Why Write Short Stories?

6 Tips For Writing From Start To Finish

These are essential tips that you will need to know if you enjoy producing creative work. I find these ideas to be a useful motivation for completing my writing projects:

1. Complete Thought

• Use a post-it or a notepad to write down your thoughts in a complete sentence or two, so you can get back to it later.
• Do you ever sit quietly with several thoughts running through your mind? Journaling is the opportunity to document your thoughts thoroughly. Especially those that tell a story, expel intense emotion, provide resolution, or report valuable information. Jotting down innovative ideas can come in handy.
• It’s best to write something from start to finish with a motivation to make your work meaningful to more than just yourself. Don’t spend countless hours trying to come up with a thought and believe that you have writer’s block. Just write about what your thinking with as much detail as possible.

2. A Tight Plot

• Structure your writing so that you know the who, what, when, where, and how. Consider the parts of a plot: the introduction and backstory, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the conclusion.
•  If you’re not writing a story, you may be recounting the many milestones of your life or creating an autobiography. You want a theme that strengthens your high points or reveals the triumph of overcoming challenges.
• For any writing, there has to be an objective or purpose for the work. The presentation of information makes all the difference in whether it compels the readers or not.

3. Design an Outline

• Numbering or alphabetizing an outline for your creative idea is crucial to organizing your thoughts, so that others may better understand them. It can help you maintain an agenda while writing so that you have a focus point.

4. Free Write

• A free-write is the opportunity to collect your thoughts and place them into perspective.
• It’s necessary to take time to complete the free writing activity. Write until you feel that you have exhausted the point. You can always erase it later.

5. The Character Arcs

• A character arc will assist with character development. The arc is appropriate for the main character or the characters that are mostly affected by the actions of the plot. The arc shows a change in the character(s) and their situation over the storyline.

6. An Effective Ending

• The best endings are surprising and unexpected. Most importantly, you want the person reading the story to enjoy the conclusion and feel like the characters received what they deserved.
• An ending some times reiterates the theme or it’s like a final thought (as Jerry Springer would call it). An effective ending can reveal the overall message clearly or cleverly.

Short stories are an excellent practice exercise for preparing to write longhand. You can always add more short scenes and backstory to your short work to make it into an intense novel. If you desire to be a creative author, no matter what anyone tells you, keep producing literature! Creative work is subjective, so you will find people who don’t like your work and others who praise it. However, the quality of your writing isn’t subjective. So be diligent to carry it through from drafts to revisions.