How to write short stories
BY Cynan Jones
16th Mar 2023
Cynan Jones is an acclaimed short fiction author and novelist. He is the author of five novels, published in over 20 countries. He has won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, a Betty Trask Award, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award, and the BBC National Short Story Award, for which he was also on the 2019 judging panel. His short stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies and in journals and magazines including Granta and the New Yorker. Cynan also leads our six-week online Writing Short Stories course and our nine-week Writing Short Stories – Advanced Zoom course.
Here Cynan discusses the important questions all short fiction writers should ask themselves about the story they want to tell.
What is a story?
In its purest sense, a story is an account of events.
We are pattern-making creatures, and instinctively make connections between things to help us make sense of the world.
Story is the result of our brains bringing patterns to events, be they real or made up. And in bringing these patterns to bear, we give events a logic that is suggested by cause and confirmed by outcome.
Put more simply, in most cases a story provides the reader with the reason (even if only intuitively) why a thing happens – it shows that thing happening, and (perhaps only by implication) offers some awareness of the result of what happens.
In more subtle stories, the reader might have to intuit a lot of the reason and result from the clues the author provides. In other stories, the reason and result are made very clear on the page.
Key story elements
- Who: The character(s) who have a role in or are affected by the events of the story.
- Where: The place where the story happens.
- When: The time when the story happens.
- What: And above all then, we must ask: what is happening in your piece?
The answer to this question, ‘what happens?’, is akin to what you might have heard referred to as ‘the elevator pitch’. There’s only so much room in a short story, and in general the form is very effective at delivering clear, strong ideas. Can you sum up your story in a very few words? Preferably in a single sentence that should reflect the events of your story.
Questions for writers
Good writing doesn’t just happen at the desk. Walk away from what you’ve written for a while. Does the piece set you thinking when you are away from it? How do you feel about the piece when it’s not there in front of you?
It might suit you to take yourself out for a coffee. You may prefer to head off for a walk. The great thing here is, you are still on task. This is still writing time. Without this thinking time, your writing won’t be as strong as it could be. Ask yourself questions like:
- Will my piece catch and hold a reader’s attention? Is it engaging?
- Are my characters authentic? Are they interesting?
- Does the place where my piece happens feel real? Does it add to the atmosphere?
- Will what I’ve written cause an emotional reaction in my reader?
- How do you feel about the piece now you’ve started writing? Does it engage you?
- Is there an event that truly stands out from others? If there is, and it dominates, should other things that happen be cleared out so as not to detract from that main event?
- If there are no stand-out events, should there be? Should something more happen?
These questions are all tricky. Sometimes the answers are obvious. Other times elusive. Sometimes the answers change with your mood. This is why it’s important to take time to think about your short story from different angles, in different frames of mind.
The more you ask questions of and assess your work, the richer you’ll be able to make your story.
This advice is taken from our six-week online Writing Short Stories course. Enrol now to learn more about crafting short fiction from teaching videos, notes and writing tasks presented by Cynan Jones.