Ballea Writers Club

Find an Unforgettable Title that echoes the story. The title is the first thing that the potential reader sees so it must grab his attention and not let go. It must demand that the story be read, and immediately at that. There is no copyright on title but for the sake of confusion writers should avoid well-worn titles in current usage.

Make the Opening Line Short and contain a hook. I opened one of my stories: 'With her dying breath she told me to kill him'.

Reveal a Conflict in the First Paragraph. One way to get straight into conflict is to open by writing a line of controversial dialogue. If there is no element of uncertainty or suspense from the beginning the reader has little reason to keep going past the first paragraphs. The reader will stay with the story if he knows, early on, that the central character has a peculiar problem or difficult situation to resolve.

Make Every Story Memorable. A successful story will remain in the head of the reader. There are numerous ways for writers to achieve this but an unusual setting or an extraordinary incident can be helpful. A role reversal such as writing about a man abused by a woman can win writing awards.

Make Something Happen. A slice of life slice does not qualify as a story and neither do essays, reports, memoirs or anecdotes. A story requires that the central character be changed by the events of the story. If the central character does not change there is little possibility that the story will satisfy the reader, enhance his understanding of man or advance the writers career.

Be Brave If a writer adheres to political correctness the characters can become constrained in straight jackets and the resulting story insipid. But offensive comments are only acceptable if made by a character and never acceptable in narrative summary.

Vary the Pace. Writing extended blocks of long sentences can bore the reader and extended blocks of short sentences can exhaust him. Either way he wants to stop reading. A useful technique is for writers to progressively shorten the sentences towards the climax. Writers can vary the pace during dialogue by having one character speak more concisely than the other.

Curtail Back Story. Many stories fail because writers give as much wordage to what happened before the opening paragraph than to writing the story per se. Such stories start, stop, go into reverse, take the wrong course and run out like a show jumper spooked by the clock. Keep on course by writing the first draft as quickly as possible without any backstory and then, and only where absolutely necessary, inject the dialogue with a small amount of backstory.

Forwards is the Only Permissible Direction and there must be a beginning, middle and end or resolution. Any time jumps, including flashbacks, which can work when writing a novel, are a potential disaster in a short story.

Start as Near to the End of a Story as Possible and be prepared to edit down the opening to achieve this result.

Keep to the Simple Past Tense. The most frequent mistake that I find when editing stories is a tendency for writers to let their tenses wander. Beware of having verbs ending 'ing' within paragraphs that contain verbs ending 'ed.' Never start a sentence with an 'ing' word and try to circumvent 'ing' words throughout. Some 'ing' words highlight clause reversal, a gross error in sentence structure.

Ban Passive Verb Forms, as they make the narrator sound tentative and distance the reader. The active verb form should be used at all times, even when the character is deceased. Thus 'My father's body was carried to the ambulance' should be reworded: 'They carried my father's body to the ambulance'. Pointers to passive tense can be the word 'was' before a verb or the object of the sentence coming ahead of the verb or the verb released late in the sentence.

Test Point of View by asking 'whose story is it?' The story belongs to, is narrated through, the character that undergoes the most adventure/enlightenment/change. First person or simple, one viewpoint, third are the most appropriate for short story. An unbelievable story in third person can become believable when the writer transfers it to first person.

Limit the Time Span, ideally to hours rather than days, weeks, months or years. The longer the time span the weaker the story. A short story is a snapshot rather than an album.

Create Three-dimensional Characters. Just as in life, the motivations of every fictional character will reflect his family of origin story and he will have 'issues' that impact his values and behaviour.

Give the Characters Charisma by exaggerating key personality traits but beware of writing the antagonist as an archetypal baddie. The reader needs to be able to empathise with all the characters including the antagonist. Try to give the antagonist circumstances that the reader can sympathise with or give him a positive quality that counterbalances his negatives.

Keep Character Descriptions to the Most Poignant and allow the reader to form his own picture. One key facial characteristic, such as busy eyebrows, can be enough to introduce the reader to the character. As the story progresses it is how the character behaves and the way that he interacts with others that brings his image more sharply into focus.

Name Your Characters with Care. An Albert would be perceived differently from an Al, Bert or Bertie. To avoid confusion make sure that each character's name begins with a different letter of the alphabet and sounds distinct. One wouldn't put Mandy and Katy in the same story anymore than one would put Maud and Paul together.

Limit the Number of Characters. The ideal number of characters is three. Less than three characters can create problems interjecting dialogue and/or produce verbal ping-pong. More than three characters can cause clutter and increase the word count.

Bring all Three Main Characters on Stage in the First Page and never bring on a new character more than half way through a story.

Empower the Characters to Silence the Author. It's their story not the writer's story and the reader wants to hear it from them rather than a go-between. If a line of dialogue is tagged: he said venomously, the writer is either inferring that he failed to get the venom across or he's inferring that his reader is a dimwit for not perceiving the venom. Tags such as he retorted or he postulated intrude and take the reader out of the story while showing us nothing except the verbosity of the author. He said, John said, he asked and their derivatives go largely unnoticed and are the only acceptable tags to use in a literary piece. Even these neutral tags can intrude if attached to every line of dialogue so writers should only use them where the reader needs to be reminded who is speaking.

Allow a Thirty Percent Minimum for Dialogue because dialogue is infinitely more character revealing than narrative summary. Dialogue moves a story forward and allows backstory to be filtered through subliminally.

Keep the Dialogue Sharp by writing it in fragments rather than writing it in full sentences. Keep its full sentences short and don't let your characters dribble on about uninspiring topics such as the weather, cricket or fashion. Silence them from dreary monologues about their in-laws or neighbours, their latest doctors appointment, how they got a scratch on their car or their child's performance at school. Ban them from preaching religion or getting into the depths of philosophy. As the author you have the power to edit down their words so that their sentences are succinct and there is a balance between what each of them say. While it is fine for one character to be more talkative than another, curtail a dominant character to a maximum of sixty% of the dialogue and make sure that all of what he says is necessary.

Dialogue Can Be Oblique. Avoid unqualified 'Yes' or 'No' responses, as they look abandoned and reveal too much white space when printed alone on separate lines. Unless the character is in court there is rarely a need for an unqualified answer to a question. Real life conversation advances in positive and negative directions with more fluidity and can move on obliquely while still illuminating the core response without the need to state it.

Movement. Think of the characters as if they were on a stage and keep them on the move, pulling curtains, making tea or whatever but don't just have them group somewhere and talk. Movements, or beats, break the monotony of talking heads and show the reader the relationships and varying emotional engagement of each character in a group as well as their social class and setting. Actions complement dialogue. For example a character that takes off his sock and picks his feet, while his wife was trying to get him to talk about their relationship, show us something different from one who responds by tickling her with his toes.

Allow for Scene Changes and dramatise each scene. Don't get the characters stuck in a kitchen, a hallway or some other bland location. If they need to be retained in a house let them at least move from room to room, fall down the stairs, get chased around naked or trapped in a fire.

Allow for Scene Transitions and handle them in real time e.g. it will take a writer more narration to cover the time that it would take an elderly person to climb the stairs than it would for a teenager. While jump cuts to a forward scene can work well for writers in some incidences don't overuse jump cut technique or you will leave the reader behind.

To Plot or not to Plot that is the Question? Opinions tend to polarise between writers who find it impossible to write without first knowing the plot in detail and other writers who profess that they write to discover and wouldn't bother to write if they already knew the outcome. I would suggest a balance, whereby writers have a destination in mind at the outset but the characters are empowered to choose a byroad at their discretion. Hereby the writer is the chauffer rather than the tour guide.

Theme and Voice Can Take Care of Themselves. Theme is closely related to the moral of the story: crime doesn't pay, what goes around comes around, etc. But if writers put the theme in the forefront during the first draft it can scream its presence and alienate the reader. The central character often needs to learn something/grow before the theme comes into focus and when this happens the theme, appropriately, remains subliminal rather than in your face. A metaphor or group of metaphors can illuminate the theme.
Entire books are written on voice without getting to the core of what it is and how to apply it and maybe that's just as well because a manufactured writing voice sounds contrived and creates a barrier for the reader. The reader wants to be immersed in the story and forget that there is an author. He doesn't want to hear an obtrusive author bellowing his presence above that of the characters. So forget about a struggle with voice: it is something that emerges over time and its clarity and ability to blend are more a function of how much one writes and how comfortable one is with writing than of writers self-conscious efforts at voice projection.

Edit to the Power of Ten but not before the first draft, which I call the blast draft, is finished. An edit is never complete but at some stage has to be abandoned. Don't abandon a literary piece for at least ten drafts and save every draft. Leave a week between draft one and draft two and a week between draft nine and draft ten. These are minimum guidelines but acclaimed short story writers such as Frank O'Connor put his stories to a minimum of forty drafts and allowed them to gestate for months. A definition of literary fiction can be obscured by the fact that literary works can include romance, murder, fantasy characters etc but the distinction is apparent in the quality of the finished product. But if your writing market were a popular magazine or a local newspaper, where you are paid by the word, then you'd want to wrap in two to three drafts. Whatever your writing market you need to submit clean standardized manuscripts and those for competitions and publishing houses need to be double-spaced.

Punctuation. The colon and semicolon are commonly misused but there is no need to struggle over their usage because they make a short story read like a legal/academic report and for that they should be avoided entirely. Eliminate all exclamation marks as they scream the presence of the author above that of the character. Never put a full stop directly after a question mark. Punctuation must stay inside the speech marks where: 'What.' is correct and 'What', is incorrect. Tags must be laid out with the subject first and the verb second e.g. he said, Mark said. Never reverse the tags to read; said Mark, said he. Convention on single speech marks, double speech marks, italics and dashes varies but is ultimately determined by the publication that the work is aimed at, so adhere to your publisher's format.

Overwriting must be eliminated by the final edit. Overwriting does not only refer to groups of superfluous tags but any unnecessary wordage such as long-winded dialogue and lengthy description. The most irritating of overwriting is repetition; where the author, inferring that the reader was too stupid to catch something he was told once, writes it again in a different format. When a tutor tells a writer to tighten a piece he is saying that the piece is overwritten.

Evoke the Five Senses. Writers who are self-conscious about using all of the group of five senses; sound, sight, smell, taste and touch, not only rob the reader but fail in writers competitions and remain under-published. If a writer employs the five senses the reader can be transported into the very essence of the story. Let your character e.g. lick his cut and wince at the metallic flavour, get a whiff of rancid cheese, run his finger over orange-peel skin, hear a death rattle, or notice someone blush/go pale. There should be a minimum of two senses writen into ever page. They act as the illustrations. The portrayal of negative senses e.g. smells associated with stale armpits, are easier to describe and have more impact on the reader than those of flowers or perfumes.

Show not Tell This is particularly apparent for emotion, which has to be shown rather than told when writing in third person and should usually be shown when writen in first person. Thus 'She was furious with him' exemplifies tell and gives the reader little whereas 'She flung his meal round him' shows us more than an enraged action, it shows us a tempestuous nature, probable provocation, an unhealthy/dysfunctional relationship and a whole lot more. To show instead of tell is thus very economical on words. The only time that a writer can get away with telling an emotion is in dialogue but even then it tends to fall flat.

The Setting is Like a Character and to be organic to the story it needs to be shown rather than told. Thus, 'the room had tall bookshelves' gives us little to take notice of whereas, 'she scrambled onto the desk to reach down a photo album' gives us four in one; she is probably in a middleclass home, is an agile/youthful character, keeps her past out of everyday reach and is in a room with deep shelves that are high off the ground. Likewise, don't tell the reader that a hallway has flocked wallpaper but show the protagonist picking at it. This way we see old-fashioned/downmarket wallpaper while seeing that the, probably female, character is agitated.

Imagery is a Must but keep it relevant to the scenario. Thus 'he crept up on me like a tarantula' could work in a story set in a tropical rain forest but would jar in a story set in the Alps. Imagery serves as illustration, should be peppered through the work and is best applied where it expands on itself e.g. the tarantula example would suit an antagonist already known to have a hairy back.
Note; tutors that advise story writers not to be too poetic are not advising writers against writing relevant imagery but against the use of irrelevant imagery, rhyme, slant rhyme and alliteration etc.

Work on Three Stories at Once. While editing one story the writers subconscious is freed to advance other stories and get them out of trouble. This is to do with right brain versus left brain activity, where the creative brain can be most productive when allowed space for free association. A monotonous task such as vacuum cleaning or washing the car can sometimes release writers creativity more readily than sitting at a typewriter. However, bum glue is needed for editing, is a must for long pieces and is an insurance against waiting in vain for the muse to strike. The muse can be reluctant to put in an appearance until he sees a writer making an effort and is thereby sure that his visit will be welcomed.

Keep a Fantasy Reader in Your Mind at all times while writing and perform to impress him. He should ideally be someone further up the writing food chain than you, someone who would critique your work and support your journey. He may be a published writer in your writing group, a writing tutor, a 'name' that you met at a literary festival or your publisher. A relative is rarely an ideal candidate. Fantasy readers can be as fickle so is advisable to have a group to choose from.

Fantasise About the Applause that you will get when your story is published and/or wins a literary award. Think of what it will feel like to be acknowledged as a writer. And revel on the impact that this will have on the no-sayers, begrudgers and groups who tried to hold you back.

Set Goals One short story per fortnight would produce a respectable portfolio in a year. And if some writing prizes, or one major literary prize, materialises there is every chance of finding a publisher. A sizable short story portfolio provides writers with the hands on experience in every aspect of writing that is required for novel. And if writers can produce runs of short stories they have the proven stamina for novel.

Do Not Break the Rules of Short Story until you are proficient at employing them and have, through experience and publication success, discovered modifications or innovations that clamour to be tested. Novice writers shouldn't start out by breaking the rules. Rules are there to help writers get published and to help writers win writing competitions. When you have completed a final edit look back and make sure that every rule has been adhered to.

Read as Much as You Write. If you don't have time to read short stories then you are wasting your time trying to write them. Writers should stock up on anthologies and stash them in the office, house, car, briefcase, handbag, backpack, kit bag etc and carry one everywhere. You will be surprised how many times a day you can grab ten minutes to read a short story. Watch for weaknesses as much as strengths and dissect the stories as if preparing a literary review. I attach a 'post it' to the last page of each story, mark it out of twenty and record what it taught me.

Always Carry a Notebook and make at least one entry every day. Writers should watch people and record their mannerisms/body language as well as physical characteristics. Writers need to become eavesdroppers and record snippets of conversations that could be used in dialogue. Visit settings that your characters could visit and sketch the locations and/or take photographs. A drawer of notebooks serves as an insurance policy against writers block.

Strike Out Every Cliche except in dialogue and only leave it in dialogue if you want the character to come across as a moron. Cliches aren't just proverbs or sayings; they are any phrases or groups of words that are in common usage. Thus 'black as night' would be as abhorrent to a publisher as 'horses for courses' or 'at the end of the day.' It can be unpalatable for anyone to listen to top of the head remarks but readers are especially discerning. Readers demand originality, rebuke regurgitated material and won't give a writer a second chance before shifting their readership elsewhere.

Never Qualify a Verb with an Adverb because to do so demonstrates that the wrong verb was selected in the first place. For example, 'he walked quickly' should be replaced with 'he strode.'

Minimise the Use of Adjectives because they usually demonstrate a writers lack of thought. For example, 'strong pink' would be better written as 'cerise' and 'pink tongue' should just be 'tongue.' Never double adjectives up or string them together because they compete with each other and cause confusion rather than clarification. Adjectives hold up the pace of a story and tend to be blanked out/skipped by readers. Writers who litter their pieces with adjectives give away that they haven't mastered the technique of 'Show not Tell,' so rather than tell that a character is tall let him e.g. stoop to get through a door. Adjectives serve little purpose other than to reduce a writers chance of publication.

Bring the Ending Full Circle to the Opening. The first line and last line should resonate with each other e.g. Lillian, an award winning story from Ballea Writers Vice President John O'Connell, opened 'The home was cold before she arrived' and after Lillian had pepped up the lives of the pensioners and met an untimely death, the story closed on 'I wondered if the home would be cold again.'

Leave the Reader Thinking An open-ended ending is inappropriate in short story. In literary short story the reader wants a conclusion or outcome that permeates his subconscious and leads him to ask questions of himself and of life. In commercial short story a twist ending is the norm.

Be Careful Who You Show Your Work To. I came out of a public reading in bits when an audience of amateur writers decimated one of my stories. Among other things they told me that there was too much imagery, that the circumstances were unbelievable and that the characters could never have been so aggressive. I'd already submitted the story to a literary competition, where I later heard it was short listed, or I'd probably have hidden it away forever more. Were they attacking the piece out of ignorance or jealousy? I'd think a mixture of both. Most writers are insecure creatures with delicate egos that can be easily undermined and when this happens a writers ability to continue to write can be dangerously at risk. Some company, even that of fellow writers, can be an unsafe place to be. People whose only comment is 'brilliant' are just as potentially damaging. One needs peers who can give constructive criticism; who can spot a continuity lapse, suggest a more appropriate title or name for a character or e.g. point out where a motivation may be unclear. If you haven't got a reliable peer at hand then finding one is your top priority. Vist serveral writing groups/writers clubs before deciding which to join.

Copyright© 2007 Elaine Rhys-Davies of Ballea Writers Club Ireland. All Rights Reserved.
Elaine Rhys-Davies and Ballea Writers Club Ireland can be contacted through balleawriters@gmail.com
Ballea Writers Club Ireland, c/o Ballea Castle, Carrigaline, Co.Cork, Ireland

Ballea Writers Club Ireland - Writing Tips & Writing Exercises