How To Write And Sell Great Short Stories

‘The sun was shining on the mock Tudor façade of the library as Alice walked carefully up the steps and opened the large oak door. It slanted across the black and white tiled corridor, almost touching the double doors at the end of it. Almost reaching into the library. Alice opened the doors onto the dusky Victorian room and looked around. Perfect. All the books were aligned exactly as she had left them last night. The cleaners had obviously read her little note, reminding them to place any books, accidentally knocked off the shelves, in the correct Dewy-Decimal position.’

Remember your goal when writing is not to make the writing effortless, but to make it seem effortless.

‘The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope with our music to move the stars.’

‘They were ravished with its loveliness; a warm, soft-voiced spring-green landscape dotted with sassafras and scarlet-colored snakewood, smelling of wild strawberries and hart’s tongue.’

If a person creeps into the room, two alternatives are placed in a reader’s mind: either she’s very nervous or she’s being very secretive about something; both make the reader interested. If she bounds into the room, she’s obviously very energetic or excited. If a woman shimmies into a room, we get the feeling that she’s sexy. Look at how altering one verb gives us this subliminal information.

Another way to use a ‘twist’ is to start with the ending and work backwards to the beginning, so we unravel the plot through flashbacks.

Knowing your characters intimately is vital when writing engaging stories