Young Writers Society

I know there are probably already threads for both of these, but I'd appreciate some more personalised answers in your own words.

1. How do you show and not tell? Some of you probably read something of mine and I tend to tell a lot. Please explain it so I can understand.

2. How you tell a good, detailed and conclusive short story? If you only have about five hundred words to use, how can you write a story which... works?

I am not an expert but I shall still answer it.

1. Take a lot of pictures and avoid telling about them. :3

2. Remove the introduction, the details, depth of character, and the conclusion and hopefully, you will be able to write a pretty cool short story.

P.S. I was just being silly. I hope an expert would answer you really soon.

I am also not an expert...haha. But I'll give you some advice. Let's take this sentence for example. "She turned her head to see the fire spreading through the forest." You're telling your reader what's happening. That's what the girl is seeing, but the reader isn't really seeing what she's seeing, right? That's where imagery and description comes in; the more detailed the better.

So, instead you could write, "The girl turned her head, and the heat immediately pinched at her cheeks, the flames reflecting in the blue orbs that were her eyes. She felt the tears trickle down her cheeks, hot and burning like the fire that crawled slowly toward her, a grating crackling sound filling her ears." It's a lot longer; but the description is really only needed once to bring the reader into the environment and setting of your characters.

As for your second question; that one's a little bit more difficult to answer. Many short stories use irony, or a series of events that occur contrarily to what is expected, to guide the plot. Five hundred words...that's hard, so you have to be descriptive, but not overly so, so that your reader can empathize with your MC, but it doesn't take the whole story. I would start with a description of the setting, and then state the current situation the MC is in. Then you can describe the MC, maybe illustrating a certain habit that they have (if you're writing in the third person). For example, if they're walking down the sidewalk, then tell if they're limping slightly, or if their head is cocked to the side. Then immediately launch into the story, ending it with an ironic twist.

I know this hardly helps, but I know that Stephen King has some good short stories out there that you could check out to base your stories off of. They're longer than five hundred words, but at least it'll give you an idea of what you want to be writing. Here's a URL to one of them:

ftp://82.1.244.36/shares/USB_Storage/Media/Books/Non-Medical/Stephen%20King/Stephen%20King%20Short%20Stories/Night%20Shift%20-%20Strawberry%20Spring.pdf

Sorry if this wasn't much of a help, but I hope you get something out of it.

I'm one of those people who fits a lot into a tiny word count, so hopefully some of my techniques can help answer the second question.

First things first, strip out all unnecessary descriptions and actions. The easiest way to tell if something is unnecessary or not is by asking yourself "Does the reader absolutely need to know this?" or "Is this absolutely essential to the story? Will cutting this out change the story completely?" If the answer is to any of these questions is "no", then it's unnecessary, and you'll want to cut it out.

Save the details you cut out, though. Once you strip out all the unnecessary details, you'll be left with a pretty bare piece of prose, and you'll want to add in some descriptions to enliven your writing. But adding details back in comes in later.

Before you add details back in, you'll want to make sure the order of descriptions and actions makes sense. Do they flow logically from one to the other? An example of descriptions and actions not flowing logically would be something like:

The girl kicked. She lifted her leg up and the blow threw her opponent back. Her extended leg came in contact with his chest.

Compared to a more logical order for the actions:

The girl kicked. She lifted her leg and extended it. Her foot came in contact with her opponent's chest and the blow threw him back.

Once all your actions and descriptions are in logical order, then you can start looking to make your writing more vivid. Before you start adding descriptions back in though, take a look and see if you can use more precise and vivid verbs, or more concise and varied sentence structures. Vivid verbs are particularly important because they replace a more wordy adverb + verb combination.

Going back to the example I've been using:

The girl chambered a kick. Her leg shot out, and her foot slammed into her opponent's chest. He fell back.

Now that you have the basic framework set, you can start adding details back in. The easiest way to go about that is to ask yourself "Does this detail directly apply to or enhance this scene?"

In short fiction, every detail must count for more than just being a detail. Every detail and description has to contribute something irreplaceable to the story, otherwise it's just padding, and padding weakens your story.

For the fight scene, some details that would really enhance it include how the fighters physically react to blows, the directions they move in, how quickly they move, how they feel about the fight, and so on. Depending on the kind of story, you might focus more on the characters' emotions, the physical actions as they are, or the physical actions in an exaggerated fashion.

For a realistic example:

The girl carefully chambered a kick, her eyes never leaving her opponent's torso. In a flash, her leg shot out and her foot slammed into his chest with a wet crunch. Her opponent staggered back, gasping for air, his stance completely shattered.

The girl grinned as she lunged forward, ready to deliver the finishing blow.

Compared to a more emotion-centric example:

The girl chambered a kick, her eyes never leaving her opponent's torso. He was fast, but as her leg shot out and slammed into his chest with a satisfying crunch, she congratulated herself on being faster.

Her opponent staggered back, gasping for air, and the girl fancied she saw a panicked look buried beneath the pained grimace on his face.

She grinned, her heart singing with triumph as she lunged forward to deliver the finishing blow.

When writing short fiction in general, the most important thing is focus. What is the main point of your story? Everything in that story must contribute to that main point, and if it doesn't, it needs to be cut.

Don't waste your word count on description for description's sake. Setting the scene is not a good enough reason by itself to justify description in short fiction: if you're describing the scene, it also needs to tie into the main point of the story (such as if the place being described is the main point of the story), and it's even better if the description also ties into the characterization and/or conflict, or any of the other elements included in your story.

It's also possible to write stories without any showing at all. In those cases, the ideas are the most important aspect, and it's even more important that everything contributes to that main idea.

It's also worth noting that what you don't explicitly mention in the story can often be just as important as what you do explicitly mention. Hemmingway is a great example of the power of implications in storytelling, and I'd strongly recommend reading up on his short fiction. One of the nice things about using implications is that you don't have to spend your word count including them directly. You do, however, need to include enough hints and clues so that your readers can make the correct inferences to get the implications though, otherwise it will look like you left out a very important element out of inexperience rather than it being a deliberate technique.

As for your first question, I've already answered it with examples. To summarize: vivid verbs, logical flow, and relevance are important. You can tell us "The girl kicked hard" or you can show us the process, how she feels about it, and how the kick affects other elements of the story (like the other characters or the environment).

And of course, practice, practice, practice!