How to write a Short Story – Ways of doing it...

Hi fellow Writers or aspiring Writers,


I’ve been writing for a while now, many many years in fact and often times I’m asked ”How do you come out with that stuff?” or “Where do you get your ideas from?” , especially in regards to short stories that I write.


So I thought it would be a good idea to explain how I do it, in the hopes that, perhaps, it’ll help someone out there in creating their very first Short Story.


There are other ways to write a short but this is how I do it, 90% of the time.


First, a story needs a theme. As it goes with our writer’s contests here on Hernando’s, a theme is already proposed so that’s easy. All that needs done is to start with that premise.


The best example I could use on how I do it, is to use the current entry that I’ve written for this October’s contest, which holds the theme “Outdoors”. As it is a non participating entry which won't be voted on, I think it'd be best used for this thread.


I would recommend you read the story first as you’ll then better relate to my procedure of writing a short, from scratch to end.


Here’s the link to this particular story: D & D

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Now that you’ve read it, let me try my best at explaining how this story came to life.


Writing a short story is an incredible experience and writing is the short part of it. The longest part – and that could take a few hours or a few days – is putting down ideas on a piece of paper or, as I do it now, in Microsoft Word.


In this instance, before I started writing anything whatsoever, I jolted down different ideas that would fit with an outdoors theme. I had to think of something I’d enjoy so a wilderness camping adventure seemed like something fun to write about as it’s something I’ve done in the past.


The idea I scribbled down was about a couple, camping in some National Park, away from the facilities and campgrounds for personal and romantic intimacy, as they’d be renewing their love relationships with themselves and with nature. That sounded good to me. What could I have them do though? What would happen to them? That was my next step in jolting down ideas.


They could experience an alien abduction, a forest fire, being attacked by a wild animal, a bear or a cougar or such, they could be terrified of a unannounced tornado or hurricane slamming on them or they could even get face to face with an escaped convict that randomly came their way as he’s running away from authorities.


I loved that final idea, two innocent victims falling in the hands of a crazy predator.


Now that I had a basic adventure theme, I needed a location for this to happen. Often times I like incorporating real facts and locations in a story as it adds to the realistic aspect of it. This is something I’ve learned from reading Dan Brown and other similar author books. Researching real info makes the story closer to home in a “damn...this could really happen...”kind of way and for me now, a lot of the fun of writing resides in the research of what I’ll incorporate in a story.


So, here comes our common friend Google, helping me find the location where this could take place. There were two things I needed to look into; (one), a U.S. State Penitentiary that is close to (two) a National Park or something alike.


I started with Google leading me to wiki for a list of U.S. penitentiaries:




en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._federal_prisons


So I started clicking those links, starting with the first on the list which is located in Pennsylvania. Then the second, then the third in Pennsylvania...but as I was looking on Google maps of Pennsylvania, no Parks seem to be close by. So I then looked at West Virginia, randomly chosen out of the list and followed the link to the Hazelton penitentiary.

Hazelton Penitentiary



I then brought up a Google map of Hazelton, WV and BINGO, close enough to a State Forest which would serve the same objective as a National Park for the plot of the story; the Coopers Rock State Forest.



www.google.com/maps/place/Hazelton,+WV+26525/@39.6405711,-79.5562709,11.5z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x88355038e6cf3913:0x78b267036dccb4af


So I googled Coopers Rock State Forest and it was perfect.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coopers_Rock_State_Forest

Reading the top wiki on it, I discovered that a trail, inside the forest, led to the Mont Chateau State Park and Cheat Lake.




A Lake was the perfect camping spot for our two lovers. After reading the link from Mont Chateau, I found out that it closed in 1977 so that was to be it, as it appeared to be a closed and restricted area, in the wilderness and close to a lake.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Chateau_State_Park


My next step was to make sure that the Penitentiary and Coopers Rock were indeed close to each other, so I looked it up on Mapquest.







13 something miles away, along Interstate 68 and the final destination, Cheat Lake, was but another 3 or so miles further. This was perfect!!


I needed a few more things before starting to write down this story. So I started jolting down ideas for a title and needed to find first names for our two lovers.


I already had in mind to name it D & D as it came out as something we always use on here. Doug & Dirk’s tab at Duffy’s. ( D & D ).


But naming our lovers Doug & Dirk would probably make both our moderators very angry at me so I went for two other moderator’s first names instead, two that I know of, Dave & Diana.


My final drafts of ideas were based on the heartfelt feeling that this story needed a twist. An escaped convict comes across our lovers and they become his victims. What then? It was clear in my mind, even though I didn’t really expand on it, that our convict wasn’t the type that was in jail for having been caught with a small bag of weed. He was there because he was a serial killer or a mass murderer or a serial rapist or something terribly bad. The guy was a whack job and a serious danger to anyone.


I researched Google once more to find family names that are common in West Virginia. Warner is one of those and that is how William “Billy” Warner was born, Billy being a nod to Billy the Kid.


Out of the blue, and this happens often once you get used to this, the imagination kicked in when it came to finding a twist. How about Warner becoming a victim of his victims? I liked that idea, the predator becoming the prey.


That is how the Collective came to exist, some sort of secret agency existing for the sole purpose of finding escaping psychopaths and getting rid of them without anyone knowing about it. The rest is just fancy dressing, briefs descriptions of how the Collective operates such as the computers calculating where he’d end up, the 37 possible locations, Unit 9, their training and so on...


All I needed now was an Agency name for the Collective that could also work with D & D as I already jolted down the idea of our convict asking the name of the secret team and imagining it was Dave & Diana but only to be revealed that no, it meant Detain & Discard at the very end.


Once I had all of these, it didn’t even take an hour to write down the short.


Part one would be who the couple is, where they are, why they’re there and bang, a cliffhanger. Not every chapter needs to finish with a cliffhanger but I find that it bring a certain “damn..what happens next?” sort of thing, arousing curiosity and interest.


Part two would be about the introduced character at the end of part one and then bang once again, cliffhanger.


Part three would be the conclusion.


Finally, I Googled once again to find a couple of pictures to add to the short. I find that pictures add to the reader’s imagination as it helps visualize what is happening.


Being a short story, tons of info is missing and such info could easily turn a short like this one into a book, a script or a movie. All that is needed is to ask more questions, jolt down more ideas and add meat to the bone in describing what is in there already by expanding on absolutely everything.


So that is how I do it but it doesn’t mean in any way that every writer out there does it the same way.


If you are a writer, you may want to pinch in, explaining how you come up with your stories or if you’d prefer sharing tricks of the trade, that’d also be great. There are a lot of people that have no idea that they could write masterpieces simply because they haven’t tried it yet.


If you are a member aspiring to writing shorts, you may want to ask questions on this thread since there are many writers on Hernando’s that – I am sure – would enjoy helping you out.


Writing is fun; it is a form of art, much like a sculptor who sees the final shape in a boulder of rock even before he chisels the first piece out, or the painter who sees the extraordinary scenery on the canvas before he even picks up his brush.


I do hope that this has helped you in some way or another in finding the writer in you.


Solarius.