writing stories is

• Use dialogue

Use descriptive details

Revise your story, publish your story.

Here's a simpl e approach for how to write a story.

1) Come up with a situation where your character is dealing with a problem.

- They suspect their spouse is cheating on them.

- They are trying to escape from a kidnapper.

- The new home they just bought appears to be haunted.

If you're stuck for ideas, feel free to use one of the examples above.

2) Before you start writing, you can spend a few minutes to explore the idea in your imagination.

Imagine you're the character in the situation you've chosen. What would you do? What might happen next?

Daydream the scene from your character's perspective. Let it play in your head like a movie.

Try to make your daydream as vivid as possible, paying attention to sights, smells, sounds, and sensations.

3) Now, take detailed notes on your daydream.

Don't worry about style or how your writing sounds. You'll go back and edit later. First, just focus on capturing the details and feeling of the scene, as if you were writing in a diary about an experience in order to preserve the memory.

4) Ready to go back and edit?

Part of crafting a story is choosing which details to keep, and which ones to leave out. Think about what it felt like when you were daydreaming the scene. Which details are important to that feeling? Which ones can you leave out and still recreate the overall experience? Use your daydream of the scene as a point of reference when you are editing.

We offer a short course on how to write a story's beginning, middle and ending . You can take it for free here.

Hooray! You've written a story!

How to get character ideas

There are endless ways to get character ideas. Your characters might be inspired by people you know or by strangers you see on the street. You can use photos or paintings as a starting point. Or, you can just write down a random name and see what image it brings to your mind.

Here are some prompts to inspire you...

- Imagine a character who acts rude, but is actually just shy. - Imagine a character who desperately wants to impress their older brother. - Write about a character who is secretly planning to leave their marriage.

Now, YOU complete the sentences to get even more character ideas:

- Imagine a character who acts ________, but is actually ________. - Imagine a character who desperately wants ________. - Imagine a character who is secretly ________.

Click here for a free e-book with 160 photos to give you character ideas.

Character profiles

Character profiles are a tool for getting to know your characters better so you can bring them to life on the page. Make notes for yourself on the character's appearance, personality, history, current situation, close relationships, hopes and fears. You can use these character profiling questionnaires to develop your character.

Click here to get our e-book of character profiling questions for free.

Note: Most of the information in the profile might NOT actually end up in your story. The character profile is just a behind-the-scenes tool to help you imagine the character more fully.

Showing your characters

One mistake that beginning writers often make is to introduce each character to readers with a little biography. There are other ways to help readers get to know your characters.

Think of the way you get to know real people. Normally, they don't introduce themselves to you saying, "I'm so-and-so. I'm a divorced 34-year-old doctor with two small children. I love to paint, and I'm afraid of intimacy."

Instead, you form an impression gradually. You notice:

• Their physical appearance.
• The way they dress.
• The way they talk and what they talk about.
• Their gestures and habits.
• The way other people react to them.
• Their actions.

You can use the same types of clues, sprinkled throughout your story, to let your readers gradually get to know your characters.

TIP: To show what your characters are REALLY like, put them in stressful and difficult situations that bring out extreme aspects of their personalities.

How to write a story that goes somewhere

For there to be a story at all, something has to happen or change. The story has to go from Point A to Point B.

What happens could be:

• A physical event (Point A = Amy's ex-husband is trying to kidnap her son. Point B = Amy's ex-husband is arrested).
•  A decision (Point A = Ellen wants to marry Steve. Point B = Ellen decides to marry David instead).
• A change in a relationship (Point A = They hate each other. Point B = They love each other.)
• A change in a person (Point A = Martin is a jerk. Point B = Martin learns to be less of a jerk.) 
• A change in the reader's understanding of a situation. (Point A = We believe Ellen has been framed for murder. Point B = We discover that she's actually guilty.)

What happens could even be the realization that nothing will ever happen. (Point A = your character dreams of escaping prison. Point B = his dream of escape is shown to be hopeless.)

The sequence of events between a story's Point A and Point B is called the story's plot .

Plot structure

So, how do you get a story from Point A to Point B? You introduce a conflict , or problem.

If everything's just fine at Point A, then there's no reason for anything to change. If characters are satisfied with their lives, they are not motivated to take drastic action. They can just stay put, enjoying their happy marriages and lovely homes, strolling the landscaped streets of their adorable town, crime rate zero. These characters have everything they need and want, so there is no reason to keep turning pages. This is the end of the story. Unless... we add a destabilizing element (Political corruption? Infidelity? Werewolf epidemic?)

A classic plot structure looks like this:

• (Point A) You introduce the character and the character's problem.
• The character struggles against this problem. The struggle increases in intensity until it reaches a peak. This is called the climax of the story. It is the the decisive moment which determines the results of the character's struggle.
• (Point B) You show the results.

TIP: If you're ever feeling stuck a story that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, check to make sure it has a clear conflict. If the conflict is weak or nonexistent, the story will seem flat. It may read more like a description or anecdote than a story. A strong conflict will give the story a focus and move things alone.

How to write a story setting

Your setting is the time and place of your story.

Does your story happen in present-day Philadelphia? Does it happen on a French battlefield during the first World War? Does it happen in the year 3010 on a planet you've invented?

Your choice of setting has an impact on nearly every aspect of your story, from the way characters talk and what they talk about, to the objects in their homes and the scenery around them.

Researching your setting

Just as it's helpful to get to know characters before writing about them, you want to have a detailed knowledge of your setting so that you make it real for your readers.

You have a head start if you choose your hometown or another place you know well to be your story's setting. You already have a detailed map in your imagination -- you can close your eyes and picture it in detail; when your characters move around in your setting, you know what they see.

On the other hand, you might want to set your story in a place you've never been. The trick then is to get the place in your imagination so that you can visualize it as clearly as your hometown.

If you're writing about a real place, you can travel there or look at pictures, read about it in books and on the Internet. If you're writing about an imaginary place, you might want to start a notebook where you invent details about it,. You might even want to draw maps and collect or draw pictures to help you imagine different aspects of your setting.

Our Setting Questionnaire will help you develop your story's setting. Click here here to get it for free.

How to write a story in scenes

Beginning writers have a tendency to summarize their stories instead of writing scenes.

Here's an example of summary:

I came home after midnight. My mother was furious, and threw me out of the house. 

Here's the beginning of a scene:

I unlocked the door as quietly as I could and slipped into the dark kitchen. Then I saw my mother standing there in her long nightgown, silhouetted by the light from the hall. I expected her to shout at me, and when she spoke quietly, almost whispering, the effect was chilling. "If you can't follow the rules of this family," she said, "then you can't live here anymore. Go pack your things and get out."  Do you see the difference? A scene SHOWS the story's events instead of just TELLING about them. Scenes use dialogue, action, and descriptive details to help readers feel like they're watching things happen in "real time".

If you write a whole story as summary, the result can be boring, like a Wikipedia article.

On the other hand, summary is sometimes useful if you want to quickly fill in background information or to create transitions between scenes.

How to write a story that "shows" instead of only "telling"

Let's say you are writing about a boy named Nathan, who is a bully. You could simply TELL readers, "Nathan is a bully."

On the other hand, if you SHOW Nathan tormenting a child on the playground, readers will decide on their own that Nathan is a bully. And this "first-hand" observation will have a lot more impact than any information you "tell." Readers won't love or hate a character just because you tell them to. But, after watching Nathan grind mud into a little girl's face, readers are likely to hate him.

Here are some examples of "telling" and "showing" .

TELLING: Andrea is upset, but trying to hide it.

SHOWING: Andrea forces a smile, but her hands are shaking.

TELLING: The hotel room was creepy.

SHOWING: Ivan sat on the bed, staring at stains the colored of dried blood in the carpet. The lights kept flickering, then suddenly went out, plunging him into darkness.

Now, you try it. How can you SHOW the following information?

TELLING: Mark's office is compulsively neat. (Ask yourself: What is the neatness LIKE?)

TELLING: Chrissie was annoyed with Lisa. (How do you know when someone's annoyed in real life? What signs tell you? How about this character, Chrissie -- how does SHE react to feeling annoyed?)

In general, showing is more vivid and interesting than telling. It has a greater visceral impact. On the other hand, sometimes it makes sense to TELL instead of showing. If Ivan is a doctor, I don't have to make a special point of showing him in his white coat and stethoscope. I can just say, "He's a doctor." That quickly gives readers the information they need to know. As a general rule, you'll want to show instead of telling when your goal is to make readers FEEL something.

TIP: Do you find yourself doing too much TELLING in your fiction? Here are some things you can do to help yourself switch to SHOWING.

1) Add dialogue. Let readers "hear" the exact words a character says.

2) If your character is alone, put another character in the room with them, and make them interact. It's hard to use "showing" in a scene where a character is sitting alone, thinking things over.

How to write a story from your character's perspective

Here's an example of the same scene told from three different points of view :

• Waiting in front of the restaurant was a short blond man with a smug smile, who Laura knew had to be Ron. His t-shirt, she noticed with disbelief, had the words "Boy Toy" printed across the chest in hot pink letters. "Where does my sister find these creeps?" she asked herself. (This version of the scene is written from Laura's point of view. It is written in the third person -- in other words, Laura is called "she" instead of "I.")
• Ron saw a plump red-haired woman approaching him. Not his type at all. "You must be Laura," he said, forcing a smile to mask his disappointment. (This is written from Ron's point of view. Again, it's in the third person -- Ron is "he," instead of "I.")
• From the balcony, I watched a couple talking in the doorway of the restaurant across the street. The man was blond and wore a black t-shirt with some kind of pink writing on it that I couldn't read without my glasses. The woman was heavy-set with dyed-orange hair. (This is written in the first person -- the narrator uses the word "I" instead of "he" or "she.")
• Imagine that the reader is actually present at this scene, watching it unfold. Where is the reader sitting? Are they standing behind Ron, watching over his shoulder? Are they inside Ron's head? Can they see his thoughts ? Are they sitting on a balcony, looking down at it all from above? The answer will change her perspective on everything that happens.

For example:

• If the reader is inside Laura's brain, they can't see Ron's thoughts. They can only guess at his thoughts based on external clues such as his behavior, speech, gestures, etc.
• If the reader is inside Ron's brain, they can't see what his face looks like (unless he is looking at his reflection).
• If the reader is watching the scene from a fourth floor balcony, they probably can't hear what the characters are saying or see small details like Laura's chipped tooth or Ron's diamond earring.

How to write a story from the best point of view

If we are going to write a story about Ron's blind date with Laura, we should choose the narrative viewpoint that works best with our goals for the story. What parts do we want the reader to see first-hand? what information do we want the reader to be able to access? Whose thoughts do we want the reader to see? These are all factors to consider.

If we decide to switch between one viewpoint and another, we have to be careful not to confuse or disorient the reader. On the other hand, if we limit the viewpoint to just one character, the reader will tend to feel a stronger intimacy with that particular character. It's as if the reader becomes that character for a while.

TIP: If you're struggling with a fiction piece that seems a bit flat or dull, you might try rewriting from a different character's point of view to see if that makes the story more interesting.

Write dialogue

How to write a story with great dialogue

There are two kinds of dialogue :

1) Direct dialogue , where the reader "hears" what the character says: ("Do you have a magic pill?" Tony asked the pharmacist.)

2) Indirect dialogue , where the reader gets a summary of what the character says: (Tony asked the pharmacist if she had a magic pill.)

Your character's voice

Imagine standing on a street corner, asking everyone who passed by for directions to a post office. If you asked ten people, chances are, you'd get ten different answers. Even if they suggested the same route, they would use different words to explain it. Even the "I don't know" answers would likely come out differently:

"I'm sorry, I really couldn't say."

"No friggin idea."

"Get a map, man."

Each person has a unique voice and a unique style of talking. So should each of your characters.

Some factors that will affect how your characters talk include:

- Background and culture

- Educational level

- Personality. (Is the character shy? Diplomatic? Aggressive? Insecure? Snobby? Bossy? Flirtatious?)

- The character's emotions at that moment. (Is the character nervous about what he or she is saying? Proud of it? Trying to cover up something?)

- The character's relationship with whoever else is part of the conversation. (We don't speak to our kids the same way we speak to our boss.)

Writing direct dialogue

Your challenge as a writer is to capture your character's voice without boring the reader with all of the fluff, filler, and incoherence of real speech.

In real life, we hem and haw, cut off our own sentences, change the subject half-way through, repeat ourselves over and over. If you write dialogue the way people really talk, you will quickly lose your reader's attention.

The trick is to include just enough of the character's natural speech mannerisms so that the reader gets the flavor.

• Do you know someone with a background and personality similar to your character's? Listen carefully to that person's speech patterns. When you write dialogue for your character, imagine the words spoken in that person's voice.
• It is also a good idea to speak dialogue out loud as you are writing. You can improvise it out loud, then write down what you've said. Or you can write the dialogue first, then read it out loud as a test to see if it sounds like natural speech. If not, rewrite until it does.

When to use indirect dialogue

There are times when indirect dialogue (where the reader gets a summary) works better than direct dialogue (where the reader "hears" what is said).

Two examples:

• "She repeated to her husband everything that had just happened. He listened to her for hours, until the sun started to come up.
• "We almost died of boredom as Aunt Bertha went on and on about her poodle's weight loss program."

Dialogue tags

Dialogue tags are the "he said," "she said," labels that tell the reader which character said what. Sometimes you don't really need these because it is clear who is speaking. Where they're not necessary, you can leave them off. In general, writers also start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

There are also more colorful dialogue tags such as "he shouted," "she muttered." Be careful not to overuse these, or it can get distracting for the reader. If the dialogue is written well, the reader should be able "hear" the difference between scolding and cajoling, so neutral dialogue tags ("say," "tell," and "ask") are generally enough.

Dialogue format

Dialogue format is different in different countries. To find out how dialogue is normally written in your own country, just look at some novels that have been published in your country and use them as examples.

Here is an example of how dialogue is normally written in the U.S.:

"I know you took one," Anna said.

"It wasn't me," said Bobby.

"Yeah, right." Pointing to the cookie jar, Anna said, "Your fingerprints were all over it."

Examples of common mistakes:

• "I know you took one." Anna said. (This should be written as one sentence).
• ...Anna said, "your fingerprints were all over it." (Since the quotation is a complete sentence, it should start with a capital letter.)
• " I know you took one," Anna said. "It wasn't me," said Bobby. (Normally, there should be a paragraph break between these two sentences because the speaker changes.)

How to write a story that comes to life in the reader's mind

You can use description to guide the reader's imagination so that they imagine the story the way you do.

The first thing to remember about description is that it's part of your story, not decoration on top. You don't have to interrupt the action to present a block of description. You can use descriptive language and details within your scenes to bring them to life to the reader.

Use specific details

We're going to try an experiment. No reading ahead.

Imagine a room. Before you read on, take a moment to really form a mental picture of this room.

What if I tell you that the room is a restaurant kitchen -- does that change your mental picture?

What if I tell you that the restaurant's closed for the night, and the kitchen is dark except for the streetlamp shining in the back window. Did your mental picture just change again?

The more specific information you give the reader, the closer the reader's mental picture will be to the one you intended.

The same principle applies for describing characters. If you tell your reader that Chris is blond, the reader's idea of Chris might be very different from your own. If you say that Chris is a three-year-old girl with blond curly hair and glasses, you are focusing the reader's mental image.

But use the right details

Your reader will not have infinite patience to read long descriptions. And if you pile on the details, at some point it becomes too much. The reader cannot visualize so many details at once.

The key is choosing the right details.

• Look for details that suggest a larger picture. (If I tell you that my living room has a sofa and an armchair, that doesn't distinguish it from anyone else's living room. If I tell you that the sofa measures exactly five feet and four inches, that doesn't help you imagine it. If I tell you that the sofa has a hole in it that has filled with sandwich crumbs and loose change, then you start to form certain ideas about the type of place where I'm living... and it's not Buckingham Palace).
• If you're writing from the point of view of a specific character, ask yourself this: which details would THAT character be noticing at THAT moment? The details you choose to describe can express a lot about that character and the character's emotional state.

Use powerful nouns and verbs

Before piling on the adjectives and adverbs, take another look at your nouns and verbs.

Choosing the right nouns and verbs allows you to express more in fewer words, intensifying the impact of your writing.

For example, take this sentence: "She took the food out of his hand quickly, greedily, and forcefully." We can express the same information by saying, "She grabbed the food out of his hand."

The word "food" is also quite vague. It does not help the reader form a specific mental picture. What kind of food did she grab? It would be better to say, "She grabbed the sandwich out of his hand," or "She grabbed the doughnut out of his hand."

Our three-day online course on description writing is currently available for free. You can get access here.

At some point, the story or novel you're working on will be just about right . That's the time for polishing -- tweaking a word or a sentence here or there.

But before you reach that point, it's often worth trying to rewrite the piece from beginning to end. I mean actually starting over. On the one hand, this is a lot of work. On the other hand, this approach to revision can make first drafts a lot easier and more enjoyable, and it can lead to better results.

Your imagination can flow freely without your "inner editor" interrupting it. You can pour all your ideas onto the page, knowing you'll sort them out later. The first draft is risk-free, so it's less scary. You can experiment and try different approaches.

Your fiction is also likely to be stronger as a result of this approach. The first draft is often a kind of exploration to see where the story is going. In the process, you discover new things about your characters. The ending of the story is often not what you expected. The second draft is an opportunity to start again with the benefit of all of this information . Now you can write Page 1 with the exact knowledge of where you are headed.

TIP: Do you ever find yourself struggling for hours with a certain sentence or passage in your fiction? You revise and revise it, but can't seem to get it right. Try this. Put it down. Take a little break. Maybe go for a walk, or put in a load of laundry. Then come back, and -- without looking at the old version -- try to write a new version from scratch.

Click here to get a detailed revision checklist.

We've put together an e-book with detailed advice on how to publish a story, as well as a list of places where you can publish it. You can get the e-book for free here.

The Poets & Writers website has extensive databases of literary journals and writing contests .

How to Write a Story - More Resources

• How to get started writing a story
• What is fiction?
• Types of fiction
• Questionnaires for writing character profiles
• How to show your character's thoughts
• How to make your characters more interesting
• How to write a story villain
• Top 8 tips on how to write dialogue
• How to use descriptive beats
• How to write a story with the right amount of detail
• Creating suspense with setoffs and payoffs
• How long should your story be?
• How to write a story with plot twists
• Mental strategies for fiction writers
• Online course: Story Structure
• Online course: Bringing Characters to Life
• Online course: Mastering Dialogue
• Writing websites

How to Write a Story - Frequent Questions

"How do I start writing a story?"

Create a character, and imagine a problem facing that character. Daydream a scene in which the character is struggling with the problem. Then write the scene quickly, trying to capture your daydream on the page. Once you have it all down, you can go back and edit (it's normally better not to edit while you're writing your first draft). Normally, your story beginning should set up the character's struggle, and the ending should show or hint at the result of the struggle.

"How do I begin a story?"

Your story beginning should capture the reader's interest and pull them into the story. It sets the story's tone and introduces the character's dilemma. It's often easier to come up with the right beginning after you've finished a rough draft of the story. So if you're having trouble coming up with a great first line, don't let that stop you! Just jump right into the story. You can go back and improve the beginning later. And sometimes starting partway through a scene actually makes for a dynamic story beginning.  

Lesson 1 of our course Beginnings, Middles, and Endings goes step-by-step through how to write a story beginning.  You can get the course for free here.

"How do I write a good story?"

It's usually helpful to separate writing from editing. If you try to edit as you write, that can interfere with your creative flow. During your first draft, don't worry about how good your story is. Just try to imagine it as vividly as possible and capture everything on the page. Once you finish a draft, then it's time to revise and make your story great. You can use this revision checklist.

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How to Write a Good Story

Last Updated: February 21, 2023 References Approved

This article was co-authored by Lucy V. Hay and by wikiHow staff writer, Danielle Blinka, MA, MPA . Lucy V. Hay is an author, script editor and blogger who helps other writers through writing workshops, courses, and her blog Bang2Write. Lucy is the producer of two British thrillers and her debut crime novel, The Other Twin, is currently being adapted for the screen by [email protected] TV, makers of the Emmy-nominated Agatha Raisin. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 17 testimonials and 80% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 1,475,741 times.

A good story captures your reader’s attention and leaves them wanting more. To craft a good story, you need to be willing to revise your work so that every sentence matters. Start your story by creating memorable characters and outlining a plot. Then, write a first draft from beginning to end. Once you have your first draft, improve it using a few writing strategies. Finally, revise your story to create a final draft. You may need to edit a few times but keep doing so until you enjoy the final product.

Things You Should Know

• Make character sheets and choose a story setting. Then, create a plot outline to guide you through the story-writing process.
• Set the scene, introduce the characters, and establish a problem for the characters to solve in the first 2-3 paragraphs.
• Fill the middle of the story with action that shows the character(s) working on the problem. Present 2-3 new challenges to keep things interesting.
• Create dialogue that reveals something about your characters and keeps readers' eyes move down the page.

Developing Your Characters and Plot

• Your life experiences
• A story you heard
• A family story
• A “what if” scenario
• A news story
• An interesting person you saw
• Photographs

• Do the sheet for your protagonist first. Then, make character sheets for your other main characters, like the antagonist. Characters are considered main characters if they play a major role in the story, such as influencing your main character or affecting the plot.
• Figure out what your characters want or what their motivation is. Then, base your plot around your character either getting what they want or being denied it.
• You can create your own character sheets or find templates online.

• For example, a story about a girl who wants to become a doctor would go much differently if it were told in the 1920s instead of 2019. The character would need to overcome additional obstacles, like sexism, due to the setting. However, you might use this setting if your theme is perseverance because it allows you to show your character pursuing her dreams against societal norms.
• As another example, setting a story about camping deep in an unfamiliar forest will create a different mood than putting it in the main character's backyard. The forest setting might focus on the character surviving in nature, while the backyard setting may focus on the character's family relationships.

Warning: When you pick your setting, be careful about choosing a time period or place that's unfamiliar to you. It's easy to get details wrong, and your reader may catch your errors.

• Create a plot diagram consisting of an exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
• Make a traditional outline with the main points being individual scenes.
• Summarize each plot and turn it into a bullet list.

• 1st person POV - A single character tells the story from their perspective. Because the story is the truth according to this one character, their account of events could be unreliable. For instance, “I tiptoed across the floor, hoping not to disturb him.”
• 3rd person limited - A narrator recounts the events of the story but limits the perspective to one character. When using this POV, you can’t provide the thoughts or feelings of other characters, but you can add your interpretation of the setting or events. For example, “She tiptoed across the floor, her entire body tense as she fought to stay quiet.”
• 3rd person omniscient - An all-seeing narrator tells everything that happens in the story, including the thoughts and actions of each character. As an example, “As she tiptoed across the room, he pretended to be asleep. She thought her quiet steps weren’t disturbing him, but she was wrong. Beneath the covers, he clenched his fists.”

Drafting Your Story

• You might start your story like this: “Esther pulled her medical text from the mud, carefully wiping the cover clean on the hem of her dress. The laughing boys sped away on bicycles, leaving her to walk the last mile to the hospital alone. The sun beat down on the rain-soaked landscape, turning the morning’s puddles into a dank afternoon haze. The heat made her want to rest, but she knew her instructor would use tardiness as an excuse to kick her out of the program.”

• For example, let’s say that Esther’s class is going to get the opportunity to work with real patients, and she wants to be chosen as 1 of the students who gets to do it. However, when she gets to the hospital, she’s told she can only go in as a nurse. This sets up a plot where Esther tries to earn her spot as a doctor-in-training.

• For example, Esther might go into the hospital as a nurse, look for her peers, switch her clothes, almost get caught, and then meet a patient who needs her help.

• In Esther's story, the climax might occur when she’s caught trying to treat a patient who’s collapsed. As the hospital tries to remove her, she shouts out a correct diagnosis, causing the senior doctor to demand her release.

• For instance, the senior doctor at the hospital might compliment Esther and offer to be her mentor.

• Esther’s story might end with her starting rounds with her new mentor. She might reflect on what she would have lost if she hadn’t defied the rules to pursue her goal.

Improving Your Story

• For example, starting with Esther walking to the hospital is a better place to start than when she enrolled in medical school. However, it might be even better to start when she arrives at the hospital.

• For example, this piece of dialogue shows us that Esther is frustrated: “But I’m the top student in my class,” Esther pleaded. “Why should they get to examine patients but not me?”

• For example, Esther being denied entry to the hospital as a doctor is a horrible experience for her. Similarly, being grabbed by security would be frightening.

• For example, Esther could react to the smell of the hospital or the sound of beeping machines.

• For instance, Esther has worked really hard for something only to be denied it based on a technicality. Most people have experienced a failure like this before.

Revising and Finalizing Your Story

• Printing out your story may help you see it from a different perspective, so you might try that when you go back to revise it.
• Setting your work aside for a little while is a good move, but don't set it aside for so long that you lose interest in it.

• You can also read your story to other people and ask them for advice.

• The people closest to you, like your parents or best friend, may not provide the best feedback because they care about your feelings too much. However, you may be able to find a writing critique group on Meetup.com or at your local library.
• For feedback to be helpful, you have to be receptive to it. If you think you've written the most perfect story in the world, then you won't actually hear a word anyone says.
• Make sure you're giving your story to the right readers. If you're writing science fiction but have handed your story to your writer friend who enjoys literary fiction, you may not get the best feedback.

Lucy V. Hay

If you're getting good feedback, consider submitting your story to a short story contest. Some short story contests have prizes, like being published in an anthology or having a chance meet an agent. Those types of things can be valuable to you later on. For instance, if you get published in several anthologies, you can utilize that when you're making submissions to agents. Some competitions, like the Bridport Prize and the Bath Short Story Award in the UK, are very prestigious—if you can win one of those, you'll actually be seen as a writer with some significant chops.

• For instance, let’s say there’s a passage where Esther sees a girl in the hospital who reminds her of her sister. While this detail might seem interesting, it doesn’t advance the plot or show something meaningful about Esther, so it’s best to cut it.

Sample Excerpts

Community Q&A

• Keep a notebook with you wherever you go so you can write whenever an idea comes to you. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Don't start editing your story right away, as you're less likely to see errors or plot holes. Wait a few days until you can look at the story with fresh eyes. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Do drafts before you do the final copy. This helps a lot with editing. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

• Make sure you vary your sentence lengths. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0
• Don’t make your story drag by incorporating extra information that isn’t necessary to the plot or character development. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Don't copy things from other books, because it’s plagiarism . ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Don't edit as you work, because it slows your writing down. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming/
• ↑ https://www.scad.edu/sites/default/files/PDF/Animation-design-challenge-character-sheets.pdf
• ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zkgcwmn/articles/zfh6vk7
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/developing_an_outline/how_to_outline.html
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/point-of-view/
• ↑ https://literarydevices.net/rising-action/
• ↑ https://www.rcboe.org/cms/lib010/GA01903614/Centricity/Domain/4395/Elements%20of%20a%20Story.pdf
• ↑ https://penandthepad.com/incorporate-dialogue-narrative-21717.html
• ↑ https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-make-your-writing-suspenseful-victoria-smith
• ↑ https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/descriptive_writing
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/getting-feedback/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/conciseness/eliminating_words.html

About This Article

To write a good story, make sure the plot has a conflict and that there's something at stake, which will keep readers hooked. For example, you could write about two men fighting over the same person. You should also come up with characters that are relatable so your readers get invested in them. Also, avoid explaining everything to readers, and instead try to show them through the dialogue and actions of the characters. For example, instead of telling readers that your main character is grumpy and bitter, you could include a scene where they lash out at another character for no reason. For tips on how to come up with story ideas, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a Short Story in 6 Simple Steps

Writing a short novel can be a challenge: in the space of a few pages you’ll have to develop characters, build tension up to a climax, and resolve the main conflict. 

To help you with the process, here's how to write a short story step-by-step:

1. Identify a short story idea

2. define the character’s main conflict and goal, 3. hook readers with a strong beginning , 4. draft a middle focused on the story’s message, 5. write a memorable ending, 6. refine the plot and structure of your short story.

Step by step, we’ll show you how to take a blank page and spin it into short-form narrative gold.

Before you can put your head down and write your story , you first need an idea you can run with. Some writers can seemingly pluck interesting ideas out of thin air but if that’s not you, then fear not. Here are some tips and tricks that will get your creative juices flowing and have you drumming up ideas in no time.

Pro-tip: Interested in writing short stories? We recommend taking this free 10-day course taught by professional editor Laura Mae Isaacman. 

FREE COURSE

How to Craft a Killer Short Story

From pacing to character development, master the elements of short fiction.

Start with an interesting character or setting

Short stories, by their very nature, tend to be narrower in scope than a novel. There’s less pressure to have a rich narrative mapped out from A to Z before your pen hits the paper. Short story writers often find it fruitful to focus on a single character, setting , or event — an approach that is responsible for some true classics. 

John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” is about one character: a suburban American father who decides to swim through all of his neighbor’s pools. While Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has a larger cast of characters, the story takes place perhaps over one hour in a town square. By limiting yourself to a few characters and one or two locations, you may find it easier to keep your story from getting out of hand and spiraling off into tangents.

Mine your own anecdotes

When it comes to establishing a story’s premise, real-life experiences can be your first port of call — “write what you know”, as the old adage goes. While you might not have lived through an epic saga akin to Gulliver’s Travels, you probably have an anecdote or two that would easily form the basis of a short story. If there’s a funny story you always reach for at a party or a family dinner, you could repurpose for a piece of writing or let it serve as a launchpad for your imagination.

Eavesdrop and steal

There is beauty in the mundane. Writers these days often have a document open in their phone’s notes app to remember things that might spark their imagination at a later date. After all, something you overhear in a conversation between your aunties could be perfect short story fodder — as could a colorful character who turns up at your workplace. Whether these experiences are the basis for a story or function as a small piece of embellishment, they can save your imagination from having to do all the heavy lifting.

It’s not just your own life you can take inspiration from either. Pay extra attention to the news, the stories your friends tell you, and all the things that go on around — it will surely serve you well when it comes to brainstorming a story.

These little snippets can serve as the genesis of a story, or could even make it in verbatim as inspiration for your dialogue. Want more dialogue writing tips? We've got a free course for that.

How to Write Believable Dialogue

Master the art of dialogue in 10 five-minute lessons.

Try a writing prompt on for size

If you’re still stumped, looking through some short story ideas or writing prompts for inspiration. Any stories that are written with these resources are still your intellectual property, so you can freely share or publish them if they turn out well!

Once you have your idea (which could be a setting, character, or event), try to associate it with a strong emotion. Think of short stories as a study of feeling — rather than a full-blown plot, you can home in on an emotion and let that dictate the tone and narrative arc. Without this emotion core, you may find that your story lacks drive and will struggle to engage the reader. 

With your emotionally charged idea ready to go, let’s look at structure.

You might be tempted to apply standard novel-writing strategies to your story: intricately plotting each event, creating detailed character profiles , and of course, painstakingly mapping it onto a popular story framework with a beginning, middle, and end. But all you really need is a well-developed main character and one or two big events at most.

Short stories should have an inciting incident and a climax

A short story, though more concise, can still have all of the narrative components we’d expect from a novel — though the set up, inciting incident, and climax might just be a sentence or two. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, writers should aim to start their stories “as close to the end as possible”. Taking this advice to the extreme, you could begin your story in medias res , skipping all exposition and starting in the middle of the action, and sustaining tension from there on in.

What’s most important to remember is that short stories don't have the same privilege of time when it comes to exposition. To save time and make for a snappier piece of writing, it’s usually better to fold backstory into the rising action .

Each scene should escalate the tension

Another effective short story structure is the Fichtean Curve , which also skips over exposition and the inciting incident and starts with rising action. Typically, this part of the story will see the main character meet and overcome several smaller obstacles (with exposition snuck in), crescendoing with the climax. This approach encourages writers to craft tension-packed narratives that get straight to the point. Rarely do you want to resolve the main conflict in the middle of the story — if there’s an opportunity for tension, leave it open to keep the momentum going until the very end. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment with structure and form

Short stories by design don’t really have the time to settle into the familiar shape of a classic narrative. However, this restriction gives you free rein to play around with chronology and point of view — to take risks, and be experimental. After all, if you’re only asking for 20 minutes of your readers’ time, they’re more likely to go along with an unusual storytelling style. Classic short stories like Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” did so well precisely because O’Connor redrew the parameters of the Southern Gothic genre as it was known — with its cast of characters, artfully sustained suspense and its shocking, gruesome ending.

Want to get creative with POV? Check out our free course to master the concept, and pick the perfect perspective for your story.

Understanding Point of View

Learn to master different POVs and choose the best for your story.

A lot rides on the opening lines of a short story . You’ll want to strike the right tone, introduce the characters, and capture the reader’s attention all at once — and you need to do it quickly because you don’t have many words to work with! There are a few ways to do this, so let’s take a look at the options.

Start with an action

Starting with a bang — literally and figuratively — is a surefire way to grab your reader’s attention. Action is a great way to immediately establish tension that you can sustain throughout the story. This doesn’t have to be something hugely dramatic like a car crash (though it can be) — it can be as small and simple as missing a bus by a matter of seconds. So long as the reader understands that this action is in some way unusual, it can set the scene for the emotional turmoil that is to unfold.

Start with an insight

One highly effective method for starting a short story is to write an opening hook. A 'hook' can seem an obtuse word, but what it really means is a sentence that immediately garners intrigue and encourages your reader to read on.  For example, in “Mrs Dalloway” (originally a short story), Virginia Woolf opens with the line, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” The reader then wonders: who is Mrs. Dalloway, why is she buying flowers, and is it unusual that she would do so herself? Such questions prompt the reader to continue with interest, looking for answers.

Start with an image

Another popular way of opening a story by presenting your reader with a strong image. It could be a description of an object, a person, or even a location. It’s not to everyone’s taste (especially if you love plot driven stories), but when done well, a well-drawn image has the ability to linger on the reader’s mind. Let’s go back to our example of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. This story starts opens with a vivid and detailed description of a village: The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. Though this description seems to be setting the stage for a pleasant, lighthearted tale, “The Lottery” actually takes a darker turn — making this opening image of an idyllic summer’s day even more eerie. When this story was published in The New Yorker, readers responded by sending in more letters than for any story that had come before — that’s how you know you’ve made an impact, right?

[ PRO-TIP : To read some of the best short stories, head here to find 31 must-read short story collections . ]

The old maxim of “write drunk, edit sober” has long been misattributed to Ernest Hemingway, a notorious drinker. While we do not recommend literally writing under the influence, there is something to be said for writing feely with your first draft.

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Don’t edit as you write

Your first draft is not going to be fit for human consumption. That’s not the point of it. Your goal with version 1 of the story is just to get something out on the page. You should have a clear sense of your story’s overall aim, so just sit down and write towards that aim as best you can. 

Avoid the temptation to noodle with word choice and syntax while you’re on the first draft: that part will come later. ‘Writing drunk’ means internalizing the confidence of someone on their second bottle of chablis. Behave as though everything you’re writing is amazing. If you make a spelling mistake? Who cares! Does that sentence make sense? You’ll fix that later!

Backstory is rarely needed

Hemingway ’s Iceberg Theory — correctly attributed to the man — is well suited to short stories. Like the physical appearance of an Iceberg, most of which is “under the surface”, much can be inferred about your story through a few craftily written sentences. Instead of being spoon-fed every single detail, your reader can ponder the subtext themselves and come to their own conclusions. The most classic example of this is “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” — a six-word story with a whole lot of emotionally charged subtext. (Note: that story is attributed to Hemingway, though that claim is also unsubstantiated!)

In short, don’t second-guess yourself and if your story truly needs more context, it can always be added in the next revision.

Nothing is more disappointing to a reader than a beautifully written narrative with a weak ending. When you get to the end of your story , it may be tempting to dash off a quick one and be done with it— but don’t give in to temptation! There are countless ways to finish a story — and there’s no requirement to provide a tidy resolution — but we find that the most compelling endings will center on its characters .

What has changed about the character?

It’s typical for a story to put a protagonist through their paces as a means to tease out some kind of character development. Many stories will feature a classic redemption arc, but it’s not the only option. The ending might see the main character making a choice based on having some kind of profound revelation. Characters might change in subtler ways, though, arriving at a specific realization or becoming more cynical or hopeful. Or, they might learn absolutely nothing from the trials and tribulations they’ve faced. In O. Henry’s Christmas-set “The Gift of the Magi,” a young woman sells her hair to buy her husband a chain for his pocket watch. When the husband returns home that night, he reveals that he sold his watch to buy his wife a set of hair ornaments that she can now no longer use. The couple has spent the story worrying about material gifts but in the end, they have learned that real gift… is their love for one another.