All Write - Fiction Advice

What do you need to include in your short story to ensure that it’s well-written and is a great read? Apart from a strong storyline, solid characters, established POV, a central theme, a setting and an idea of beginning, middle and end, the rest of the ‘meat’ of your story should concentrate on motivation, conflict, emotion, pace and that fine balance of narrative dialogue and description. Even in short stories, your main character needs motivation, so make sure your reader is aware of the reason your main character is doing what he’s doing, and acts and reacts to events and other characters. What problem must he overcome, what is his ultimate goal? Motivation drives your character. If there’s nothing within the story that motivates him, there is no story. You may not think that emotion and conflict are that important to a short story, given that there are fewer words in which to tell the story, but that’s not the case.   Even short stories need a certain amount of conflic...

As part of the planning stage, in addition to the storyline, characters, point of view, central theme and where the action takes place, it’s worth outlining a beginning, middle and an end. You may not think this is necessary with a short story, but it can help keep you motivated during writing because sometimes things can slow to a halt, ideas dry up or you’re not sure which direction the story should go, so a rough outline helps to keep you on the right path and provides a framework around which the story can form. The Beginning Unlike novels, short stories must convey a lot of information in fewer words, so there isn’t much room to give the reader backstory or lots of background information, but that doesn’t mean you can’t include it – it just means you need to be more efficient in with your words. The beginning should start at an important or interesting moment in your protagonist’s life, or at a crisis point. There’s no room for half a page of explanation. Get right to the ...

Short stories require writers to be economical – there’s a limited amount of words to work with, since most of the elements you find in a novel are condensed into a short story format, but that doesn’t mean the quality and depth of the story should suffer because of it. The key to a good short story is not what it’s about, but how it’s written. Get the structure right and the story will work. The best way to write better short stories is to start with a bit of planning. Lots of writers don’t plan, and prefer to ‘wing’ it, but the result is not always a well-crafted piece of fiction.   A story plan doesn’t have to be detailed. It can be a few paragraphs of ideas or scenarios, or a brief outline and some characters. It just needs to be enough to help you write your story, so you’ll want to include the following as you plan: Storyline Characters POV A central theme Setting the scene Beginning, middle and end Firstly, know what your story is about. Short stories ...

Part 1 looked at the how your character’s inner thoughts (or inner dialogue) can help with characterisation, and ways that it can deepen the narrative, but in addition to that, writers also use visual prompts – things like gestures and body language - to give their protagonist more than just words. A lot our communication is nonverbal – we gesticulate, we move our bodies, and our facial expressions show sentiment, mood or emotion. We easily pick up on those subtle movements and we interpret them, or “read” that person. In fiction, your characters are no different. Writers can show a lot about a character without him or her having to say a word. Body language covers a large area – everything from gestures, posture, ticks, facial movements, and other movement not associated with gestures. But gestures are the one thing we all do and understand – it helps us express ourselves and reinforces what we say. For instance, someone might show open palms as they talk, which is often symboli...

The depth of characterisation comes from how well your write your characters. Their personality, their flaws and their unique characteristics, coupled with how they behave, how they act and react to other people and situations, and importantly, what they say, provides more for characterisation than just the words they speak. Characterisation isn’t just about what your character says or how they say it. While dialogue is important, it’s also important to give them more than just words. As writers, you can give them more, and to do that we give our characters inner dialogue, or inner thoughts. Inner dialogue refers to the internal thoughts of your character. It’s his or her deep thoughts and feelings, which the reader is privy. This provides the reader with insight into the character which can’t be gleaned by actions alone – because often what the character really feels on the inside is very different to what they do or say on the outside, seen by everyone else. So in a way, inner dialog...

When we think about horror, we immediately think of visceral, blood and guts stories, but horror is much more than that – the best horror stories are about our fears, perceptions and the unknown - the things we don’t see or understand. All you need is the fears of your reader’s imagination.   No horror should be without some foreshadowing. It’s another way to add atmosphere and tone to the story, as well as added tension. Writers use all manner of things to foreshadow – the weather, an animal, a dream, a sound, circling birds…as long as it isn’t out of place within the story, and the reader can see it, so they will know that the birds circling the trees might signify something, or the coal coloured clouds in the distance represent a dreadful, suppressive mood that belies something terrible is about to happen.   The right pacing is essential. It can create dread, tension and provoke fear. To do that, use longer descriptions that deliberately linger on certain sensory ...

So what makes horror stories so...horrifying?   Writing a good horror story is all about tapping into the reader’s fears. Everybody is afraid of something, whether it’s the dark, spiders, thunder and lightning, snakes, even death...there is always something that terrifies people, and the best horror stories exploit these irrational fears (or phobias). Most of our fears come from childhood – an incident that we remember, such as seeing a spider, or behaviours and fears picked up from the adults around us. Often their fears become our fears. Additionally, there are instinctual and primitive fears – such as being afraid of large predatory animals like sharks or bears.   On the other side of the coin there is the fear caused by imagination; the monsters we create for ourselves, such as vampires, demons, bogeymen and creatures under the bed. But whether they’re primitive fears or made up ones, they all have something in common – they are all illogical – such fears make ...