One of my hobbies is fiction writing, and I particuarly like to write short stories. In this article (one of several Mslexia is publishing to help prepare writers for entering their short story competition), Margaret Wilkinson shares a great set of questions you can ask yourself about your writing to make it stronger and more readable.

Give your story a facelift

Don’t abandon your short story just because it’s been rejected a few times. If the idea was enough to inspire you in the first place, chances are it has the potential to inspire an editor or competition judge too. Perhaps all it needs is a bit of a makeover? If so, here are a few tried and tested tweaks to try.

1 Is your main character sympathetic enough?

You need to make sure that your reader really cares what happens to your protagonist. A simple way of achieving this is to give your protagonist a single, strong, clear and concrete want or need (for a cigarette, a new lover, a place to hide, a good night’s sleep). However unattractive or immoral your character is, if you give them a really deep desire for something, your reader can’t help rooting for them.

Another way to make your main character more sympathetic is to endow them with something you value yourself: your fondest memory, a treasured possession, your most cherished belief. This will force you to empathise with your protagonist — and hopefully communicate this to your reader.

2 Is there enough conflict?

Who or what is stopping your main character from getting what s/he wants? If there’s nothing in their way, perhaps you need to introduce an antagonist? An antagonist is not necessarily a bad guy; s/he is simply a character that opposes what your protagonist wants — sometimes for their own good. If your heroine desperately wants to get married, for example, conflict could be expressed by a best friend counselling her to wait.

You could also introduce conflict in the form of an obstruction or thwarting event, such as a divorced father, who is entrusted to pick up his daughter from nursery school, but the traffic is gridlocked, or his car is clamped.
If your story already contains some conflict, try turning up the volume. The best friend could boycott the wedding; the school could be locked by the time the father arrives.

3 Have you started too early? Or ended too late?

Chekhov said: ‘Short stories are like tortoises: they’re all middle’. There’s no space in a short story for a long preamble. The reader needs to feel as though they’ve arrived slightly late at the theatre: the curtain’s up and the characters are already talking to one another. If your reader has to play a bit of ‘catch-up’ s/he will feel more involved in the action.

Similarly, you need to bring the curtain down early at the end of your story, so your reader has the sense that the characters are continuing the action afterwards. Chekhov recommends lopping off the first and last paragraphs as an experiment. Keep on lopping until you achieve the effect you need.

4 Is your story too complicated?

Short stories are all about focus and significance. There’s simply no space for needless complexity. You need to concentrate on creating one main effect and cut out anything that distracts from that effect. That means no flashbacks, no subplots, no multiple viewpoints, no complicated mixed motivation. Are there too many characters? If there are, try cutting or amalgamating them. Are there too many moods? Aim for one simple transformation, from despair to hope, perhaps; rather than a rollercoaster of contrasting emotions. Are there too many images? It’s better to stick with one or two subtle and pervasive metaphors than to confuse your reader with a dazzling palette of similes.

5 Have you chosen a single point of view?

The most basic mistake is to tell the story from more than one characters’ point of view. If you do this, you lose focus and dissipate empathy every time you shift perspective. One way to keep your point of view consistent is to rewrite the story in first person. This will force you to stay with your protagonist; you can always change back to third person afterwards, when you have achieved the focus you need.

Writing in first person should also help you to clarify and distil the motivation of your main character. Ask yourself why they feel as they do, why they are acting in this way, and your story will gain shape and depth as well as focus.

6 Is your story monotonous?

You can add variety and dramatic interest, without adding confusion, by dividing your story up into scenes as if it was a play. Three scenes are ideal: a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion. Make each scene different in some fundamental way from the others, by changing the setting, the characters involved, the action. Writing in scenes will also (hopefully) encourage you to use dialogue, which will add further variety to the text.
Another way to create variety is to vary the length of your sentences and paragraphs.

7 Have you conveyed a sense of place?

You can inject colour and atmosphere into your story by setting it somewhere definite, and then interspersing fragments of description throughout the text. Concentrate on the opening paragraphs, to encourage the reader to form an early image. There’s no room in a short story for extended description, but you can create a surprisingly vivid sense of place with a few judicious phrases (squashed chips on the pavement, gritty wind made her cheeks sting, fresh dung steaming in the farmyard, the crunch of his boots on the frosty grass).

: Mslexia Short Story Competition Writing Workshops ::.