To write a short story: start with a character who wants something they cannot easily have, place them in a situation that forces the conflict into the open, build through a series of complications, and reach a moment of irreversible change. Short stories differ from novels in compression — every element must earn its place. A short story can be written in a single draft sitting; it is revised over days or weeks.
Short stories are the hardest form to master and the best place to learn to write. They give you immediate feedback on every decision — character, voice, structure, scene — without the long commitment of a novel. This guide covers the complete process from idea to published draft.
What Makes a Short Story Different From a Novel
Short stories are not small novels. They work differently. A novel can sustain multiple plot threads, develop many characters, and take time to build its world. A short story must do its work in a single sustained movement — usually focusing on one character, one situation, and one significant change.
The short story form rewards: compression, implication, precision of detail, endings that resonate rather than resolve. It punishes: over-explanation, multiple plot threads, slow openings, and anything that does not serve the central situation.
Step 1: Find Your Central Situation
Every short story needs a central situation: a specific circumstance that creates pressure on a character. This is not the same as a plot. A plot is what happens. A central situation is the condition that makes things happen.
Examples of central situations: a woman learns her estranged father is dying; two strangers are trapped in a lift; a soldier returns home to find everything familiar has become strange. Each of these creates immediate pressure. Each implies a character with something to lose or gain.
How to find your situation
The most reliable sources: something that actually happened (to you or someone you know), something you have long wondered about, something you were afraid to examine directly. Short stories that work are usually about something the writer needed to understand. If you are indifferent to the material, the reader will be too.
Step 2: Create One Character Who Wants Something
Kurt Vonnegut’s first rule: every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. In a short story, you usually only have room for one fully realised character. That character needs a want — a goal that drives action — and a fear — something that prevents them from acting directly.
The want and the fear should be in tension. If the character wants love but fears vulnerability, that tension generates story. If the character wants money and has no fear of getting it, you have a procedural, not a story.
Specificity over type
The failure mode for beginning writers is creating character types rather than specific people. A “grieving mother” is not a character. A mother who still sets a place at the table for the child who died six months ago, who has started going to church not out of faith but because the priest does not know what happened, is a character. The specific detail is the character.
Step 3: Choose Where to Begin
Begin as late as possible. Most first drafts start too early — with setup, backstory, or the character going about their normal life before anything happens. Start instead in the middle of the situation, at the moment when the pressure is already active.
In medias res — into the middle of things — is not just a technique; it is a necessity in short fiction. You do not have room to warm up. The opening line should already be doing work: establishing voice, implying character, creating tension, or raising a question the reader needs answered.
Strong opening lines
Three approaches that work: establish the voice so precisely that the reader immediately wants more of it (“Call me Ishmael”); create a situation that demands explanation (“The morning Gregor Samsa woke to find himself transformed into a giant insect”); or introduce a destabilising fact that needs resolving (“They shoot the white girl first”).
Step 4: Structure the Story Around a Change
Short stories are about change. Not necessarily dramatic or positive change — but a shift in understanding, situation, or character that is irreversible by the end. The character at the end of the story cannot return to who they were at the beginning, because they now know something they did not know before.
This change does not have to be plotted in advance. Many writers discover what the story is about through writing the draft. But in revision, ask: what changes here? If the answer is nothing, the story is not finished.
The three-scene structure
Many effective short stories can be mapped onto three scenes: situation established (character and conflict introduced), complication (the situation becomes more difficult; the character’s assumptions are challenged), resolution (the change occurs; the character understands something they did not before). This is not a formula; it is a description of how most stories that work are structured.
Step 5: Write the First Draft
Write the first draft without stopping to revise. The first draft’s job is to exist, not to be good. The writer who revises every paragraph as they go produces technically polished work that has no momentum. The first draft needs to be alive before it can be refined.
Practical guidance: write the first draft in a single session if possible. A short story is 1,000 to 10,000 words — achievable in one extended sitting. The coherence that comes from writing a story in continuous time is worth the exhaustion.
Step 6: Revise for Compression
Short stories are revised toward compression, not toward length. Every scene, line, and word should earn its presence. The test: if this were removed, would the story lose something essential? If not, remove it.
What to cut first
- The first page: Most first drafts open too early. Cut until you find where the story actually starts.
- Adverbs: Adverbs usually modify weak verbs. Replace the verb instead.
- Explanation: If you have explained something the scene already shows, cut the explanation.
- The last paragraph: Many stories end one beat too late. The final resonant moment is usually the second-to-last paragraph.
Step 7: Write an Ending That Earns Its Weight
The ending is the last thing the reader carries away. In short fiction, it carries more weight than in any other form. The worst endings: ones that explain what the story meant, ones that resolve too neatly, ones that arrive before the story has earned them.
The best short story endings create resonance rather than closure. Something is understood that cannot be unsaid. The character (or reader) cannot return to the beginning. The final image or line should contain the whole story in miniature — not explain it, but embody it.
Where to Publish Short Stories
Short stories are published in literary magazines, both print and online. Start by reading the publications you want to submit to — this is not optional; submitting blind is a waste of everyone’s time. The major online submissions system is Submittable. Most literary magazines accept simultaneous submissions; some do not.
- Online literary magazines: The Sun, One Story, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Missouri Review
- Flash fiction (under 1,000 words): Flash Fiction Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, Fractured Lit
- Genre short fiction: Clarkesworld (science fiction), The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nightmare Magazine
- Prize anthologies: The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize — these compile the year’s best from literary magazines
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a short story be?
Short stories are typically 1,000 to 10,000 words. Flash fiction is under 1,000 words. Literary magazines vary: most prefer 3,000 to 7,000 words. Over 10,000 words is generally considered a novella or long story. Word count matters less than whether the story uses exactly the space it needs — no more, no less.
What makes a good short story?
A specific character in a specific situation undergoing a real change, told in precise language, ending at exactly the right moment. Compression is the key quality: nothing wasted. A good short story contains more than it seems to — rereading reveals layers the first reading only hinted at.
How do you write a short story for beginners?
Start with something that actually happened — to you, or to someone you know. Write it as plainly as possible, in the first person if that is easiest. Do not try to make it literary; try to make it true. Read it back and find the moment that feels most alive. That moment is the centre of your story. Rebuild the draft around it.
What are the elements of a short story?
The core elements: character (who the story is about and what they want), conflict (what prevents them from getting it), setting (where and when), plot (the sequence of events that moves the character through the conflict), and theme (what the story is ultimately about). In short fiction, all five must be compressed into a small space — which means each must do more than one job simultaneously.