How to Write a Short Story

I’ve been meeting a lot of people who wonder, “How is a short story written, what is involved?” I figured I’d break it down into simple steps. They don’t have to be followed exactly, but, they’ll probably help you on your quest.

Get an idea
Since it’s ready taken, don’t worry that it’s already taken
Masturbate to a photo of Flannery O’Connor
Have a cup of coffee
Start your story briskly!
Briskly throw it away after 5 minutes.
It’s the law.
Restart.
Write about life
Or death
Don’t let anyone else know that, make them think the plot is about as simple and carefree as having sex in a helicopter.
The first sentence of your story should only take you about seven months
If you think it’s done any sooner than that, keep crumpling it up and throwing it in your bird cage
Have a bird and a bird cage
Maybe a cockatiel just cause that’s funny to say
Cockatiel
write a rough draft of your idea
keep it loose
put in some of the key building blocks of life and humanity
such as love
betrayal
trust
typos
grammatical errors
explosions
the Pacific Ocean,
You love the ocean but don’t get to go as often as you’d like
In the short story mention a bunch of other cool shit
you have a lot of options
Don’t mention anything lame for more than 3/4 of a sentence.
Have you been writing on a yellow legal pad with a blue ball point pen? Go back to number 6.
Ask everybody on the street for clues about who Alice Monroe is
did they tell you? Perfect. Add some of her wisdom
find out from the deli girl slicing your ham who Denis Johnson is
insist on “thin sliced ham”
Back to the story. Add tension
add more tension
Make sure there’s a conflict
Make sure there’s a resolution
Make sure your character undergoes some monumentous forced bullshit change
Does it feel forced?
not working
Force harder
Add some love triangles
Also add an artistic scene of the narrator glancing out at the Pacific Ocean like the end of Barton fink.
Was that a short story?
I dunno
Maybe write Barton Fink as a short
Or whatever you want
It’s your story
You call out of your job for a week
You finish the first draft of your short story!
Celebrate!
Go out for a $250 steak dinner
Get a strawberry slushy from 7-11, add 13 shots of mescal
Get drunk in a random limo
Tell the limo driver to take you to Raymond Carver’s house
“Who’s that?”
“Look her up motherfucker.”
“Get out of my limo, you look like you’re gonna choke on your own vomit.”
At home you hit your head on the mirror, slipping in the bathroom
Nasty
Get some stitches
“What happened to your head?” someone asks
“Art” you say. Not meaning it. You just think it’s funny to say.
Submit your first draft to McSweeny’s!
Get rejected by the mailman as you hand him/her the envelope
Send it also to Esquire
The Paris Review
Your mom
Get rejections from all the magazines in six months
Your mom whenever Thanksgiving is
Rewrite your story
Type it this time
I thought you had enough common sense to type your draft …
you sent a handwritten story in an envelope without even an SASE? OMG?!
It goes like this:
Idea
Yellow legal pad
blue ball point pen
Type it up
Double space it
12 point times new roman
Put your email and name on the top of each page
Don’t be a smug asshole in your bio
Be nice
Thank the editor for their time
That’s it
SASE if sending through snail mail
who cares if it’s digital.
whew, alright, pressing  on …
Ok, you need critiques on your story
It’s obvious
Have your barber look it over
“Make your protagonist a barber” he’ll say
Don’t do it
Spell check your work again
It’s ‘your’ not ‘you’re’
Or ‘it’s’ not ‘its’
A bunch of other shit
Delete all the Martians
All the celebrity psychics
All the werewolf detectives
Write about regular people
Give them regular names
Or no names
Make their lives interesting (kinda)
But please don’t make them spies
Or cops
Or Jean Claude Van Dame
Rewrite the first sentence over and over and over again until blood comes out of your eyes
Then delete the entire story
Say “Fuck why did I delete that?”
Take your computer to a tech geek. Have the file rescued from wherever fucked up accidentally deleted files go.
Take the tech geek on a romantic weekend getaway to a secluded bed and breakfast in upstate NY
Screw loudly
Get complaints from the old couple that run it
Print them out your story on the printer by the chess board next to the fireplace
“Lose the barber. Who wants to read about a barber?” the old lady says.
“Make him a werewolf spy,” the old man suggests.
Submit the second draft to university presses
Get rejected
Marry the tech geek on the beach
You both love the beach
Submit draft 3 to online websites like Pank and the Nervous Breakdown
Get rejected
Submit draft 6 or better to small press online sites
Get accepted!
Say, “fuck them! One more draft”
Resend to the New Yorker.
Never hear back
Forget your story for a decade
start a family with the tech geek
Get a condo
Take the cockatiel with you
Gain 24 pounds
Figure out how to make jello no bake cherry cheese cake
“Easy as shit”
Have two kids
Twins
Whatever non identical is called
Boys
Kyle and Wiley
Start growing your own weed in a secret room behind your bookcase
Also, take your family on a vacation to see colonial Williamsburg in Virginia
They’ll hate it
You’ll hate it
That kinda stuff is good for your writing. Hate.
Also: crash your car into a telephone pole while fucked up on over the counter prescription medication that you crushed up and snorted
It doesn’t matter
It was a Mazda miata
That’s also good for your writing
Tell your kids “SHUT THE FUCK UP! I’m trying to write”
Draft 8
Draft 9
Suffer at work
Get the silent treatment at home
Decide to enter into rehab for the prescription drugs you snort
Adderal mostly
This saves your marriage
Your kids make the highschool soccer team
Whatever
Soccer sucks
Take your first writings class!
After the first class take the writing teacher out to the bar
ask, “So how did you get published in the New Yorker?”
Be surprised when the teacher says, “sheesh, I can’t even get a short story published in the local newspaper.”
Send your story to the local newspaper
It’s accepted!
Reject them too.
Laugh at the editor on the phone.
“Sorry, bub” you say. “Bigger and better things, bub.”
Do some research
Get someone to hit you with rocks so you finally understand Shirley Jackson’s “the lottery”
Workshop your story all that year at one of your six writer’s groups
Shut up and Write!
Write Prison!
Write N’ Munch
Scribble Fun
The Leather Elbow Pad
MFA MOTHERFUCKER’S ANONYMOUS
they’re all helpful
Tighten up your troublesome short story with all that wonderful FREE advice from all those other aspiring writers
Get a twitter account
Follow people who hash tag #ThePenIsMightierThanGettingFucked
Follow Raymond Carver
Finally read one of his stories
Tell me if it’s any good
Make your story sadder
Put in cancer
A car crashing into a train
Maybe some assault of some kind. people love that
Give everybody a pet dog with a wet nose
set the story in Pittsburg
In a steel mill
The day it’s set to close
Give every character a ton of back story
Write it in third person present tense
Oh shit your story is 63,000 words
Lean what flash fiction is
Learn Hemmingway’s 6 word story about the fucking baby shoes
Learn who Hemingway is
Cut your story by 61,000 words
Ditch the steel mill
Let your cockatiel go free
It dies in the snow
“Stupid” your computer geek spouse says
Your kids laugh
You think that’s a bad sign
Maybe they all need lithium
You don’t want any
You think psych drugs will take away your creativity
after work one day you stop in a your local seedy dive bar where bands and poets play/read and you are surprised to see a zine stuffed in the toilet
Fish it out
Rinse it off
what the hell, you send them your story
They publish your story!
You are 55 years old, you feel accomplished
“I’m a published author” you scream from your home at the top of Mt. Everest which you climb up and down all the time to do all your goddamned errands and crap.
That’s irony
Learn that.
Put it in your new shit.
Now, write a zillion more stories.
About what?
Anything but writing
Unless you don’t give a fuck
Just have fun
Go to the beach
Bring sandwiches
And an umbrella
And a blanket big enough for all of you
Watch the blue sky
jump in the green ocean
Feel good while you can
say, “I think this sandwich just gave me an idea for a story …”
“About what?”
“You’ll see. When they publish it.”
“Who?”
“Well, I’m not sure yet.”
“There’s sand in my sandwich.”
“Isn’t that exactly what life is?”
The sun goes behind a cloud and a chill comes off the ocean
you lay down next to your love
you both cover up for a little with the big beach towel
that’s your favorite part