Most people wonder why it is important to have tips for short story writers. The answer to this conundrum is that every writing style has its own requirements and peculiarities. For short stories, you have to write a complete story with enough detail in a word count between 500 and 3,000 words. That’s very short compared to novels which often have upwards of 100,000 words.

Most novelists start writing short stories before they progress to book-length works. The reason might be that they are familiar with the style of writing from school or simply because it is easier to plan short stories. However, short stories can be difficult to do well because of the restrictive word count and the need for excellent word choice. The following are some tips for writers of short stories.

Don’t have too many characters

Short stories have one major weakness; they limit your word count significantly compared to other works. You therefore have limited words to develop the characters. Every character in a story should be well developed so you should only include characters that are critical for the story. Depending on your skills, you can have a different ideal number of characters compared to other writers. The recommended characters for a short story are not more than four. If a story is shorter than 1,500 words, you should only use two characters.

Stick to the story

One of the luxuries that you don’t have when writing short stories is to use waffle. This is when you use a string of words when a single word would have conveyed the same message. Your word choice should always be excellent when writing short stories.

Use strong, well-chosen descriptive words

People who write novels have the luxury of writing many words to paint the picture in readers’ minds. However, a person writing a short story should minimize the words used. It is sometimes difficult to find the perfect words to use when writing short stories but writers must make the effort. If you are sure that what you are writing can be said in a single word or using a short phrase and you don’t have the phrase at the top of your head, flick through a thesaurus to refresh your mind.

Don’t overdo the description

This point is closely related to the previous tip. Although you need to describe the scenes and characters in your short stories, too much descriptive writing takes the momentum out of the story. Some authors write highly descriptive but interesting short stories but they always use descriptive language when it is essential for the story.

Build your story quickly

You should not use up all your words building the story. Just like novels, short stories need a beginning, middle, and end. You should therefore scale the story depending on the number of words you have to work with.