How to Write a Short Story

by Rachelle Arlin Credo

Everybody knows writing a story is not easy. Like the drama or the poem, it is imaginative literature that should appeal to the emotions of the readers. Since it communicates the writer’s interpretation of reality, there must be an artistic use of language to signify human experience. But how do we write a great short story? What are the things to keep in mind in order to come up with a short story that works? Here’s a quick guide to get you started:

More: http://adamanatomy.wordpress.com/2007/03/18/how-to-write-a-short-story/

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Third person

Third person is the most common narrative perspective used in contemporary literature; it is the classic storytelling mode in which the storyteller is recounting a series of events to an audience. Third person includes a number of more specific techniques which offer different benefits and limitations to the writer.

Writer’s voice

Writer’s voice is a literary term used to describe the individual writing style of an author. Voice is a combination of a writer’s use of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works). Voice can also be referred to as the specific fingerprint of an author, as every author has a different writing style.

In creative writing, students are often encouraged to experiment with different literary styles and techniques in order to help them better develop their “voice.” Voice varies with the individual author, but having a strong voice is considered positive and beneficial to both the writer and his or her audience.

The Art of Writing and Other Essays, Robert Louis Stevenson

ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE {1}

There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.

How to Write a PhD Thesis

When you are about to begin, writing a thesis seems a long, difficult task. That is because it is a long, difficult task. Fortunately, it will seem less daunting once you have a couple of chapters done. Towards the end, you will even find yourself enjoying it—an enjoyment based on satisfaction in the achievement, pleasure in the improvement in your technical writing, and of course the approaching end. Like many tasks, thesis writing usually seems worst before you begin, so let us look at how you should make a start.More: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html

Revision

Myths

There is a myth that great writers just sit down at the typewriter, or hunch over a café table, and write brilliantly just by recording what comes to mind. Another myth is that a student can produce a good essay in a single draft composed in the hours before the paper is due.

Mark Twian, on production of words

I wrote the rest of The Innocents Abroad in sixty days and I could have added a fortnight’s labor with the pen and gotten along without the letters altogether. I was very young in those days, exceedingly young, marvelously young, younger than I am now, younger than I shall ever be again, by hundreds of years. I worked every night from eleven or twelve until broad daylight in the morning, and as I did 200,000 words in the sixty days, the average was more than 3,000 words a day- nothing for Sir Walter Scott, nothing for Louis Stevenson, nothing for plenty of other people, but quite handsome for me. In 1897, when we were living in Tedworth Square, London, and I was writing the book called Following the Equator, my average was 1,800 words a day; here in Florence (1904) my average seems to be 1,400 words per sitting of four or five hours.
– Autobiography of Mark Twain

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