literal one.

Looking up at the sky, I saw a cloud cross the shimmering blue sky above us as we stood in the morning heat of Sin City.