We’ve talked a lot about the importance of having a reader magnet so you can grow your email list. A reader magnet is an immediate reward readers get when they sign up for your author email newsletter. When you’re first getting started, the size of your email newsletter is critical because your email subscribers will be your first readers.

If you write novels, your reader magnet should be a short story. But if you jumped straight into writing a 100,000-word novel, and skipped writing short stories, you have a disadvantage.

Skipping the short-story-writing phase of your career is like trying to run a marathon without having first run a mile or a 5K. Short stories help you grow your email list by serving as a reader magnet, helping you become a better writer, and teaching you the writing process.

Through writing short stories, you learn how to interact with an editor and take editorial feedback while preserving your voice. But if you don’t know how to write a great short story, you’ll miss out on all those benefits.

So, how do you write a short story?

How can you adapt a short story into a reader magnet?

Steve Diamond knows how. He writes fantasy and horror, and he cohosts the excellent Writer Dojo podcast, a podcast for authors that focuses on craft.

How do you approach writing a short story?

Steve: As an author who writes for others, whether readers, a publisher, or both, the most important thing is to be known as someone who is easy to work with. If I turn in a story on time, follow the submission guidelines, write within the theme, stay within the word count, include what they want, and exclude what they don’t, the chances of them asking me to write another short story increase dramatically. I like being the reliable guy.

Thomas: There are many authors in this world, but few of them can write well, meet deadlines, and be easy to work with. That’s the trifecta. Publishers will return to those writers repeatedly.  

However, many authors aren’t working with a publisher; they’re writing short stories on their own. Sometimes, they’re writing for publication as a reader magnet, but other times, they’re writing short stories for practice.

For example, my brother was getting a lot of feedback that his character voices weren’t distinct enough, so he gave himself an assignment to write a short story with a specific character voice that was distinct from another character’s voice. It ended up being an amazing short story, but his goal wasn’t to write an amazing short story. The goal was to stretch his skill in a short story context to help him become a better writer.

Steve: That’s great advice.

I was in a role-playing game group for a long time with Larry Correa, and the guy running the game told us, “We will give you extra experience points for your characters if you write a piece of short fiction summarizing the game so far. So, that’s what we did.

Every session, I wrote a piece of short fiction in a different character voice. Now, I don’t write romance; that’s not my thing. But I specifically wrote a story that was romance just to see if I could. I also tried my hand at tragedy and comedy too.

Thomas: You wouldn’t have had time to test other genres by writing a full-length novel. That would have been too much of an investment. But writing an 8,000-word short story gives you a lot of flexibility.

People get really hung up on how long a short story should be. Unless your publisher specifies a certain number of words, it can be as long or as short as you want. Readers enjoy flash fiction. Flash fiction writers develop the discipline of learning to write a story in 1,000 words.

Those constraints can be helpful. Forcing yourself to write in a character voice you don’t normally write from could help you build out your world more.

Steve: Most of the pieces I wrote for our role-playing game group were 2,500 words long. I wasn’t striving to write the next great American short story. It was for practice, and it was a way to get tangible feedback from the other people in the group. That constant feedback was fantastic for me.

If you’re writing a piece of short fiction to give away to grow your mailing list, it has to be good. Offering that short story is like conducting a mini-interview with your readers. You have to evaluate that piece of fiction and ask, “Is this the first impression I want to make?”

And that’s where your craft becomes very important.

How is a short story different from writing a longer work?

Steve: Short stories are self-contained. In general, a short story must have a beginning, middle, and end, and the arc will be simpler than that of a novel.

In a novel, you’ll have multiple characters, character arcs, character progression, and try-fail cycles that exist within your characters.

Chapters need scenes that address character, plot, and world. If a scene contains all three of those elements, that’s awesome. A scene with two of those is probably a good scene worth keeping. If it only contains one, you need to evaluate whether it’s worth keeping. It better be dang good if you decided to keep it.

In a short story, all of that must be condensed and conveyed as quickly as possible.

When I write short stories, everything starts and ends with character. I always ask, “How quickly can you make me care about your characters within a short story?” It has to be at least by the first page.

How do you make readers care about your main character right away?

Thomas: How do you do that? Do you just have your character save the cat?

Steve: There are so many different mechanisms. It can be as simple as saving the cat. You could begin with a witty quip that people really like. It can be an interesting internal piece of dialogue that helps you connect. Often, it can just be a quick opening line in a character’s voice that hooks the reader immediately.

So, I like to ask, “Can you make me care about the character in one page? One paragraph? One line?” How can you do that?

Since I care about the character so soon, I need to know right away what the stakes are.

Thomas: And to communicate the stakes, you need to know your character’s motivation.

• Who’s the character?
• What does he or she want?
• What are the stakes if they don’t get that thing?

Steve: I’ve read a lot of short stories by younger authors, and oftentimes I have to help them find the best part to put on the first page.

I’ll say, “This is a cool piece of dialogue,” or, “This character is cool.” Then I’ll highlight the piece where I finally know what the character is after and say, “That better be on the first page.” If that part is on page five, they’ve lost me, and I help them find a better way to begin.

Thomas: You can get away with that in a novel, especially if it’s not your first novel and you’ve built a reputation with your readers.

Tolkien was able to get away with a whole chapter of the hobbits throwing a birthday party because he’d earned it by writing The Hobbit. He wouldn’t have been able to pull that off if he hadn’t already had loyal readers who trusted him to make the opening worth the read.

How is the opening of a short story different from that of a novel?

Thomas: Even if you have loyal readers, the rules of the craft are different in a short story. Writing short stories can help you become a better novelist, but you need to respect the differences between the two.

One difference is that you have to open a short story much faster. Now, you can open a novel faster, and that’s one way short stories may improve your novel writing. In a short story, you must open with a bang, but it doesn’t have to be an explosion.

But your opening does need a likable character who has a clear goal for a clear reason, and that reason is called “the stakes.”

Steve: Let’s pretend that you’ve already written a 6,000-word short story. As a pre-reader, the first think I’ll evaluate is your opening line. Great first lines matter because they serve as that very first, gut punch, gut check, instinct, exposure, or impression. If your opening line is cool, I think, “Right on! What’s next?”

Then I want to see how that cool factor translates into the character I’m reading about. But I need to know the motivations and the stakes before I come to the bottom of the first page.

Sometimes, that can be hard to pin down. If you open your short story with an action sequence to get the momentum moving quickly, you give the impression and the promise that there is action in the story. When you begin with guns-blazing action or monster-craziness action, you have to assume your reader is going to want more of that as your story goes on. If I start with a guns-blazing scene and the rest of the story is naval-gazing, introspective, old-school, Great Gatsby type of stuff, it won’t match the opening.

The styles need to mesh. Your story still needs to be cogent and coherent. The immediate stakes can change as the story progresses, but I need to have stakes that seem important within the first page of that story.

Evaluate your opening and ask,

• Am I in this scene fast enough?
• Do people care about this character fast enough?
• Is my opening line cool enough?

If you doubt it, start cutting and get that stuff out of the way.

Thomas: Cutting unnecessary words, lines, and scenes is imperative when writing short stories because they’re so short.

The solution to most writing problems in a short story is to cut. Cutting teaches you to ruthlessly cut all that is not gold so that only the gold remains. It requires you to cut with precision, and as you do, the gold floats to the top and you have a strong opening.

How many characters can a short story have?

Thomas: Obviously, you can’t have as many characters as you’d have in a novel, but how many can you have? I feel like most short stories have two characters.

Steve: There are always exceptions. A man-versus-nature story would have only one character.

One of my first pro published short stories, A Single Samurai, was about a samurai climbing a kaiju that’s the size of a mountain to kill it. He’s the only real character in that story. It’s told in first person, and the environment—the thing he’s climbing—becomes its own character in a way.

Characterization of environment or place is a writing device.

In general, you’ll have very few characters in a short story because you don’t have much space to develop characters.

When people write novels, we’re always telling them that if a character doesn’t have a point and doesn’t have an arc of their own, they’re not needed. If two characters serve the same purpose, combine them. We always say that in novel writing, and that advice applies to writing short stories as well, only it’s more focused and condensed.

Your main character is the focus. They’ll interact with a random person here or there and maybe an antagonist. But if you don’t plan to use the characters again, you have to be hyper-focused, especially if your short story is 5,000 words or less.

At 8,000-10,000 words, you have a lot more real estate to play with, and you can add another character. You can afford to have a longer arc for that character, but there’s freedom there because if you’re writing for you and an audience (not for a publisher), you can do what you want.

I like writing in the 8,000-10,000-word range because it gives me freedom to add that extra character or draw out that plot device a bit more.

Do I need to outline my short story?

Steve: It all depends on the scenario. If I’m just writing for myself, I just write. I’m very much a discovery writer in general, and short fiction lends itself more easily to discovery writing than other forms.

However, I have written short fiction as tie-in fiction for other universes, such as role-playing games and tabletop games. In those scenarios, I was required to provide an outline.

There’s a constant debate between discovery writing and outlining. The reality is, as an author, you need to understand how to do both, and short story writing is a great way to experiment with both methods.

Short story writing is like the ultimate playground for experimentation. I think that’s why I like it so much.

What do you have to leave out of a short story?

Thomas: That’s fascinating because in some ways it’s so good for experimentation, and yet the rules are stricter than they are with long form writing because the time is so condensed. I think those constraints are what make short stories a great learning opportunity.

You can’t get away with having duplicate characters like you might in a novel. For instance, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, Edmund is entirely useless as a character. Edmund says nothing that can’t be said by Eustace (if you need the modern English perspective) or by Prince Caspian (if you need the Narnian noble perspective).

Oftentimes, Lewis put the words in both characters’ mouths. He had to keep Edmund because, in the most important scene of the book, where Eustace and Edmund are having a conversation, Edmund shares his experiences with Aslan.

Because Lewis had committed in the previous book to including Edmund in the story, he was able to break the rule of unnecessary characters. Edmund was just on the ship without much to do and no particular arc. Everyone else, including the mouse, had an arc.

Lewis could get away with it in the novel, but if it had been a short story, he couldn’t have kept Edmund on the boat. He would have had to cut Edmund and put those lines in either Caspian or Eustace’s mouth.

Steve: One of the biggest things I’ve learned about writing short stories is to cut as much as I can and focus on what I want people to see.

One writing exercise I recommend is to put an adjective and noun together and then write a short story about those two words in an hour.

I wrote a short story about the words “haunted camera.” At the time, my wife and I had just had our first child, so we were all sleep-deprived. I thought, “What about a haunted baby monitor? That can be creepy.”

I wrote only 1,400 words, but that story hits so hard because from start to finish, you know what the stakes are. You can relate to the POV character immediately, and you understand the mother’s fear.

There’s no time for fluff in 1,400 words. There’s no time for back and forth. I constrained myself to an hour to write that initial draft. I wrote about 1,000 words in that hour and then added a few more words later to improve it.

I’ve recommended that exercise to several writing groups, and they’ve had good experience with it. It makes you focus on the story and the character. In reality, it’s a single scene or two really short scenes. You don’t have time to mess around. You have to focus on the emotion you are trying to elicit from your reader.

What do you write in the middle of a short story?

Thomas: If there’s so little space in a short story, and the beginning must start with a bang, what does the middle of a short story look like?

Steve: If we’re talking about a 5,000-word short story, that middle part is a very brief point of progress. For me, it’s just a transition from the opening—where you make the reader care about the characters and understand the stakes—to the payoff, which has to matter. That transition is really important.

In a novel, the middle can often feel murky, where the story tends to float along as you’re slowly pulling pieces together and putting them into the right spots.

Thomas: Hollywood would call that “fun and games,” where there are a lot of adventures that don’t really impact the plot. Think of the puppet show in The Sound of Music. The puppet show is entirely unnecessary for the plot. It’s just for fun. You could cut the puppet show without affecting the plot or character development. But they included it because it was fun.

In a longer work, you can add those elements for fun. But in a short story, every scene has to carry its weight to advance the plot and develop characters. You can’t include a merely fun scene in a short story.

Steve: Most of the time when you’re writing a short story, the first part is a punch in the face, grabbing your attention and saying, “Hey, we’re here. What are we doing?” Then, at the end, you’re getting punched on the other side of the face.

What is in the middle? That’s a breath. It’s a moment to take a breath and prepare yourself for the ending.

A short story needs peaks and valleys. The highs matter more when you contrast them against the lows of the story. If you have the drama and explosions turned up to 11 the whole time, then 11 might as well be 1. People will get bored with the constant explosions because there are no contrasts.

Slower moments of peace are more meaningful when they fall between the craziness. And you have a great opportunity for character development in those lower-intensity scenes. The reader has seen the character at the high-intensity moments, so you can reveal more about the character in the low-intensity moments where the character can take a breath.

That moment is the middle transitional space where my characters and I collect ourselves, deal with what happened in the first chunk and get ready to deal with what’s going to happen at the end.

An Exercise: Adapt an existing scene into a short story.

Thomas: A good example of that would be the second half of the Fellowship of the Ring. They’re trying to get through the locked door of Moria with a big monster attacking them.

If it were a short story, the opening scene would be them fighting the water monster and retreating into the tombs. Frodo’s conversation with Gandalf is where we take a breath and prepare for the punch on the other side, which is the battle with the cave troll.

That scene is part of a much longer, larger story, but it could work well as a short story for Lord of the Rings.

Thomas: Let’s cut this scene down to a short story as an exercise.

First, you’d have to cut all the hobbits but Frodo.

You could probably cut Aragorn and Boromir and maybe combine Gimli and Legolas.

That’s the sort of cutting you’d have to do if it were a short story.

Steve: In that scene specifically, you’d have to ask, “Which character matters more: the dwarf who’s in the ruins of his own people or the foreign elf who has an ancestral hatred of dwarves?

Which of those characters would matter more to the scene?

I could write it either way and have fun with it. I would go with the person who is witnessing the loss of his people because it becomes a more personal journey for that character. That’d be really fun to write.

In a short story, the pull of that emotion matters a bit more. You have to elicit that emotion in your readers as quickly as possible and put your main character in a situation where readers feel the same emotion the character does.

Thomas: The emotion you choose to elicit in your reader is a simpler emotion than you’d choose for a full-length novel. It’s almost like you need to determine that fear, wonder, excitement, or dread is the emotion you’re trying to elicit.  

For example, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Affiliate Link) only has black and red illustrations. Dr. Seuss could have used more colors, but by only using black and red, he’s made the story more powerful. Sometimes, we make better art with those kinds of constraints.

Consider how you could tell a story with only fear and wonder as the emotions you want to elicit. What kind of story would be a fear-and-wonder story? How would that be different from a fear-plus-excitement story?

Having that emotional focus will allow you to plant the seeds of emotion in the middle so that you can nail the payoff in the end.

What do reader reactions tell you about your short story?

Steve: The great thing about short fiction, especially with endings, is that you can do whatever you want, you can have the sad, bad, horrible, terrible ending where everyone dies and that’s okay.

I pay attention to reader reactions to my short stories. If a person dies at the end of a piece of short fiction and readers say, “I’d really like to see more of that character,” that means I made them care about that character and the situation.

That’s good. You can’t really ask for more than that.

If you have a short story where everyone died in a fiery accident at the end and that’s the payoff, people might say, “Dang! That hooked me from the beginning ,and I didn’t see the ending coming. That was awesome!” If that’s the reaction I get, then I’ve won.

Thomas: Killing everyone off is probably the most difficult, riskiest kind of ending. Just because you can make it work doesn’t mean you should, especially for your first short story. It’s harder to stick the landing when you don’t have a character to experience those emotions with and through.

Where can we find great short stories to read?

Steve: Some of the best short stories you’ll ever read are from the horror genre.

I’m not a huge fan of Stephen King’s novels, with a few exceptions, but he’s one of the best guys on the planet for writing short fiction.

The piece of short fiction I always recommend, is I Am Legend by Matheson. In my opinion, it’s the best piece of short fiction ever written, and that’s because, from the start, you understand what the stakes are. In the middle, you understand his fear, his despair, and the struggles he’s going through. At the end, when you understand what’s going on, that last line hits perfectly. There’s no waste. You can’t have filler in a short story.

Thomas: The 2007 edition of Best American Short Stories was edited by Stephen King. It’s a great place to start reading short stories because King knows about editing short stories.

I read a lot of short stories in urban fantasy. There are many anthologies that take place within a universe. Larry does this a lot; he’s opened up his sandbox for other authors to play in. I really enjoyed the Jim Butcher Monster Hunter story.

There are some good short story anthologies out there. Jim Butcher has forced me to buy a lot of short story anthologies just to get a tiny bit more of the Dresden Files.

Steve: Jim Butcher is fantastic, and he’s one of those authors who understands short fiction well. In the Dresden Files universe, he often writes short stories featuring characters like the little faerie Toot-Toot and Bigfoot. The great thing about the Dresden Files is that it’s told in the first person, so you only really know what Harry Dresden is thinking.

Do you write short stories in first-person?

Steve: First-person is a great tool, especially in short fiction, because it allows you to get inside the character’s head fast. It’s a mechanical device that works well. Most of my short stories tend to be written in the first person for that exact reason. I like to get into the head of one character. It keeps it simple for me, and I get to delve into emotion.

Thomas: It’s more efficient in that the narration is also character development.

Steve: First person allows you to start with an emotional witticism or something soul-wrenching. However, when you write all your novels in the first person, there are many side characters whose perspectives you never really get to experience. That’s where short fiction comes in handy for novelists. You can write from the headspace of the faerie who’s addicted to pizza, like in Jim Butcher’s world, or explore other unique viewpoints.

Thomas: That’s a great short story, and it’s a great example of adjusting the stakes of the story. It has really clear stakes for a small faerie.

The world is not at stake, and the world is not coming to an end, yet the story is very compelling because you care about what this little character cares about, even though it’s not necessarily what you, as a human, care about.

That’s what’s so fun about a short story. I don’t think Toot-Toot, the character we’re talking about, could carry a whole novel. He’s not that interesting. But he can carry a short story and make it really interesting.

Steve: The Monster Hunter Files anthology with the Jim Butcher story features many great stories. I was fortunate enough to have a story in that anthology as well. Mine was about the Vatican combat exorcists, the ones who hunt down supernatural threats.

I knew I had done a good job when several reviews asked, “When are we going to get a novel about this guy?” That’s fantastic feedback, and it’s great for an author to hear.

What are some other benefits of writing short stories?

Steve: Short stories give you the satisfaction of having finished something. Whenever you complete a story—novel, short story, or whatever—you feel good. You can say, “I did it. I completed it.”

With short stories, you can get that sense of accomplishment quickly. Say you’re writing a big novel, 100,000 or 150,000 words. That’s a huge undertaking, and in the middle of it, you might think, “I just need to finish something.” With a 5,000-word short story, you’re in and out and done. It’s great for the ego because it psychologically reinforces that you know how to finish things, and that’s important.

Thomas: A short story is also great for getting feedback because asking somebody to give feedback on your 100,000-word book that will take 20 hours to read is a big request. That’s like saying, “Hey, would you clean my garage? It’s a 20-hour project.”

But asking someone to read a 3,000-word short story is a much more reasonable request. It’s also easier for you to reciprocate. If you want to connect with other authors to swap feedback, join us at AuthorMedia.social. I encourage that kind of community collaboration.

If you train and practice with 5,000-word stories, you will improve.

I’ve noticed that indie authors, who aren’t constrained by a publisher, often aim for 5,000 words but end up in novella territory. They try to write a novella and end up with a 10-book series.

Often, the story gets away from you, especially if you have too many characters, and it just gets longer and longer. That’s okay if you’re making it a reader magnet or if you’re an indie author. However, as the story lengthens, some of the benefits of writing short stories diminish.

Keep in mind that longer isn’t necessarily better. You’ll become a better writer faster by disciplining yourself to write short stories. It’s okay to write something just for the purpose of becoming a better writer. Not everything has to be published or make money right now.

In fact, you’ll make more money in the long run by disciplining yourself to write short stories and do those training drills in the short run. You will get better, and you’ll grow your email list. There’s a lot of money in growing your email list, too. It will work, but it’s more about it’s how it develops you as an author.

Steve: If you are using a piece of short fiction as an audition to a reader base, the whole point is to hit hard quickly and make your readers say, “That’s awesome. I’m going to read more of this guy’s stuff.”

If they pick up that first book of yours, you’ve won.

Hopefully, the skills that you’ve learned from writing short fiction will translate into your ability to write longer fiction, especially the skill of generating that opening hook within your novel.

That’s where I think short fiction works really well.

I advise people to write things you wouldn’t necessarily pick up off the shelf to read yourself. For example, I don’t read romance, but trying to write a romance scene is important because I learn how to quantify that emotion in writing. That practice will help me in every piece of fiction I write, whether it’s short or long.

Writing Short Stories for Practice Before Publication

Thomas: Have fun with your practice. Your first short story won’t determine your livelihood, and that’s a big stress reliever. You can play. You can write that romance scene that wouldn’t fit in your horror story.

The number one mistake I see authors make is to write their first short story and then publish it as a reader magnet.

Don’t do that! Practice! Have fun! Write many short stories, and then pick your best one and turn that into your reader magnet.

Steve: There’s always going to be the exception to the rule where one person wrote something brilliant on their first try. That’s great. It’s probably not you. And that’s okay.

Thomas: That’s good news. It means that if you don’t think your first story is very good, there’s no pressure to make it good. You can just write the next story.

Steve: Getting that feedback is awesome because you’ll learn from that, too. Taking feedback and having thick skin is super important in this industry, regardless of whether you’re traditionally or independently published.

Being able to take criticism is important, whether it’s warranted or not. One of the first pieces of professional editing I ever received was on a short story. Having a professional editor tell you what works and what doesn’t is super helpful.

If there are structural issues, you can fix them easily. It’s a lot easier to wrap your head around, and it will develop really good editorial habits.

Thomas: If you’re paying an editor, it’s also much cheaper because you’re only paying them for 20 pages. A lot of editors enjoy editing short works because it’s really satisfying. You can hold the whole story in your head, so to speak.

What advice do you have for someone who has never written a short story before?

Steve: Keep it simple. Start with a scene. Practice by writing a scene from your point-of-view character. If you can make that compelling, and it gets you excited about that character, that’s half the battle. The more excited you are, the more excited readers will be. Your emotion is going to translate into your fiction.

It’s okay to start out as simple as possible. There’s no mystery here, guys. Start off simple because the more you understand and master the basics of this crazy writing and publishing industry, the more those basics will become habits for you. Soon, you’ll be able to handle the complexities and layer on more elements.

Whether you’re aiming to create a really cool, complex short story or take all that knowledge and apply it to a novel, it all starts with the basics. Write a scene. Write a small scene. Tell a story within that one scene. If you can do that, you’re well on your way already.

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