Dark
and Distant Voices, my
fifth short story collection, has just been released. All told, I’ve published
over 150 short stories in the thirty-six years since I began writing seriously
at the age of eighteen. But when I started writing, I had no special fondness
for short stories. I preferred reading novels, and that’s what I wanted to
write. But I figured if I wanted to become a professional writer, I should be
skilled at writing different types of fiction, so I decided – somewhat
grudgingly – to begin working on short stories as well as novels.
Short stories didn’t come easily to
me then, and after all this time, they still don’t. They make my brain hurt
when I write them. My imagination feels cramped and constrained, and it’s an
uncomfortable experience. But you know what? The limits of the short story help
focus my imagination and keep it controlled. My imagination – like that of so
many artists – is a wild thing that wants to run as fast as it can in all
directions at once. Short stories keep it from doing that. And the focus I’ve
learned from writing short fiction has helped me write more focused scenes in
novels. Plus, short fiction allows me to experiment, to try different narrative
approaches and explore different themes, both of which sometime find their way
into my novel-length work.
I think it’s fair to say I’ve
learned a few things about writing short fiction over the years, both from
doing it myself and teaching others how to do it. What follows is an overview
of what I think are the most important considerations when it comes to writing
short fiction. Whether you’re a beginning writer or you’ve been doing this for
a while, I hope you find something of value below. (And I’m quite aware that
there are exceptions for every bit of advice I give. As I tell my students,
“The only real rule in writing is that you have to use written language to
express ideas. Everything else is simply custom, ways of doing things that in
general work most of the time for most readers.”)
Some
Basic Advice
Length: As a rule of
thumb, short stories tend to be around 1000-5,000 words (4-20 pages). They of
course can be shorter or longer, but this is a solidly marketable range, as
well as a good range for beginners. It’s long enough to practice the basics but
not so long that writers are too intimidated to revise.
Keep it Simple: Keep your
ambitions in check when learning to write short stories. Avoid massive research
or worldbuilding. Elaborate research and worldbuilding can make a story so
complicated that you can’t properly tend to the basics of characterization,
dialogue, etc.
Story Content: Use violence,
sex, politics, profanity, religion, etc. when necessary to serve the needs of
the story. Don’t try to shock readers with naughty words and sexy scenes or
beat them over the head with political or religious messages. The story is
what’s most important. But follow market guidelines, too. If a magazine says
that it will not publish a story that portrays violence against children, don’t
submit that story to that particular market. Editors say beginning writers
ignore their guidelines all the time, and it’s a sure way to receive a fast
rejection.
Short Time Frame: One way to keep a
short story under control – as well as to maximize its intensity – is to limit
the events to a relatively short amount of time: minutes, hours, maybe a day or
two at most.
Limit the Number
of Characters:
Only have two or three main characters, and don’t add too many supporting
characters. There’s not a lot of room in a short story (obviously), and because
of this, you don’t have the opportunity to fully develop more than a couple
characters, and there’s only enough time for readers to become emotionally
invested in one or two. If you have too many characters in a story, it makes
the story too complex for its length and makes it difficult – if not impossible
– for readers to connect emotionally.
Limit the Setting: Another way to
maintain focus in a short story is to confine the action to one setting. This
can be as limited as one room, one house, one street, one town, etc. The fewer
settings there are in your story, the fewer times readers’ imaginations will be
yanked from one setting and plunked down into another. Such transitions can be
jarring for readers, and unless you’re looking to create a such jarring effect,
keeping the setting limited works best.
Point of View: In general, stick
to one character’s point of view in a story. As I said above, too many shifts
in a story can be jarring for readers. Readers need to time to attach to a
point of view in a story, and while novels have plenty of room for readers to
become attached to multiple viewpoints, a short story doesn’t.
Simple Story
Problem:
Stick to one main story problem. Again, novels have room for multiple – and
major and minor – story problems. Short stories do not. Stay focused on one
story problem, and your story will have more impact on readers.
Scenes: In general, try
not to have more than two or three scenes in a short story. Again, for the same
reason I keep mentioning: short stories don’t have a lot of room.
Obstacles: Avoid having too
many obstacles (because . . . you guessed it: short stories are short). There’s
room for a number of simple obstacles, such as a locked door or a character who
momentarily doubts another. There’s less room for major obstacles such as an
earthquake or a kaiju attack.
Begin Close to the
End:
One way to keep a story short and focused is to begin telling it as close to
the climax as you can. If I was writing a story about a person trying to defuse
a bomb, I’d begin with the character already in the process of defusing it, and
then I’d work in whatever backstory was needed, probably in the form of short
snatches of memory that pass through the person’s mind, distracting him or her
while working. Not only is this a great way to keep your story focused, it can
maximize story tension as well.
Character
Show Don’t Tell: Don’t tell us your character is an angry
person. Show us who the character is
through the character’s actions and thoughts, as well as the dialogue of
central and supporting characters.
Who Cares About
Their Hair?:
Describe the physical aspects of characters only when necessary. Again, there’s
not a lot of room in a short story, and unless it’s important what color eyes a
character has or what sort of clothes he or she is wearing, these details may
not only be unnecessary, they may slow the pace of the story.
Background Check: Limit the amount
of background information you present on a character’s past. If it doesn’t
matter to the story if a character had a poodle named Bitsy as a child, then
don’t mention the damn dog.
The Most Important
Aspect of Character:
A character’s personality – his/her psychological make-up – is the most
important thing for a writer to know. How does a character meet obstacles, try
to obtain goals, react to people, places, changes, challenges, etc.? What is
this character like under stress? If you know all these things, then you’ll know
what your character will do in a given situation, which will help you plot your
story.
Vivid
Fiction
Sensory Detail: Beginning writers
usually rely on sight and sound in their stories for two reasons. One is that
these are the strongest senses humans possess, and therefore we pay the most
attention to them. The other reason is because all our visual media is made up
of sight and sound, and that’s how we’re used to experiencing stories. No
matter how much you read, you’ve probably watched far more movies and TV shows,
and played more video games, than you’ve read fiction. So don’t forget to evoke
the other senses – taste, smell, and touch – in your fiction. And here’s an
important tip. Since taste, smell, and touch are weaker senses for us, we have
to be in close proximity (sometimes very
close) to whatever it is that we smell, taste, or touch. This means that these
three senses are far more intimate than sight and sound and have a greater
emotional impact on people. They’ll do the same for your readers.
Don’t Hide What’s
Inside:
Visual media can’t get inside a character’s head, but written fiction can and
should. To make your fiction more vivid and help readers more deeply identify
with and attach to your main character, portray his or her internal world,
their thoughts, feelings, physical reactions, memory connections. Also use psychological
comparisons: similes and metaphors. When your main character watches the sun
rise, does he or she mentally compare it to anything? “Bob thought the sun rose
like a giant orange lollipop in the sky.” That’s a terrible simile, but it
tells you something about how Bob perceives the world.
Anchors Aweigh!: We experience the
world as an ever-shifting deluge of information that comes from both outside
and inside us. To create a sense of this for your readers, use what I call Anchor
Points. Use a blend of different techniques – a sense, a thought, a bit of
dialogue – to help anchor a scene in reality for your reader.
Conflict
Conflict = Story: Characters can
directly deal with conflict, indirectly deal with it, try to avoid it, try to
ignore it, but they are always reacting
to it somehow.
Conflict = Plot: The character
dealing with conflict is what gives the story its shape and forward momentum.
Exposition
Use Only as Needed: Don’t let your
stories become bogged down with too much unnecessary information. Include only pertinent background information. Try to
blend exposition in smoothly, in different places, using varied techniques, and
avoid expository lumps. If you’re unsure how to do this, write your first draft
without any exposition at all then have someone read it. Ask them to mark
places where they have a question about something. Any place they marked is a
place where they need more information. Add the least amount of information
necessary to answer that question and no more.
Dialogue
Straight to the
Point:
Dialogue must be purposeful, and each line of dialogue should advance the
story. Not just the plot; dialogue should advance our understanding of each
character.
Keep It Real: Remember how
people really speak – in fragments, simple words, slang, and they interrupt
each other.
He Said, She Said: Keep dialogue attributions
simple and to a minimum. Bad: “Look out!” he articulated with great
passion. Good: “Look out!” he
shouted.
Lights, Camera,
Action!:
Avoid having action and dialogue take place simultaneously. Bad: “Look out!” Bob said as he fired six shots, hid behind a
dumpster, reloaded, stood, and fired again. Good: “Look out!” Bob
said. He fired six shots then hid behind a dumpster. He reloaded, stood, and
fired again.
Format: Start a new
paragraph whenever you switch speakers. Use italics and no quotation marks for
internal dialogue. EX: “Hi, Sandra!” God,
I can’t stand this woman!
Event-Centered
Plot
The event-centered plot is the
classic and most commonly used plot design (but this doesn’t mean it’s always
the best).
It begins with a character who has
a goal.
Character takes steps to reach the goal.
Character encounters obstacles on the
way to reaching the goal.
Obstacles force the character to
work harder to meet the goal.
Obstacles get worse; the character
works even harder to overcome them.
At the climax of story character
either . . .
Achieves the goal completely.
Fails completely.
Succeeds or fails partially.
Succeeds or fails in an unexpected
way.
The classic plot design is useful
for novels because it allows for expansion. Keep the goal relatively simple the
obstacles fewer in a short story.
Character-Centered
Plot
If the story is intended to focus
on a character, then the purpose is for readers to get to know the character
and gain insight into that character. Create the character first, then write
detailed character notes. Look for aspects of character’s life that will show
character at his or her best and/or worst. Search for problems and crisis
points. Use these problems and crisis points to develop a plot that reveals
character through story action.
Organizational
Patterns
Chronological
order:
This is an obvious one, and as I said earlier, consider beginning close to the
climax. Also, it’s okay to skip stuff that’s not important. You don’t need to
show your characters arguing for twenty minutes about where to go out to eat.
You can just say: Jill and Sam argued for twenty minutes before finally
deciding to get pizza. Or can end a scene and begin the next one with Jill and
Sam already at the restaurant eating pizza.
Flashbacks: These can be
overused. If you’re a beginning writer, I’d suggest keeping them to a bare
minimum or leaving them out entirely. But one or two in a short story can be a
good way to present exposition in a dramatic way instead of through dry
narration.
Alternating
Timeframes:
I’ve used this technique a lot over the years. I’ll have a present-day story
that alternates with a past story featuring the same character which provides
insight into the present-day story. Sometimes the pattern will be fifty percent
Present and fifty percent Past, and sometimes it’s more like seventy-five
percent Present and twenty-five percent past. Whatever seems to work best.
Snapshot Technique: If your story
covers a long time period, you can’t cover every moment. So instead, choose
several key moments of the story to dramatize in detail. It’s like pictures in
a photo album. The album might be labeled Christmas 2017, but it doesn’t have
pictures of every single moment of how you celebrated the holiday. There might
be ten photos that, taken together, create a collage that communicates what the
overall experience was like. At a guess, you might have anywhere from three to five
scenes like that in a short story written in this manner.
Point
of View
Generally
Speaking:
Stay in the same person/point of view for a short story. Point of view shifts
within a scene break the illusion of reality for readers. While it’s of course possible
to alternate point of view in a short story, such back-and-forth shifts tend to
be jarring in a short piece.
Emotional
Core
I Heart You: At the heart of a
story should lie a strong emotional core. This emotional core is what connects
an audience to a story; it’s what makes a story matter to them – and writers neglect this all the time (and often
leave it out entirely). For short fiction include an important emotional
relationship between two characters and use this relationship as a foundation
upon which your story rests. The emotional core doesn’t have to be between two
people. In Hemingway’s The Old Man and
the Sea the emotional core is right there in the title. Can the fisherman
still do his job – can he still master the sea – or is he too old and weak? The
man’s struggle to catch a swordfish and bring it back to land is only the
surface action. The story is the emotional core: the man’s physical, mental, and
emotional struggle against mortality and Time itself.
Hopefully you’ve got a few new tools,
or at least a different perspective, on writing short fiction. Now go out there
and write short fiction that will knock readers on their asses and make them
say, “Damn! Now that was a story!”
DEPARTMENT
OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
My latest story collection Dark and Distant Voices is now available
in both print and eBook editions. Here’s what people have been saying about the
book:
"Hell is other people,"
Jean-Paul Sartre tells us. "Especially the one we see in the mirror,"
implicitly says Tim Waggoner. Both give us the theme of Waggoner's splendid Dark and Distant Voices. Our children we
don't quite recognize, colleagues not all that collegial, ghosts who silently
speak the Truth ... They're all here and more in Waggoner's brilliant story
collection. – Mort Castle
"This is every card in the
horror deck, played by someone who knows the game better than most of us ever will."
– Stephen Graham Jones
Tim Waggoner's Dark and Distant Voices is quite the short story collection.
Bizarre, weird, and utterly intriguing, the stories found here will get under
your skin. – Horror Novel Reviews
And now that you’re dying to get
the book, here’s some Amazon linkage: