Learn from the professionals. It’s very simple advice, but rarely taken by the short story writer who could benefit first by reading the work of his or her peers. It’s something I didn’t learn until I was in my mid-twenties and took a college course in short fiction. In that class we did several exercises which helped me to expand both how I read other writers’ work, and how I wrote my own. Here are just a few:
1. Read with intent. Whenever you find yourself enjoying a piece of writing, go ahead and finish it for the pleasure and then read it with a purpose. Look for what captured your attention. Was it the character, the prose itself, descriptive phrases, the focus on setting? Identify the parts of the story that compelled you to keep reading and write them down for later use in your own work.
2. Mimic your favorite paragraphs. Take one or two paragraphs from one of your favorite short stories. Rewrite the paragraph in your own language changing just one thing. First change the setting, then change the tone of the piece. Try writing it in first person if it was originally written in third. Make the main character a male instead of a female. Altering these portions can help you learn how the original writer succeeded and how you can modify their formula to suit your own needs.
3. Rewrite an ending to your favorite short story. Cut off the original writer’s story half way through and finish it in a new a different way. Maybe in the original story the character dies, but in yours they go on to have a child. Perhaps it had a happy ending and you leave the reader guessing. Rewriting an ending will help you learn how to keep the tone and wording of a piece of short fiction consistent while using original thoughts to build on an idea.
4. Write a serial story. Select a piece of short fiction that you like and write a follow-up story. What happens next? This exercise will give you a method for developing either serial story-lines or longer fiction like a book or collection of related short stories. The main lesson here is that the story will still have to stand on its own even though the characters are familiar to you.
5. Cut and paste paragraphs. Photocopy a short story that you like, then cut the paragraphs up. Rearrange them randomly and reread the story. How does the change make your perspective change? Then do each of the first three exercises on the reordered story and expand your perceptions more.
These exercises may seem simplistic or redundant to the story teller who is old hat at their work and has developed their own formulaic system. However, what these exercises are designed to do are give you added perspective into the art of storytelling and just how many ways short fiction can be presented. Every seed of a character, plot or particular scene in a short story can lead to a myriad of others. Make it so.
