Each time I enter the quarterly Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contests, I try to use a different approach to writing the short story. I’m a little ashamed to say that this year, these are the only short stories I’ve written, but it’s definitely been more of a long fiction year.
Anyway, in the July competition I did a lot more serious plot planning than usual; back in April I did a lot of brainstorming and then a one-hit write. This time round I decided to use a strategy I’d read about during the week from some info I got from the Australian Writing Academy, who sent me a small brochure about short story writing that had some surprisingly useful tips.
Basically, I followed the suggestion of outlining the story in advance, including some obstacles and how they’re overcome, and right at the end – “after” the end, in fact – adding another twist. I was quite surprised about how well this strategy worked. I planned what I thought was, on its own, a complete story, and then continued it by adding a twist, and to me it seems like that has worked out really well. I’m not sure that it produces a particularly “literary” story, but then again, the brochure is about writing short stories that sell, so they’re probably not intended to be too “literary”, so to speak.
I was also very conscious of avoiding unnecessary remarks and doing more showing than telling. A simple example: the story includes two main characters, a mother and son. When I first mention the son (by name rather than “her son”) I used to think I should immediately explain that the man is the son … but I can let readers just assume that – it sounds like he probably is just from the context – and a bit later on they can be sure when he arrives and addresses her as “Mum”. I do too much “overstating” when I write, forgetting that the reader is actually a smart cookie who can figure out tonnes of stuff for themselves. So it was good practice for me to remember this through a whole short (short) story.
One last ramble on the short story contest topic: I do love the chance to write something – more importantly, to have to write something – on a topic that’s not of my choosing. This contest still gives plenty of scope for slanting the topic into something that’s of interest to you, but you have to start with something supplied and then get creative. This is definitely good for me and something I should try to do more often.
