How to Write Punchy Short Stories

As a child I wrote a number of short stories. In fact, that was pretty much all I wrote. Writing a novel wasn’t even a consideration because of the length and complexity involved. (Of course, I thought that my stories were books.) But if you had asked me about a month ago, I would have said that I don’t write short stories.

Which, in a contemporary context, is true. All of my writing projects are books or series of books. In recent years, I’ve avoided short stories because they take my time and attention away from those other projects. That is, until I entered another writing contest, this time one that required a short story. Suddenly, all of my recent and past history went out the window and I found myself researching and learning how to write a really good short story.

Because, truth be told, a short story is both very similar and very different from a novel.

1. The Overall Structure – Short stories share the same general plotting structure as novels, but in a much more condensed format. Sounds obvious, but some writers may be inclined to ignore structure and instead focus on a very impactful snapshot of events in a character’s life. That can be a great thing, but it’s not a short story. A short story has a rise and fall of action with a beginning a middle and a conclusion.

On the other hand, it can be easy to go into a short story thinking that you can fit all of the novel beats in there. (I’ve tried that.) It doesn’t work. Unless the short story is closer to a novella, giving all of your typical plot points enough room to breathe – no matter how tightly you write them – can be virtually impossible.

For a short story, I recommend a structure that looks like the following:

¹ The word count is based on a 5,000 word story. Notice that the first quarter of the story – the opening scene and catalyst (at the 25% mark) – should be about 1,250 words (25% of 5,000 words). If your opening scene is shorter – more like 750 words – you have up to about 500 words to work with for the catalyst and vice versa.

² Characterization means that you need to show an action or dialogue from each character that shows readers what type of person that character is. Given the space constraints in a short story, you’ll have to do all of this very quickly so it’s best to pick a scene that gives readers a deep look at all of the characters in one interaction.

2. Condensed Action – The table above looks a lot like the layout for a novel. But notice what’s missing. There are no pinch points. These are the points in a novel that break up the two halves of Act 2. At or around the 37% (halfway between the beginning of Act 2 and the Midpoint) and 62% (halfway between the Midpoint and the beginning of Act 3) point in the book, writers show actions that demonstrate the ferocity of the antagonist.

We raise the stakes and show how much the protagonist has to lose. We show what is against him and how formidable that enemy is.

There’s usually no room for that in a short story. BUT that doesn’t mean it’s truly gone. Rather, we have to bake it into the other plot points. Instead of having a separate plot point to show this, roll it into the 25%, 50% and 75% points in the story. Have those points do more than they would in a novel.

In a short story we also have to be very, very tight. For instance, notice the word counts above. Those equate to no more than 1-4 pages for each portion of the story.

Double spaced.

That’s very little real estate to work with, so everything has to pull double or triple duty. I’ll give you an example.

In a horror story I wrote (for the contest I mentioned above), a young boy is at his family’s lake house for the summer. Much of the story centers on the lake itself and on him as a budding sailor. Therefore, the Opening Scene is set outside, at the dock beside the lake. The mood is dark – the property caretaker is telling the boy the tail end of a scary story.

His mother and sister make an appearance and, though they say little, their actions tell a lot. The mother is dismissive, aloof, independent, and self-centered. The sister is mocking and yet perceptive.

The boy responds in ways that identify him as skeptical, analytical and ambitious. I show both what he wants – to learn to sail – through a couple of comments about the sailboat docked there, and why this is a terrible fit for him. I accomplish the latter by showing his fear of the water, his sister’s comment that he hates it, and her additional comment that he does more reading of his dad’s sailing book than he does actual sailing.

This tells readers a lot. Clearly the dad is absent. The boy is consumed with his dad’s book (a symbolic reference to his attempts to be like his dad), but sailing itself is very obviously a terrible fit for him. Still, sailing will play a role in this portion of his life…but in ways that he doesn’t intend or expect.

Notice that within just over 500 words, I accomplished all of this. That’s hard to do. But possible.(Notice that my opening scene was shorter than what I’ve recommended above so that I had room for a slightly longer Catalyst scene.)

3. Subplots & Subtext – Subplots are going to be very, very hard, if not impossible in a short story. I would omit them completely from your first few drafts and, if you find a way to hint at one in a subsequent draft, you can add it in later. Otherwise you risk muddying the main plot which is already lean enough.

Subtext, on the other hand, should be your modus operandi. When space is tight, every bit of dialogue and action should do more than move the plot forward. It should also tell us something about character and theme.

For example, in the story above there’s a point at which the older sister tells her brother that she’ll go sailing with him. This section reads like this:

[brother]: “You hate sailing.”

[sister]: “So do you.”

Her expression was open. No sign of mocking or pranking. He shrugged. “I guess [you can come sailing with me].”

[sister]: “You know, Dad’s a jerk. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t.”

He didn’t respond. Just looked from her to the lake. When he looked back, she was gone.

There’s a lot of subtext in there. On the surface it looks like they’re just sharing a mutual hatred of sailing, but what else do we see?

1. His sister sees through him and knows that he doesn’t like sailing, but is clinging to the memory of their father.
2. She also sees that their dad wasn’t a good person, something the younger brother either can’t or refuses to admit.
3. This tells readers that he’s deceiving himself by holding to a belief that isn’t true and isn’t helping him. (It isn’t leading him to be his best self…rather than a mirror image of their father.)
4. The sister, who usually would be mocking him or playing pranks on him (what he’s looking for in her expression) is, underneath it all, actually very selfless and caring.

That’s a lot of meaning in a tiny space. Which is absolutely essential in a short story.

While it would be ideal if a novel were this concise and on-point (and it’s certainly something I shoot for), a short story can’t afford not to be. To have a really impactful and meaningful short story, it can’t just be a shorter snapshot of the characters. It has to boil the entire essence of the story down to brief sketches of description and dialogue that show readers everything in 5% – 10% of the space of a novel.

4. Story Timespan – There’s a lot of variation when it comes to how much time a short story covers in the life (or lives) of the character(s). Some short stories cover a few minutes or only a day. Others span years or decades.

But the choices as to how to accomplish this have to be very intentional. Because my story above is a horror story and horror stories generally show a progression of events as the monster pursues the protagonist, I chose to work with a short window of time. Rather than merely a few days, I skipped ahead in one section, highlighting some things the protagonist did that resulted in failed outcomes. Still, the entire story spanned merely 2-3 weeks in the characters’ lives. And the sections with action comprised no more than 2-3 days.

That was hard for me. I love subtext and tight writing (though I’m always improving), but I also love lyrical language and very immersive settings. To accomplish these latter two things, I usually need a lot of space. A lot more than I have in a short story.

I originally started the story where the novel would begin – at the start of summer when the family arrives at the lake house. Instead, I fast-forwarded a month to early July and threw in a few references to the young boy’s attempts to improve his sailing. That allowed me to skip much of the lead up that would have taken too much time. In a novel, the catalyst scene would have happened closer to their arrival, but I had no room for that so I moved it to the beginning of the short story’s timeline.

And of course I had to cut out much of the antagonist’s actions against the young boy. There just isn’t room for a lengthy series of action scenes and reaction sequels. Rather, I chose the hardest hitting one in each section and focused on that. The only exception was what I mentioned above when I said that I referenced a few actions he tried and what resulted from them.

That also meant that sometimes I had to tell about something that happened after the fact. That meant that the action took less space, but I was still able to dramatize a portion of it to give the readers a taste for what had happened. That felt awkward at first, and it certainly isn’t my preference, but I managed to work it out so that everything flowed smoothly.

5. Character Arcs & Backstory – In a short story, you still want to have some character growth. You still want to show why the character thinks he wants what he wants at the beginning and why the antagonist is doing whatever it is she’s doing. But to do that well, you’ll want to bake it into the subtext (which pulls double or triple duty for you…saving space), and you’ll want to choose only the most significant things to include.

For example, in my story above, the young boy makes a very characteristic [skeptical and scientific] comment to the property caretaker at the beginning of the story. His mom walks by at just that point and says, “He’s just like his father.” Now, this kind of comment can be taken so many different ways, but in the context I establish and given the mother’s other actions, it’s clear that it’s not a compliment. It’s also clear that she hates his father. (And as we mentioned before, the son is trying his darnedest – for his own reasons – to be just like his dad.) Which sets up an immediate conflict between the mother and son.

We know why she hates her kids’ father in one sentence. That’s in the comment that the sister, Maddie, made above: “You know, Dad’s a jerk. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t.” He left them and the mother is resentful.

Conclusion

We could spend years analyzing the short story, but the key to take away is that the entire essence of the story – as if you had had the space to write it as a novel – needs to be there, but it has to be so incredibly tight that you portray it in only a fraction of the space.

It’s hard to do. But it’s so impactful when it works.

And for me, there’s one other benefit to writing short stories – the most important one from my perspective.

The short story is like a boot camp for writing a novel. I’ve learned so much in the process of working on the story that I mentioned here. All of these types of elements – the double- and triple-hitting dialogue, subtext and description can and often should spill over into a novel. The ability to cut everything but the bare essentials is invaluable. And even with more space, knowing how to show action in either shorter or longer ways is a phenomenal skill. And it’s much harder than it sounds. It takes practice until it reads smoothly and does all of the things that each section of the story needs to do. Then, with a larger word count, the story can do all of these things in an even richer and more successful way than it would have otherwise.

Let me know about your experience reading or writing short stories. What have you seen or learned in the process – good or bad?

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