Writing Short Stories

Writing a Short Story

• Journaling
• Theme
• Characters
• Plot
• Setting
• Point of View
• Dialogue
• Description

Writer's Notebook

"Who knows when you’ll hear a nice bit of dialogue that is worth remembering or see a particularly pretty sunset whose mixture of colors needs to be recorded? You’ll most probably never again see that odd pair of children skipping stones across a lake—better get down the details while you have them." -Ron Rozelle

Determining the Theme

Defining Theme

• The message you HOPE to convey
• The moral of the story
• It's most often implied (implicit)
• An insight into life or human nature

Conveying Theme

• Put characters into conflict with each other
• Result of conflict reveals message

Finding Theme

• Witnessing events: tornado, jilted friend, saw an accident, etc.
• Frustrated by a social concern: government corruption, pay inequality, etc.
• Struggling with a personal dilemma: unkind to a friend, being rejected, facing a death, etc.

Possible Pitfall: Avoid tackling a broad, complicated plot in a short story. Better to develop a specific example of the theme.

Mosquito's theme: As a result of the conflict, readers learn that surviving taunts from older children is part of the struggle of growing up and overcoming the image of Mama's boy.

Creating Characters

Characterization

• Establishes for the reader the relationship between characters
• Major (round) and minor (flat) characters
• Develop character sketches

Finding Your Characters

• At work, school, neighbors, family, organizations, sports team, Starbucks, etc.
• Blend characteristics to create unique, fictional characters
• End goal? Aid to develop your message

Creating Character Identity

• Work on 1 character at a time
• Identities, names, ages, nationalities
• What do they look like?
• Background, family, education, hobbies, work experience, home life
• What do they like (setting)?: fancy cars, luxury dining, rustic cabins, messy office, lakes/oceans, forests

Creating Character Identity

• What do they think, how do they react to frustrating situations, what's important to them?
• How do they behave, move, respond?
• What do they sound like, kind of vocabulary, consistent with other aspects of their personality?
• How do others react to them, to what they say and do?

Creating Character Identity

• Do they see themselves the same way that others see them?
• What are their most unusual characteristics?

Possible Pitfall: Physical descriptions are not as important as personality traits. One dominant impression is more important. Short story writers must create characters quickly!

Possible Pitfall: Maintain consistent characterization. "know" your characters beyond the story's context.

Possible Pitfall: Avoid stereotypical characters. Readers are not surprised by them.

Character Sketch

• List all the traits that make your main characters interesting.
• My neighbor, whom we call "the world's oldest hippie," considers himself a healer, using strange herbs and plants, all of which he raises himself.

Possible Pitfall

• SHOW don't TELL!
• Weak: He was sloppy.
• Better: He dragged his sleeve through the spaghetti sauce.
• Weak: She was glad to see me.
• Better: When she saw me, she ran, arms open, to give me that wonderful bear-hug hello.

Developing the Plot

Conflict

• Your characters and the conflict they encounter will reveal the message.
• Conflict begins with the protagonist (main character) faces an obstacle.

Conflict

• Internal: character wrestles with guilt, sorrow, frustration, depression, indecision, inadequacies, etc.
• External: character against nature (fire, floods, drought) or another person: boss, friend, relative, etc. (antagonist)

Defining Plot

Exposition

• Introduces the characters & setting
• Established the point of view
• Gives background information

Opening

• Leads the main characters into conflict

Rising Action

• Builds the conflict
• Adds new, more complicated incidents
• Leads to the climax

Climax

• Raises conflict to the greatest intensity
• Changes the course of events or the way the reader understands the story
• May be either an event or an insight

Falling Action

• Reduces conflict
• Prepares reader for the resolution
• *Not always used

Resolution

• Ends the conflict
• Leaves the reader satisfied

Let's analyze Mosquito's Plot

Exposition

• Introduce character: Andrew and older brother Todd and his friend Brian
• Shows setting inside tent at night
• Gives background showing 3 boys at a game that requires nerves

Opening Incident

• Younger brother slaps mosquito because it hurts
• Older brother reprimands him

Rising Action

• Older brother calls Andrew "chicken-liver"
• Todd allows mosquito to bite
• Andrew shows fear by not wanting to hear ghost stories
• Andrew reluctantly agrees to play "Truth or Dare! Surprises them by calling "dare." He accepts the dare, crosses field thinks about Sasquatch, gets water

Climax

• He hears a sharp movement in the bush announcing "another presence"

Falling Action

• Andrew crashes through the tent flap
• He asks his brother for "Truth or Dare"

Resolution

• Todd, taking the opposite of his usual track, calls for "Truth," thus ruining Andrew's plan to get back at his brother

Possible Pitfall

• Use chronological order, showing a cause-effect relationship: one event causes the next
• Exceptions: Flashback and foreshadowing

Flashback

• Something out of chronological order
• Reveals information essential to the understanding of the character
• Warning: avoid meaningless details

Foreshadowing

• Gives readers a sign of something to come
• Subtle clues, not direct statements
• Creates suspense

Foreshadow in Mosquito: "... off to the left and a little behind, as sharp movement in the bush announced another presence"

Establishing the Setting

Setting

• Time and place
• Where protagonist and antagonist meet
• Characters should interact with the setting
• Learn about setting through the eyes of the narrator
• Typically readers learn about setting by inference, through hints (not detailed paragraphs)

In Mosquito, the setting is inferred through "tent crossbar and the flashlight suspended from it"

In Mosquito:

• bare, extended arms with mosquitos (warm weather)
• Send you back to the house (in backyard)
• worm-infested mud (late fall)
• Sasquatch country (Northwest)
• caught foot on stubble (harvested earlier in fall)

Picturing Setting

• Before writer can IMPLY setting, he must know all the details, even those which never appear in the story

Picturing Setting

• How does it look? Smell?
• What sounds, how does it feel (cold, muggy, raining...)?
• What's the mood: tranquil, depressing, eerie?
• What time: present, past, future, time of day, time of year?
• What is the space: acre, miles, a small room?

Possible Pitfall

• Sometimes the setting is not important; the story events could take place almost anywhere
• If so, omit details and only give general impressions

Selecting Point of View

Perspective

• POV is the perspective from which the story is told
• Usually first-person or third-person

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue's Purpose

• Revealing characters
• Developing plot

Characteristics of Dialogue

• Exact words enclosed in quotations
• Includes spelling clues
• Produces natural sounding conversation, using short sentences and contractions
• May include sentence fragments
• Uses words like "he yelled" or "she snarled" to add situational context
• Show change in speaker by change in paragraphing

Using Description

Good Description

• Emphasis on the 5 senses
• Support tone and mood, figures of speech
• Vocabulary suits the subject, attitude and audience
• Colorful language, specific nouns, vigorous, active verbs
• Omission of superfulous modifiers
• Varied setence structure

Figures of Speech

• Metaphor
• Simile
• Personification
• Hyperbole
• Symbol
• Alliteration
• Assonance
• Onomatopoeia