A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To 3000 Words…

Whoever said that writing a short story was easier than writing a novel length manuscript can kiss my patootie. And I’ll tell you why:

Recently, a friend said to me, “Gerry, you should put a short story or two up on your site in the off chance an agent or publisher is interested and wants to get a feel for your style.”

Damn fine idea, I thought. Now all I need to do is do it. Being that this is the Christmas season, I decided to write a quaint little ditty about a young divorcee named Christmas who was–you guessed it–born on Christmas day. Turns out, young Chrissie is having a hell of a time just getting herself alone with her cats and wine. If it’s not a neighbor across the hall and his poem-quoting parrot (named Poe), then she’s on the phone with a burly Mexican named Jesus, who only calls her at Christmas–something that wouldn’t bother her so much if he didn’t breathe so heavily and grunt before saying, “Thanks, chica. I needed that.” Rounding the cast out, I have a mysterious man who seems more than moderately curious as to the whereabouts of the neighbor across the hall–who, by the way, dropped the care of his Parrot, Poe, into Chrissie’s lap before leaving his apartment in a hurry. Did I mention that she has four cats?

See?

I humbly submit that writing a short story is as tough or tougher than writing a much larger story. As it stands, I’m hoping to keep this 3000 word story under 15,000. This isn’t a bad thing, really–unless I was limited to those 3000 words by an editor or contest that stated I COULD NOT EXCEED 3000 WORDS. With that in mind, I asked my buddy, Google, for a hand. There are many sites out there tailored to writers of short fiction–more than I could likely state here. If you’re curious, and want to look for yourself, do it, but I took the best ideas (in my opinion) and pooled them together to make my own version of a “How To.” Of all the ideas out there, the pyramid was the most comprehensive and easily implemented, so that’s the type I’m going to show you here.

The definitive Pyramid Scheme For Short Stories

1. First off, you need to choose a narrative point of view. You probably already have an idea in your head how you want to do this, but here are some examples. You can write your story as if you were one of the characters (first person–seems a sound choice for a short story), as a detached narrator who presents just one character’s thoughts and observations (third-person limited–my personal fav), or as a narrator who is fully removed from the actions within the story, but presents the thoughts and observations of all the characters (third-person omniscient–not much of a fan of this one, but some people can pull it off nicely). A first-person point of view will refer to the central character as “I” instead of “he” or “she.”
2. Create a protagonist, or main character. This should be the most developed and usually the most sympathetic character in your story.
3. Create a problem, or conflict (or a progressive series of them), for your protagonist. The conflict of your story should take one of five basic forms: person vs. person, person vs. himself or herself, person vs. nature, person vs. society, or person vs. God or fate. If you choose a person vs. person conflict, create an antagonist to serve as the person your protagonist must contend with.
4. Establish believable characters and settings, with vivid descriptions and dialogue, to create a story that your readers will care about. I don’t need to tell you that, with a SHORT STORY, every word counts as one that may possibly put you over said word limit (if there is one).
5. Build the story’s tension by having the protagonist make several failed attempts to solve or overcome the problem. (You may want to skip this step for shorter stories.)
6. Create a crisis that serves as the last chance for the protagonist to solve his or her problem.
7. Resolve the tension by having the protagonist succeed through his or her own intelligence, creativity, courage or other positive attributes. This is usually referred to as the story’s climax.
8. Extend this resolution phase, if you like, by reflecting on the action of the story and its significance to the characters or society. In a thimble, this means: Tie a bow in its hair and slap it on the ass. Your story is done.

So there you have it. Now go and do it.