![]() ![]() Quick tip: If your short story takes place over the course of weeks or even months, it’s a sign you might need to narrow your scope. If you try to fit too much into a short story, often it will feel disjointed, not make sense, and not have a satisfying ending. Narrow your scope to one slice of your character’s life. Your stories should focus on a single character, have a small supporting cast of characters, and revolve around one simple idea (no subplots!). ![]() Try these writing tips to shorten your word count. To avoid a short story full of unnecessary words and very little plot, you need to learn to tighten your prose. 8 Writing Tips That Will Tighten Your Short Story But if you're trying to get your story into a literary magazine, a literary journal, or entering it into a writing contest, you will most likely have to come in under a certain word count. Stories end when the writer is done telling the story, right?Īnd in general, that's true. You might ask why a writer would want to make their story shorter. My stories got better because I wasn’t wasting space with “word baggage.” When I made these cuts, I had a lot more words to use and was able to write a more compelling story. This strategy allowed me to assess if each sentence moved the story along. I had about eight different colors of highlighters and the manuscript looked like a rainbow when I finished.Įach color served a purpose: one for highlighting -ly and -ing words, one for descriptions, one for dialogue tags, and so on. One of the main components of these “good” short stories is that they focus on clarity and purpose over purple prose.įollowing the advice of a much better short story writer than me, I spent an afternoon highlighting every word in a short story of mine. ![]() It took me years to realize what qualified as good writing, especially good writing in a short story. I also used to think paragraphs of long descriptions were the mark of good writing. I talked about how I used to end my stories in the middle of the climax in a previous article on the basic elements of a short story. In this article, you'll easy writing tips that can help you cut your word count-and make your short story all the better for it. Ultimately, learning how to write a story in fewer words takes practice. Luckily, tightening a short story into an even shorter story is something you can get the hang of over time. In a short story, you have to have the same elements, but in about two percent of the words. In a novel, you have an entire book to elaborate, to make your readers care. ![]()
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