The plot quickens Print E-mail
Written by Lesley Dore, 2006   
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So you want to write short stories? You can’t go wrong if you learn from the masters of the genre, says Lesley Dore

The British writer Ali Smith compares the short story to a stone thrown in a pond. “If you throw a stone in the water, you see concentric circles. You know that something has been changed or moved and in a moment it’s going to be gone.”

There’s a resurgence of interest in the short story at the moment. The BBC’s National Short Story Prize winner, James Lasdun, beat 1,400 entrants with An Anxious Man, broadcast on Radio 4, and although experienced writers often shudder at the idea of rules, it can be useful to follow guidelines and be aware of what is expected of a short story.

Getting ideas

Where do those stones, the ideas that set the ripples in motion, come from? The advice often given to new writers is that they should write about what they know and certainly this gives your writing authenticity. If the story is set in your home town, only those who live in your street can describe it as accurately as you can and put in the details that make it different from every other street in the neighbourhood. But should you write autobiographically? You can certainly start there and then let your imagination take over.

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Road Dahl
Think about incidents in your life – or the lives of people you know – and change the reality: what if this had happened, instead of that? I wrote a story based on a dramatic incident in my childhood when one of my three sisters slipped and fell down a waterfall. I can see the scene vividly now – the long scream as she went down, my father leaping across the rocks and trying to grab her before she reached the churning cataract, the wide-eyed horror on his face as she disappeared and then the terrible silence that followed. She surfaced down river, choking but alive. I changed that. I invented sibling rivalry and turned it into a tragedy.

Were you, or was someone you know, given a piece of advice in the past that has affected, directed or blighted life since? If you speculate on the motives of the adviser, or the outcome had the advice been followed/ignored, can you come up with a story? Newspapers are a good source of ideas. The ‘news in brief’ section often reports on strange and curious events – and what about the small ads? “For sale – Wedding Dress. Never worn”. Can you be original and get away from the obvious ideas of the owner being dumped at the altar or a tragic death?

Look at photographs in the press and in the weekend colour supplements, and turn around that old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” by writing those words. Remember that Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel was inspired by Vermeer’s painting The Girl with a Pearl Earring. Thumb through the art books in your library if you’ve run out of ideas.As you travel – by bus, train or plane – observe the greetings and farewells; the lone traveller with her heavy suitcase; listen to fragments of conversation and let your imagination fly.

The essentials

Once you’ve got a storyline, write it down in summary form and start to plan. In a short story you need five things: the characters, the setting, when it happens, who is telling it and, most important of all, the plot.

First, the characters. A short story can be defined as a turning point in a fictional person’s life, and it differs from a novel where the characters can develop slowly over many chapters. Here, they must spring to life in a few lines. You may need to keep physical descriptions brief, but it’s effective to let them reveal themselves through their actions rather than make direct statements about them. “When James saw people shaking tins for charity collections he always crossed the road,” gives us a better understanding of James than “He was mean.”

Teachers of creative writing urge their students to “show, don’t tell,” for showing what is happening through the actions and reactions of your characters creates pace and movement. Dialogue is also very effective in bringing people to life, but bear in mind that it must add to the story or move it on. If it doesn’t serve a purpose, it’s redundant. Here’s an important tip about writing dialogue: Don’t try to use a variety of ‘saying words’ unless they add flavour to the incident. If your character is angry, of course she can shout; two women talking during a church service will almost certainly whisper, but “said” is usually all you need. The reader absorbs the repetition and it is less intrusive. Open any modern novel on a page of dialogue and you’ll see that often a passage flows smoothly without loss of understanding when very few such words are used.


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