Shikha Patel's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
6 Things I learnt about writing Short Stories
1) Not every story needs a moral at the end. This mostly applies if your target audiences are adults. Readers are not fond of idealistic narratives. They literally spent their whole childhood listening to those. Readers need more realistic perspective. The world these days is offering so much to individuals in terms of variety in what we eat, watch, wear and think that the pool of emotions, readers these days connect to, is huge. Write a real(istic) story, fictionalizing it shall be just the topping!
2) Make your characters good, not right. There is an illustrious difference between good and right. It pleases and connects to a reader when you make your characters do the good; and it annoys your readers if your characters do the right. Again, it usually not realistic.
3) Define your own length. I have asked and many have asked me, "what is the ideal length of a short story?" After researching, I realize there is no ideal length. Just convey your story in the best possible way you can. I have read amazing short stories of 50 words and even 5000 words. Don't consider length as a criterion to write your short story (unless you are appearing for rules bounded competitions).
4) It is not always necessary to give names and genders to your character. You must realize that the commitment from a reader is already less when they pick up your story. When a reader picks up 300 or 600 pages novel, she/ he is mentally committed to a few days. But short stories (especially the ones published online), have only a few minutes of commitment from the reader. Adding too many characters confuses and hence makes the reader loose interest. When possible, leave it to the reader to interpret the gender of your character (this might be only possible if you are writing in first person). This helps the reader connect well to your character.
5) Keep the language very simple. Understand that the person reading your 5-minute short story does not want to google the meaning of some words you have written. If you want to use heavy words, better go for a longer script.
6) Make their hearts pump fast. In case of a novel, there are enough pages for the writer to make the reader feel happy/ sad/ excited/ curious etc. But in case of a short story, you have only few words to make them feel all that. Of course, it’s challenging but try to convene emotions in a few sentences. However, this point is subjective as stories with one plain emotion have also worked wonders.
2) Make your characters good, not right. There is an illustrious difference between good and right. It pleases and connects to a reader when you make your characters do the good; and it annoys your readers if your characters do the right. Again, it usually not realistic.
3) Define your own length. I have asked and many have asked me, "what is the ideal length of a short story?" After researching, I realize there is no ideal length. Just convey your story in the best possible way you can. I have read amazing short stories of 50 words and even 5000 words. Don't consider length as a criterion to write your short story (unless you are appearing for rules bounded competitions).
4) It is not always necessary to give names and genders to your character. You must realize that the commitment from a reader is already less when they pick up your story. When a reader picks up 300 or 600 pages novel, she/ he is mentally committed to a few days. But short stories (especially the ones published online), have only a few minutes of commitment from the reader. Adding too many characters confuses and hence makes the reader loose interest. When possible, leave it to the reader to interpret the gender of your character (this might be only possible if you are writing in first person). This helps the reader connect well to your character.
5) Keep the language very simple. Understand that the person reading your 5-minute short story does not want to google the meaning of some words you have written. If you want to use heavy words, better go for a longer script.
6) Make their hearts pump fast. In case of a novel, there are enough pages for the writer to make the reader feel happy/ sad/ excited/ curious etc. But in case of a short story, you have only few words to make them feel all that. Of course, it’s challenging but try to convene emotions in a few sentences. However, this point is subjective as stories with one plain emotion have also worked wonders.
