When you are writing a short story, you will want to begin as close to the climax as possible. A brief narration does not dwell much into characters and scenes. It focuses on a single point and takes us to an unexpected yet sudden ending. Here are the tips from creative writing services experts for writing a compelling short story.
- Start: Emergency Tips
Answer these questions:
- What does the protagonist need?
- Has your protagonist taken a moral action towards their goal?
- What are the obstacles that the protagonist must break to accomplish their plans
- What are the unexpected consequences?
- What points and details can help you make the story interesting?
2. Have a catchy first paragraph
The first sentence of your narrative should grab the attention of the reader. You can achieve this by putting in conflict, action, or the unusual. Start with immediacy and compelling tension. Have the fundamental elements at your fingertips before getting on the process of writing.
3. Develop characters
As a short fiction writer, jungle up personalities and let them play along. For you to build up a fascinating character, you must understand the persona more. You can have the age, name, job, ethnicity, family, religion, pets, favorite colors, phobias, friends, residence, or secrets. The list goes on and on. These will make your readers know more about the character, but you should narrow down to the most vital things which are: appearance, action, speech, and thoughts of your personas.
4. Choose a point of view.
You can set the narration of the story from perspectives of either the first, second, or third person. Decide who is going to tell the story. The narrator can subjectively get involved in the action or objectively report the acts. The first person makes use of “I,” the second person utilizes “you,” and the third-person applies the use of “he,” “she,” or “it.”
5. Have meaningful dialogues
Let your readers perceive the stops and pauses in between your passages. Make them see the actions of the characters like leaning, fidgeting, or crossing legs. Each speaker in the dialogue must have their paragraphs.
6. Use Context and Setting
The setting helps in moving readers to your world as a writer. Close your eyes and see your characters in a jungle, ocean, or desert as it will help you balance characterization and the location. From the beginning of your story, picture the characters in a distinct area. The setting entails the location, time, atmosphere, and context that the plot gets set.
7. Set the plot
The plot is what takes place and includes the action and storyline. It is how you create the situation to what the characters do at the story’s end. A plot reveals events in their thematic, dramatic, and emotional importance. The plot involves aspects such as a hook, conflict, exposition, complication, transition, flashback, climax, and resolution.
8. Makeup Tension and Conflict
The most vital element of fiction is conflict. It is because trouble is fascinating in literature. The conflict results in tensions that take the story right off the bat. When you balance the opposing sides, you will keep your readers engrossed in your work to the very end of your work. You can include things like mysteries, empathy, insights, causality, universality, or surprise in your text to make it more gluing to your readers.