Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

1. Get Started: Emergency Tips

Is your short story assignment due tomorrow morning? These emergency tips may help. Good luck!
1.Who is your protagonist, and what does he or she want?
(The athlete who wants her team to win the big game and the car crash victim who wants to survive are not unique or interesting enough.)
2.When the story begins, what morally significant actions has he or she already taken towards that goal?
(“Morally significant� doesn’t mean your protagonist has to be conventionally “good�; rather, he or she should already have made a conscious choice, with repercussions that drive the rest of the story.)
3.What unexpected consequences � directly related to the protagonist’s efforts to achieve the goal � ramp up the emotional energy of the story?
(Will the unexpected consequences force your protagonist to make yet another choice, leading to still more consequences?)
4.What details from the setting, dialog, and tone help you tell the story?
(Things to cut: travel scenes, character A telling character B about something we just saw happening to character A, and phrases like “said happily� � it’s much better to say “bubbled� or “smirked� or “chortled.�)
5.What morally significant choice does your protagonist make at the climax of the story?
(Your reader should care about the protagonist’s decision. Ideally, the reader shouldn’t see it coming.)

Drawing on real-life experiences, such as winning the big game, bouncing back after an illness or injury, or dealing with the death of a loved one, are attractive choices for students who are looking for a “personal essay� topic. But simply describing powerful emotional experiences is not the same thing as generating emotional responses in the reader. (See “Show, Don’t (Just) Tell.�)

For those of you who are looking for more long-term writing strategies, here are some additional ideas.


If you are having trouble getting started, look out the window. The whole world is a story, and every moment is a miracle.
-Bruce Taylor, UWEC Professor of Creative Writing
•Keep a notebook. To R. V. Cassill, notebooks are “incubators,� a place to begin with overheard conversation, expressive phrases, images, ideas, and interpretations on the world around you.
•Write on a regular, daily basis. Sit down and compose sentences for a couple of hours every day � even if you don’t feel like it.
•Collect stories from everyone you meet. Keep the amazing, the unusual, the strange, the irrational stories you hear and use them for your own purposes. Study them for the underlying meaning and apply them to your understanding of the human condition.

Read, Read, Read


Read a LOT of Chekhov. Then re-read it. Read Raymond Carver, Earnest Hemingway, Alice Munro, and Tobias Wolff. If you don’t have time to read all of these authors, stick to Chekhov. He will teach you more than any writing teacher or workshop ever could.
-Allyson Goldin, UWEC Asst. Professor of Creative Writing

2. Write a Catchy First Paragraph

In today’s fast-moving world, the first sentence of your short story should catch your reader’s attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict. Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.





I heard my neighbor through the wall.




Dry and uninteresting.





The neighbor behind us practiced scream therapy in his shower almost every day.




The second sentence catches the reader’s attention. Who is this guy who goes in his shower every day and screams? Why does he do that? What, exactly, is“scream therapy�? Let’s keep reading�





The first time I heard him, I stood in the bathroom listening at our shared wall for ten minutes, debating the wisdom of calling the police. It was very different from living in the duplex over middle-aged Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their two young sons in Duluth.


The rest of the paragraph introduces I and an internal conflict as the protagonist debates a course of action and introduces an intriguing contrast of past and present setting.


“It is important to understand the basic elements of fiction writing before you consider how to put everything together. This process is comparable to producing something delectable in the kitchen–any ingredient that you put into your bowl of dough impacts your finished loaf of bread. To create a perfect loaf, you must balance ingredients baked for the correct amount of time and enhanced with the right polishing glaze.� -Laurel Yourke

3. Developing Characters


Your job, as a writer of short fiction–whatever your beliefs–is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value–that will, in Chekhov’s words, “make [man] see what he is like.� -Rick Demarnus

In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story. Here is a partial list of character details to help you get started.




•N²¹³¾±ð
•A²µ±ð
•J´Ç²ú
•E³Ù³ó²Ô¾±³¦¾±³Ù²â
•A±è±è±ð²¹°ù²¹²Ô³¦±ð
•R±ð²õ¾±»å±ð²Ô³¦±ð

•P±ð³Ù²õ
•R±ð±ô¾±²µ¾±´Ç²Ô
•H´Ç²ú²ú¾±±ð²õ
•Single or married?
•C³ó¾±±ô»å°ù±ð²Ô?
•T±ð³¾±è±ð°ù²¹³¾±ð²Ô³Ù



•Favorite color
•F°ù¾±±ð²Ô»å²õ
•Favorite foods
•Drinking patterns
•P³ó´Ç²ú¾±²¹²õ
•F²¹³Ü±ô³Ù²õ

•Something hated?
•S±ð³¦°ù±ð³Ù²õ?
•Strong memories?
•Any illnesses?
•Nervous gestures?
•Sleep patterns


Imagining all these details will help you get to know your character, but your reader probably won’t need to know much more than the most important things in four areas:
•A±è±è±ð²¹°ù²¹²Ô³¦±ð. Gives your reader a visual understanding of the character.
•Action. Show the reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives.
•Speech. Develop the character as a person � don’t merely have your character announce important plot details.
•Thought. Bring the reader into your character’s mind, to show them your character’s unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

For example, let’s say I want to develop a college student persona for a short story that I am writing. What do I know about her?


Her name is Jen, short for Jennifer Mary Johnson. She is 21 years old. She is a fair-skinned Norwegian with blue eyes, long, curly red hair, and is 5 feet 6 inches tall. Contrary to the stereotype about redheads, she is actually easygoing and rather shy. She loves cats and has two of them named Bailey and Allie. She is atechnical writing major with a minor in biology. Jen plays the piano and is an amateur photographer. She lives in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She eats pizza every day for lunch and loves Red Rose tea. She cracks her knuckles when she is nervous. Her mother just committed suicide.

4. Choose a Point of View

Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the actionobjectively.
•First Person. The story is told from the view of “I.� The narrator is either theprotagonist (main character) and directly affected by unfolding events, or the narrator is a secondary character telling the story revolving around the protagonist. This is a good choice for beginning writers because it is the easiest to write.





I saw a tear roll down his cheek. I had never seen my father cry before. I looked away while he brushed the offending cheek with his hand.


•Second Person. The story is told directly to “you�, with the reader as a participant in the action.





You laughed loudly at the antics of the clown. You clapped your hands with joy.




(See also Jerz on interactive fiction.)


•Third Person. The story tells what “he�, “she,� or “it� does. The third-person narrator’s perspective can be limited (telling the story from one character’s viewpoint) or omniscient (where the narrator knows everything about all of the characters).





He ran to the big yellow loader sitting on the other side of the gravel pit shack.


Your narrator might take sides in the conflict you present, might be as transparent as possible, or might advocate a position that you want your reader to challenge (this is the “unreliable narrator� strategy).


Yourke on point of view:
•First Person. “Unites narrator and reader through a series of secrets� when they enter one character’s perceptions. However, it can “lead to telling� and limits readers connections to other characters in the short story.
•Second Person. “Puts readers within the actual scene so that readers confront possibilities directly.� However, it is important to place your characters “in a tangible environment� so you don’t “omit the details readers need for clarity.�
•Third Person Omniscient. Allows you to explore all of the characters� thoughts and motivations. Transitions are extremely important as you move from character to character.
•Third Person Limited. “Offers the intimacy of one character’s perceptions.� However, the writer must “deal with character absence from particular scenes.�

Very interesting points made and extremely helpful.

thx for the compliment! hope it's convenient for everyone!