Perhaps you have an idea for a short story and are wondering what is best to start writing. Or, although you have written your short story and are now looking for ways to revise it for a more complex and engaging story. You can create exciting prose and deepen your short fiction with the following strategies:
1) Start an action or move , or in mass media, which is Latin for "in the middle of things". Because of the limited space in the short story, you want to immediately contact your reader. The movement pulls us into the story faster than silence. Say, for example, you are thinking of writing a story about a teenage boy who decided to rob a liquor store for the first time. Instead of introducing a character before he enters the liquor store, why should he not enter the store, reach out to his gun and not cope with his inner conflict by committing his first crime? When reviewing a real action, when a central symbol and a conflict are entered, it cannot appear until it is indicated that page 5 and the previous pages are filled with a background and ground situation. Try starting on page 5 and turn on the background as the story unfolds, making it part of a growing action.
2) Include your contract or short story promise in the first two paragraphs. This gives readers a context of what is unfolding, and lets us know what is at stake for the central hero. It shows what the character wants, and we can feel that from the events that are starting to unfold, regardless of whether he reaches his desires, this character will be changed by the end of the story.
3) Use specific, specific parts as much as possible. Specific details resonate even more with readers than high statements. Wide-format or abstract statements tend to break away from the melodramatic. Direct them into reality with concrete and tangible details. This creates a more experimental reading of your short story.
4) Show and to tell. We are all familiar with this saying, “show, do not speak,” but it is impossible to exclude all “storytelling” from the story, especially in a short fiction, where we have a limited narrative space. Summing events are necessary to cover long periods of time or to repeat repetitive actions that bring context to the actual action of the story. The trick is to make your story look like a show, using specific details that dramatize tolling. For example, let's look at the section in Snow Kilimanjaro to see how Hemingway hides his presentation with very specific and concrete details:
He destroyed his talent, without using it, betraying himself and what he believed in, drank too much, that he blunted the edges of his perceptions, laziness, laziness and snobbery, pride and prejudice, a hook and a crook. (60)
The narrative is filled with stories, but what masks the story is the insertion of “too many drinkers,” a simple phrase that fills in the gaps and justifies all abstract statements with real concrete terms.
5) Use an inner monologue to create more depth for your character. Although you don’t want to go out and explicitly indicate your character’s feelings, such as “he felt sad” or “she was happy,” you can express your character’s impressions, judgments and thoughts to express your emotional complexity. Looking again at Hemingway’s quotation, notice how the character reflects and concludes that he lost his talent because of his drink. Without condemning emotions, Hemingway was able to convey the depth of character and regret.
6) Create tension by putting obstacles in your character’s needs. This is at the heart of the growing action of your short story. Your character wants something (what's at stake?) And there is a conflict in his attempts to achieve this desired result. Tension is created when we see a character struggling with these obstacles.
7) Allow your characters to be vulnerable and corrupt. , Release the protection. They are much more interesting when they make mistakes, talk about the wrong things or get in trouble. It is their vulnerability and shortcomings that make your short story characters human and sympathetic to your readers. This is also part of creating a symbolic arc. Sometimes the obstacles to the character's desire come from the character himself, and it is in overcoming (or not) these obstacles that he changes.
8) Strategically insert your memories (past as scenes) in a short story. Flashbacks interrupt the present moment and can slow down your short story, especially during an emotional moment. If the flash is intense, try using it in a standard scene and use simple, unobtrusive time stamps (for example, “three months ago” or “last spring”) to accommodate the reader. If the flashback is brief, consider inserting it well enough before, possibly in an earlier scene, so that your character can experience an emotional moment in real action without interference. Readers will have a memory when your character acts in the present.
9) Make memories and past in a summary, report this action in your short story In other words, the past must provide context for your actions or beliefs of your character at the moment.
10) Stay in an emotional moment. It is sometimes difficult for writers to hang there at a critical emotional moment. He may feel uncomfortable. And sometimes, we feel inadequate to express it well, so we have a lot of development and detailing of the short story narrative before and after, and not during the emotional moment, but when we look at such a significant moment, readers will feel that they have been abandoned. or even missed. Worse, the final will seem unearned. A delay in the emotional moment can mean thinking in the character's mind. Try to get for thinking behind the thought. Or, if your character does not look too much inside, you can still feel the emotional significance, increasing the characteristic details of the perception of the character (smell, sight, hearing) or his physicality (how the body feels or what it does).
Incorporating these craft tips into your letter will go a long way towards creating a more visceral reading experience, a more believable change arc, as well as a more meaningful connection between character and action. You will be on your way to writing an attractive and compelling story.
