The Modern Short Story Format

Part 1 of "How to Write Short Stories"

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Let's get this out of the way: there is no one correct way to write a successful short story. Highly acclaimed short stories exist that ignore every single direction you will see in this series of how-to articles. Short story writing is an art, not a science, and definitely not something that should become a simple cookie-cutter task.

But despite that, this series of articles will give you the framework and tools of short story writing. This is to get you started and give you the foundation to grow as a short story writer.

Consider the analogy of a wine-and-painting class, where you walk out afterward with your own version of someone else's artwork. It is unlikely to end up in the Louvre, but it has a good chance to be hung proudly on your own wall without shame or embarrassment.

Remember, this is foundation and tools, not rules. That said, let's get started...

Over the decades since the art was created, a particular formula has proven to be very common among short stories. Boiled down to its simplest form, we have:

A character has a goal that, after a series of attempts finally achieves it.

This is the point where people say: "But I know a story from a villain's point of view." "I know a story where the goal isn't achieved." "I know a story without any characters at all!"

Those are exceptions. They can be very good stories and can be very worthwhile in discussing as to why they were good despite not fitting this formula, but that is for a future date. Now back to the formula.

Consider the story that starts with "Bob knew the world was about to explode, but didn't care." Sure, the problem is of critical importance, but to our central character, it isn't. He doesn't care, so we don't. We care if a kid gets the Christmas present of his dreams if he cares, but we don't care if the world is saved if Bob doesn't care. So the statement needs modification.

A character has a goal of utmost importance to him that after a series of attempts he achieves.

Okay, so now we find the goal worthwhile, even if that goal is downright evil, because it is worthwhile to our character.

But we aren't there yet.

Bob wanted dearly for the world be saved from destruction. The scientists tried and failed. The mystics tried and failed. The aliens tried and succeeded. The end.

Not satisfying to the reader, because Bob did nothing to achieve his goal. Bob needs to be our protagonist -- he needs to be the one who got things to happen. If someone else does the actions, Bob is an afterthought at best.

So that changes our formula just a little...

A character has a goal of utmost importance to him that he takes a series of attempts to achieve, until at last he succeeds.

Great... but what if Bob is an idiot?

Bob wanted dearly for the world to be saved from destruction. He tries changing his light bulbs. He opens a bookstore. Finally, he turns off the switch that had the countdown on the self destruct switch and succeeds in saving humanity.

Nope, the decisions Bob makes have to be rational.

Bob wanted dearly for the world to be saved from destruction. He tries the stop button without success. He tries a reset command on the computer without success. He unplugs the computer. Success.

There is no progression in tension in such a story. We might have well have skipped to the end. Each step along the way, the tension increase.

So our short story format has become --

A character has a goal of utmost importance to him that he takes a series of rational attempts to achieve that fail and make things worse, until at last he succeeds.

But he doesn't just need to succeed. He needs to succeed against all odds. He needs to face that ultimate challenge at great risk or high cost. THEN the readers get a big payout. That gives us:

A character has a goal of utmost importance to him that he takes a series of rational attempts to achieve that fail and make things worse, until at high cost or risk, he finally succeeds.

It is difficult to name a short story that everyone has read, so we will use a popular movie's plot as an example.

In Star Wars, Luke has a goal -- to have glory and honor, the kind you get from a life of high adventure. We have a protagonist and a goal. When the new droids give him a chance of a taste of adventure that might get him the glory and honor he craves, he follows that path, but that leads him to be attacked by the sand people. Logical choice followed by a negative consequence. He is rescued by Obi Wan who tells him a story about his father. Listening to the story is a logical choice for a good kid who respects his elders, but the story inflames his desire for adventure. He lets Obi Wan listen to the princess's message, but that now creates a specific high-risk goal rather than the general goal of adventure. Yet another logical choice but an increase in danger.

Every decision needs to be the best possible option available at the time. And every failed decision needs to increase difficulty, increase the consequences of failure, or increase the desire for success.

Going into town patrolled by Imperial soldiers was necessary, but it tremendously increased risk, especially after finding that they slaughtered the Jawas and Luke's family. Selling the speeder was necessary and logical, but makes returning to a level of comfort more difficult, so success becomes more important. Going into a seedy bar where no one cares if an arm is chopped off to find transport is logical, but again, risk increases.

As the story progresses, the rule-following kid who would have had a boring but safe life as a farmer gets deeper and deeper into more and more dangerous situations, until he is faced with the ultimate choice -- give up on following the rules, trust his intuition and "the force", and risk it all. And when he did, he overcame the final hurdle and got the glory he desired.

If you laid out all of Luke's decision points, you'd have a lot more than a typical short story. Just to list them would take a whole lot of words, and there's one unbreakable rule of short stories -- they are short.

A short story should be read in one single reading session.

The typical modern short story would have three to five decision points. There is no magical number here, more... fewer... it's a matter of artistic judgement. Fewer than three makes the entire effort seem too easy. More than five will make the story long and risk being repetitive. But it's up to the writer to find that perfect balance.

Think 1000 to 7000 words. Stretch it out farther and you enter the novella realm.

But don't sit down and write 1000 words if you don't know where you are going. Answer these questions:

1 - What is the problem and why is the protagonist the one person in the whole universe who finds the problem to be the most critical and difficult?

2 - What is the first thing he tries to do to resolve the problem, how does it fail, and how does it increase the difficulty, increase the consequences of failure or increase the desire to resolve the problem?

3 - What second (and third or more) thing does he try and fail at and how does it make things even worse?

4 - What final attempt does the protagonist do at high risk or cost in order to succeed?

Answer these questions and you'll have a good plan on writing your short story.