Short Story Writing

 

Short Story Writing

By David Lavisher

February 22,  2008

 

I have no qualification in the discipline of story writing other than that of experience.

Short story or any story writing is a different proposition than say poetry writing, which by and large is feeling or motive driven and uses varying methods of contact with its readers.  Story telling has been going on in one way or another since men first painted on the walls of caves. The written word eventually set out a pattern of story writing and its formulation that has changed little, right up to the present day.

 

First, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, ‘I could write a better story than that.’  I have seen the results of such optimism in that some are amusing in their writer’s raw enthusiasm to be ‘next writer of note’, while others ramble over many acres of foolscap and say nothing much in the end.

 

Your chosen subject needs to be laid out correctly, flow evenly, be coherent and detailed, above all it needs to be interesting to a cross section of people in your chosen market (your theme may be interesting to you, however you aren’t the one the piece is aimed at or you wouldn’t be writing it in the first place). The short story genre is difficult because of the need to compress your ideas into the generally accepted module which is 600 to 1000 words. Up to1500 words are acceptable on some themes where the situation requires 4 or more characters and varying locations, or the figure is asked for. 

 

The layout should be something akin to wall building in that blocks of print (paragraphs) are separated by change of subject. In my opinion, speech should be separated from text and each utterance given a new line of its own with a 3 spacebar indent before the first inverted comma i,e.

   

3 sp.bar  ‘(speech-----)’

3 sp.bar  ‘(speech--------)’

 

If you are using 2 of your characters for speech, establish the speakers i,e.

  

3 sp.bar  ‘----------,’ said John.

3 sp.bar  ‘-------------,’ replied/ said/ asked /Mary, with indifference / happily / walking away.

 

From then on until the end of each speech it can be he/she. A lot of written speech today doesn’t indicate at all who has spoken and you can find yourself constantly reverting to the ending of the previous paragraph to identify the first speaker.

If there are more than 2 characters, name them each time they speak.

                                                                                                                                                        

The most important thing about your story by a long hop is ‘interest’. Your first line is the ‘catch’ line and immediate subsequent lines must be holding ones.  Pick up on your theme continually. After that you are character building (padding out) describing your people physically and emotionally and your places generously keeping both short and not running off into the wide blue yonder.

At the bottom of each page of the story your reader must want to turn to the next page, it is at this point that interest is held or lost.  Here are a couple of minor examples of how to give added interest to your writing.

 

Text: - John walked down the street and into the shop.

 

Example: - In the midday heat, John walked casually down the tree-lined street, admiring himself in the many shop windows before turning into Bleasdales confectioners.

 

Remember that your reader has nothing visual to go on, give her/him a picture of your street, you can indicate roughly what the time/ weather/ conditions are if you wish to. This practice applies to most of the subject content in your story.  I was once asked to write 40 words to describe a spoon, it can be done - with a degree of difficulty.

 

Text: - Mary sat at the table in the kitchen.

 

Example: - In the fading light/early sunshine, Mary sat down at her grandmothers black oak/ pine/ highly polished/ kitchen table aware of  peeling wallpaper and the musky smell from damp, ageing furniture.

 

Text: - John saw a leopard lying on a tree branch.

 

Example: - Against the sun John could see the honey gold markings of a large male leopard, it’s rosette spots glowing a deep shade of red in the suns rays, as it lay on a branch high in the foliage of a Marula tree.

                                                                                                                                                        

You might find that in using lots of adjectives or describing subjects too heavily you will run over the recognised amount of words, also people will tell you that you are being over-descriptive, however, better too much padding than too little, which will leave your story ‘thin’ and no lingering pictures of your theme. You can always edit your story to a reasonable length at leisure.

                                                                                                                                                           

Some writers prefer to lay out their whole story in brief with pointers at various stages in the piece.  Others (me), like to pick up their thread and see where it takes them – this has lead to more than one embryonic piece of wishful thinking being ‘binned’ when I’ve fallen over the edge of my idea and had to resort to the coffee cure in consolation.

 

Principles are, your story should have the opening ‘catch’ paragraph, followed by the gist of its content ‘the meat in the sandwich’ where the interest lies, and preferably an abrupt ending, be it a twist against the run of your story, humour or an underlying reference to the body of your theme.  Anything else and you are on your way to a chapter or eventually a book.  Tailing-off, rancour and obscure meanings are not usually good practice and often leave your reader unsatisfied.   

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