An Expansive Mini-Guide for Structuring Your Short Story

Structure and Character in the Short Story

Let’s talk about short story creation and structure. 

Word Limits: 

·         A short story typically has 1500 to a 7500-words. You need to always read and follow submission guidelines when submitting stories. 

·         Flash Fiction has around 500 to a 1000-words. 

Word count image created in Excel by the author using information from Wikipedia and the Author Learning Center

 In this article, I am going to assume we are writing a short story somewhere in the area of 3000 to 5000 words. 

To Start:

·         You need a character with a deep need or desire. Something that they will fight or struggle to get or resist. They need an external need/desire and an internal need/desire. This need or want is intertwined with the character's core motivation for their actions and choices, consciously or subconsciously, good or bad. Maslow'sHierarchy of Needs.

·         Your character needs resistance, and by that, I mean something, someone, situation or event, that prevents them from fulfilling their deep need or desire. This resistance generates conflict for the forward story movement.

Clarify and simplify your character's personality with a one-word description tool to capture character essence while you write.  Describe them with one word to help you create a concept in your mind to use as a guide. ex: hopeless romantic, avenging mailman, nervous bank teller, guilty father, cranky bus driver. 

Decide on setting.  Setting can be snow at Christmas, or in the middle of Walmart, or a rainy day Monday, or waiting for a bus at the bus terminal.

Or a situation can also serve as both setting, location, and generate general conflict ideas: A bank robbery or shopping for toilet paper during the Corvid19 pandemic.

Start a short story as close to the end and in the action as possible.

The Hook

What is a story hook?  Why use it? A hook is something that is special about your story that grabs the reader’s attention keeps them reading.  A hook is story-based through ideas and concepts directly connect to the story world.  Suggested reading: Active Hooks.

In short stories, the hook works somewhat like the inciting incident in novel plotting. You want to grab them in the first couple of lines or by the first and second paragraphs.

Keep your word limits in mind.

Start your story in the middle of the action, or with active dialogue, or active setting as story character or reveal some aspect of your character.  Suggested reading: Active Setting

Get rid of thought verbs, to be verbs and excess filler words such as just, really, very, even, then/than, suddenly, and phrases like at or in the moment, just now and so forth. Write with conciseness.  Limit your adjectives.

Use strong verbs such as batter, blab, growl, gush, shimmer.  

The purpose of a scene is to show a moment in the life of the character within the story world moving toward the story end goal. 

Story Movement--Rising Action

 

The rising action is a series of actionable scenes leading up to the climax of a story. 

The word limits of short stories do not leave a lot of room for characterization, setting, and conflict. That means you have to be selective in word choice and limit your conflict.

The rising action begins at the beginning of any story. Actions and choices, when presented with resistance, move your character toward the story's high point. (Novels structure refers to this as the climax — turning point.)

Short stories, unlike novels, will only have two or three of these moments until the turning point because of word limits.

Conflict In Story: Resistance

The purpose of all conflict in stories is to move the story forward toward the end story goal or scene story goal.

Conflict is NOT something random happening or daily routine.

Conflict is anything that stands in the way of your character reaching their greatest desire or need creating change within the character and/or outside the character or story world.

Conflict is generated and sustained through the choices and actions your character takes when blocked by the resistance, keeping them from the thing they desire or need most.

The High Point or Climax

 

The climax is somewhere in the middle of ANY story. Everything after that will be falling action moving the character toward the resolution or end story goal.

The climax is the highest pivotal moment or emotional point signifying a change in direction or heart in the story. It is the moment when your character realizes how much they have to lose.

It also clarifies and solidifies all rising action to this point leaving, no doubt why this is happening or happened.

The character is all in—no turning back win or lose.  

In short stories, this is often the dark night of the soul too or followed, in short, by the dark night of the soul because of limited word counts. The falling action then is the events that move the story toward the end goal or resolution.

Falling Action

 

Falling action occurs after the climax and sets a tone opposite of rising action cueing the reader the end approaches.   

In a short story, you may have two or just one falling action moment, conflict--resistance, before the resolution. The falling action is the journey to the wrap-up. You tie up loose ends giving the reader closure for the story.

A Summary of Short Story Structure

The beginning = Setup a character with a problem in setting

The rising resistance = A character faced with choices and prevented from reaching or achieving their deepest desire or need. (Obstacles to overcome internal and/or external.)

The climax = This is the highest point in the story. It is created by the rising action forcing the character to go all-in with no turning back.

The falling action = The journey and resistance to reach the end tying up all unfinished elements moving to the story resolution.

The resolution = The problem is solved through the characters, choices or actions, achieving their deepest desire or need or accepting the loss.

All loose ends are resolved. It may also show a brief glimpse of the character in this new world created by their journey and choices.

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Here are some free tools to help you create characters and guide story structure. 

·         Cheat Sheet: Character Creation & Short Story Structure.

·         Bonus extended character creation cheat sheet using astrology for creating more 3-dimensional characters and in-depth worldbuilding.

·         What makes a good flash fiction piece?

Submitting to Anthologies: What You Should Know and Why You Should Give It a Try

Today we welcome L.G. Keltner, winner of the IWSG Anthology Contest!

Anthologies are a great option for anyone who writes short stories. One obvious reason why they’re so good is because of the exposure. A reader who was previously unfamiliar with your work may pick up an anthology and fall in love with your story. From there they may do some research to see if you have any other works available. What author wouldn’t love to have this happen? I know I would!

While there are many ways to get your short stories out into the world, there’s another advantage of submitting to an anthology that I appreciate. They typically have a clearly-stated theme in the guidelines. For the writer who may be struggling to come up with a good story idea (and we’ve all been there, haven’t we?), this may be just what they need. I’ve gone through listings for upcoming anthologies and almost always walked away with a new idea for a story. Even if I don’t end up meeting the submission deadline, I still have a possible story swirling around in my brain.

So, how to you go about finding anthologies that are seeking submissions? One way is to join writing groups online, and IWSG is one of the best. There are also plenty of other groups on Facebook and Goodreads. There’s also a thriving writing community on Twitter. Writers are usually willing to share information about writing opportunities, so keep an eye out! There’s also the rather straight-forward method of doing an internet search for anthology openings. This may not be the most elegant of methods, but it works.

When you do find an anthology opening that appeals to you, read the guidelines closely. I like to write out the guidelines by hand so I’m certain that I haven’t missed anything. If you don’t follow the guidelines, your submission will be disqualified regardless of the quality of your story. You don’t want to invest all that time and creative energy only to have this happen. It’s both disappointing and embarrassing.

The guidelines will give you specifics about theme, word count, where and how to submit, the contact information you need to provide with your submission, and payment. Sometimes you’ll also find legal information regarding what to expect following publication. Be sure that you understand the legal terms presented, and if anything doesn’t make sense to you, research it!

One of the most common questions people have about being published in an anthology is how they’ll be paid. This is understandable. We may write for the love of it, but getting paid is nice too! There are generally three types of compensation possible, and there are pros associated with each.

• Non-paid anthologies: These are the ones where there’s no monetary compensation. This shouldn’t necessarily deter anyone from submitting since you still benefit by reaching new readers.
• Up-front payment: This is where you receive a one-time payment for your story. The benefit of this is that you know how much you’ll be receiving, and you’ll get all of that money at one time. It may even be a sufficiently large amount that you can treat yourself to something nice.
• Royalties: This is where you receive a percentage of the royalties as a payment. The amount you make is contingent upon how many people buy the anthology, so you could end up making very little, or you could end up making a lot more than you anticipated. It could go either way, but you do get the benefit of getting a little something for your work at regular intervals. A few extra dollars here and there never hurt anyone.

This is all useful information to have if you’re considering submitting to an anthology, but there’s one last thing I’d like to say on this subject. You need to know about the submission process, yes, but there’s one obstacle you need to overcome before you even get that far.

Lack of confidence.

I’ve seen people look at the theme for an anthology and say they don’t think they could write a good story along those lines, even though they may want to. I’ve also seen people with a brilliant story idea, but they don’t think they can pull it off. My advice for you is to ignore that nagging doubt and try anyway.

While working on “Felix Was Here” for the contest, I felt like I was in over my head. I’ve written a lot of science fiction, so I’m not new to the world of the speculative. Still, my story is also set in the 1940’s, which makes it historical. Historical fiction is something I’d never done before, and the amount of research I needed to do was significant. I also faced the challenge of staying within a small word count (which has never been easy for me) while building a world. It proved to be a daunting task, and there were several times when I was tempted to give up on it. I loved the story idea, but I didn’t feel like I could make it happen. Thankfully my stubbornness prevailed, and I got it done. I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I found out that I’d won, and how grateful I was that I didn’t quit.

Don’t sell yourself short. Keep writing, keep submitting, and keep pushing your boundaries. You never know what you’re capable of until you try.