{"id":3474,"date":"2019-10-14T20:13:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T00:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WP\/?p=3474"},"modified":"2019-10-14T20:13:28","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T00:13:28","slug":"what-makes-a-good-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/fiction\/what-makes-a-good-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes a good short story?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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W<\/span>riting a short story is not for sissies. To get it right, no pun intended, takes knowledge of what makes a good story and the ability to execute the plot, setting, dialogue and more.<\/p>\n

Major Elements of A Short Story<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Protagonist: <\/span>The good guy or gal trying to solve a problem or overcome something, make something happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Antagonist:<\/span> What, or who, the protagonist struggles against. The bad guy or gal which may be the environment that\u2019s trying to kill or defeat the protagonist. Might be an enemy, a bully, a teacher, anyone or anything that works against the protagonist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conflict:<\/span> Without conflict you have no story. This might be war, sport, entrance to a club, school, or gang, or perhaps acquiring a present, home, degree, or winning something.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disagreement:<\/span> Characters don\u2019t get along. How could they when they work against each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Dialogue:<\/span> Must support the plot and conflict. Be sure that how your characters speak reflects their education, technical savvy. One thing not to do is to attempt to write with an accent. And don\u2019t use foreign words and phrases without their translation in English in parenthesis. To learn
\nhow people actually speak, take notes of people actually speaking. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Characters:<\/span> colorful, smart, dumb, whatever they must be memorable with foibles, problems, bad habits, good habits, nice people, terrible people; make them real.<\/span><\/p>\n

Character\u2019s Internal and External Emotional Conflict:<\/span> Your characters do things, they take certain actions, are those things done because the character wants to do them, or because the character is doing what is expected, is coerced, doing it for money, what?<\/span><\/p>\n

Character’s Interpersonal Conflict:<\/span> Do the characters like each other? Do they want the same thing? What is their problem? How do they deal with it? With each other?<\/span><\/p>\n

Setting: <\/span>indoors, outdoors, residential, industrial, commercial, technology, cars, boats, planes, home, shop, store, garage; the setting must be consistent with everything in and around it. That includes how characters dress, act, speak. <\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion: <\/span>know the ending of the story and write to it. Remember that th ending must tie up all loose ends; this is not the place for a cliff hanger as there is no follow up to a short story; if you\u2019re writing a cliff hanger you\u2019re not writing a short story but an ongoing series<\/span><\/p>\n

Research:<\/span> do as much as you can before starting, when you come to something that needs more reading, you don\u2019t need to stop writing. Put three x\u2019s (xxx) in the manuscript and come back to it later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outline:<\/span> the story from beginning to end. <\/span><\/p>\n

Subplots:<\/span> A short story is generally too short for subplots, unless you\u2019re writing a serialized story, or a novel, or a long short story. Subplots have two criteria:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0internal relationships between the characters<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0some nonfiction element that supports the story, perhaps real information on
\ntechnology that\u2019s in the story<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing a short story is not for sissies. To get it right, no pun intended, takes knowledge of what makes a good story and the ability to execute the plot, setting, dialogue…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,80,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-short-story","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneaenglish.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}