Take some time to get acquainted with your characters. That probably isn’t something you want to do with a short story anyway, but just because the story is short doesn’t mean you can skimp on character development. I’m not going to sit here and act like there is an answer to the question of exactly how long a short story can be before it becomes just a regular ol’ story, but in the spirit of precision, it’s safe to say there won’t be time to detail the entirety of each character’s life. So today, let’s focus on character development with seven ways to tackle characters in your short stories. There will be plenty of time to whittle away the excess. Ok, now you can let your ideas percolate and worry about length later. What do all-well, most- short stories have? Setting, plot, characters…you get the idea. If short stories are the best of both worlds, then writing them requires capturing the best of those worlds, and this prospect is understandably nerve-wracking.īut if you step out of the pressure cooker for a moment, you can begin to break it down. Short stories contain all the aspects of a prose narrative and all the precision of a poem. Sure, he may be a little biased, but it’s helpful for me to think of short stories as sitting somewhere between prose and poetry. Take Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s idea that prose is “words in their best order” and that poetry is “the best words in the best order,” and run with it. Saying more with less is much more difficult than it might seem. Why are short stories so hard to write?īecause space is at a premium when word count is low. But fear not! We’ve got you covered with a few tips to help you break down character development into manageable chunks. If you are anything like me, the notion of writing a short story is nothing short of daunting-more daunting than writing any other type of prose, especially when it comes to character development.
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