Short story guidelines

Got this at school and thought it could help a little. We also read the black cat, which is an excellent example of his work, if you should care to read it.

It must create a single impression;

this it should be capable of being read at a single sitting;

nor a word may be irrelevant, for every word must contribute to the predesigned effect and be developed unswervingly through the story;

when the author achieves his climax, the story should end, with no explanation or secondary effects;

only characters that are absolutely essential to the predesigned effect should be introduced, and these only developed to the extent required by the story.

I find writing short stories really hard sometimes but working on them in class has inspired me, hopefully this'll inspire you too!

wow, that sounds hard!

I've actually heard these tips scattered across the Internet in the midst of trying to better tune my own writing. And well, they are very useful. For the most part though, they are common sense tips, reminding you not to add words if they don't contribute to the story or characters if they don't push the plot ahead more.

Anyway, thanks for adding them to the site. These tips are a wonderful resource for anyone when they are writing.

I love Poe's short stories. My favorite's "How to Write a Blackwood Article;" he may be known for his works' creepiness, but this piece made me laugh out loud.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/blackwod.html :]

I don't care how good Poe was, I'll add as many unnecessary words into my stories as I like.