Developing An Outline for Your Short Story

Spring time is approaching and that always makes me think of short story writing for some reason! I'm re-posting this piece by Clive West on how to use an outline to develop your short story!---Mary Ann

They might not take as long to complete as an epic novel. You won’t, in most instances, be putting in weeks, months or even years of research. But if anybody ever told you that writing short stories was easy, they were very wrong. And the hardest part of all is getting started.

Your ideas are there, and some are very strong, but they’re jumbled. Characters are coming to life in your mind. You think your story could be great, and you’re desperate to get in on paper.

Stop there. When writing fiction, planning is everything. Here are a few tips on how to write the perfect short story outline.

Your characters

Get those characters right

Your characters will drive your situations, further your plot and take up a lot of space in your mind until you get your story finished! They’re important, yes? So invest plenty of time in them! Make a list, a template if you like, for them, from the basics of their name and age, through to their fears and key life experiences. Go so far as to list ‘facts’ about them that, although may drive their actions in your story, you will not reveal to the reader. Make them as realistic, well rounded and as human as you can. Wooden or forgettable characters will make your story about as riveting as watching grass grow, no matter how solid or inventive your plot is.

Note down and play around with your dialogue

You may have snippets of conversation between characters in your head, or just single lines of dialogue you want to fit in but are not sure what to do with yet. That’s fine; just get them all written down. Say them aloud. They may appear very different in both instances than they initially did in your head – you might decide you no longer want to keep them at all! And that’s fine. Change and adjust accordingly. Don’t be afraid of a little experimentation – no harm will come from it!

Now write that outline!

It’s time to get your beginning, middle and end down onto paper. Be detailed – don’t just make quick notes, use full sentences. Note down when the dialogue you have written and planned will be used and who by.  Don’t just rely on your memory, get those tiny but important details in there too. You’ll be surprised how easily they might slip your mind when it comes to drafting, and one little slip could ruin your entire piece. Don’t write it like a synopsis; think of your story in chunks. How big or small these chunks are is up to you, but use a bullet point to describe what is going to unfold in each one. Make sure everything is in order.

Polish and modify

One day, one day.

Your outline needs the tender love of your inner editor as well. Before you even think about starting that first draft, read through the outline. Does everything make sense? Are there things that you might like, but don’t need in terms of furthering the plot? Are some moments in the story weaker or less interesting than others? Spot and solve these early problems. Don’t leave it until you start writing; the more you prepare with your outline, the easier drafting will be.

All done? You’re ready to go. Good luck!

Sometime in the near future, when your short story is completed, edited and ready for anything, you might be thinking about trying to get it seen by a publisher. Why not give Any Subject Books a try? They always welcome new talent, and if they see true potential in your work you might find yourself on their list of authors very soon indeed!  Their submission process and guidelines are simple to follow and can be found on their 'Writers Wanted' page.

Quirks, foibles and traits

Sounds like a collection of ultra-small physics particles, doesn't it?

In reality, the insertion of these idiosyncrasies into a book are a key part of what delineates a potentially great author from a mediocre one. If that sounds like an exaggeration, I'll say it again in a slightly different way - leave them out at your peril.

Let's look at an example. A typical breakfast scene where the main point of the act is the dialogue that's taking place between the principal characters. No doubt you've polished this and it works perfectly so I’m not going to consider the conversation, only the actions that are going on around it.

Thus, what you may not have done is to have considered the 'little details', such as having one or other of the characters:

• Leave the milk out of the fridge so it gets warm
• Burn the toast
• Have an impromptu 'seconds' from the cornflakes box so that there isn't quite enough cereal left for the other person to get a full serving
• Open their boiled eggs upside down
• Make a ritual out of sweeping up every last crumb of toast

... and so on.

There's nothing particularly magical about this list and you could easily add hundreds more bits of human weirdness that regularly take place around any breakfast table. While those details recounted en masse might well be terminally tedious, scattered sparingly over the breakfast scene just like pepper over one's scrambled eggs, will 'pep it up' considerably.

In fact, that's the key to the correct use of these qualities. When you choose your book’s cast, pick on a selection of ones which you feel are both in keeping with your characters and which will also allow you to inject interest into scenes which might otherwise be too dry or complex.

If I've not quite convinced you of how relevant this is, I'd like you to think of another scene that occurs regularly in your life such as going to work, eating dinner, preparing for bed – anything like these will do. Now make a mental list of what you actually do on each occasion and then make another list of how many processes you actually need to do. For example, take 'going to bed'. You don't NEED to line up your watch, jewellery, wallet etc - you could simply just chuck them down on the bedside table or the dresser. You don't NEED to put both shoes together - as long as you can find them, that's all that matters.

... and so on.

Whether you choose to make your quirks, foibles and traits amusing, frustrating or plain irritating, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you have made your characters human and depicting their weaknesses - weaknesses which we all suffer from – will be a major influence in getting your readers to identify with them.

Now, where’s my protractor? I like to leave my laptop screen at exactly 115º when it’s not in use.

Struggling with your formatting, cover design, ghost-writing, marketing or distribution? Contact Any Subject Books and we'll be only too pleased to help you. We're a family firm with old-fashioned standards of accuracy, attention to detail and decency in its trading. Because we endeavour to 'get it right first time', our overheads are lower and our prices highly competitive. Check it out now by clicking this link - Any Subject Books.

How to Effectively Build Characters

Your characters are the most important part of your story - yes, even more important than the plot!

You can still create a well-written, meaningful piece of fiction without a large and complex narrative, but you can't have a good story without well-built and realistic characters to drive it. The people in your story must be multi dimensional, have their own unique histories and interests, make mistakes and most importantly, appear to be just like somebody you could meet in real life. Here are some tips on how to make your characters as believable as possible.

Watch and understand people

Observe, always observe

In order to build well-rounded characters, you must have a good understanding of human nature and what drives people to do the things they do. Go to the park and and 'people-watch.' Study how they interact. Pick up on their little quirks, listen to the funny things they say. Pick fragments of them, and of people you know; you can mix them up and put them all together to create a character.

It is not always necessary for your characters to be likeable

Obviously this goes without saying if your character is a serial killer or similar, but even if not, remember your main character doesn't always have to be likeable, nor do they always have to do the right thing. We meet people we dislike all the time in everyday life. We are all human and make mistakes, and it is good to reflect this in your writing. Stories with an unlikeable protagonist(s) can sometimes provide a more interesting narrative, and give the reader a thought-provoking experience.

Know your characters

Write extensively, for your own use, about your characters history, their best and worst traits, even little things that might seem silly - their favourite foods, for example! Create this, memorise it, get to know your characters and let this knowledge drive you as you lead them through the story. You don't have to share the small details, or even their history if you don't want to - how much you tell your reader about them is up to you, and sometimes it can be more effective to keep details about the character secret. Know your characters inside out and let that knowledge drive them.



Keep that eye open!

DO YOUR RESEARCH

This is so important. It's not just the plot that needs research behind it to look authentic; your characters need it too. If one of your characters has an illness you know nothing about, read up on it! Find stories of personal experience to help you add that personal touch. Get that authenticity.

Understand how your characters relate to one another

In real life, even the best of friends do not get along all the time. Not everybody likes everything about everyone and people have different opinions. Let this feed into your interactions between characters, their conversations, and the ways in which they relate to one another; it will make for more effective, realistic seeming characters.

About the writer

This great advice was written by one of our authors, Stephanie-Louise Farrell, who, like me, is a keen advocate of observing people and using that experience in her writing. She's put together an excellent collection of her short stories called 'Haunted - Four Tales Of Obsession And Horror' which, as you can see from her reviews, have been very well received. The anthology's definitely a walk on the dark side and is extremely well written - I can definitely recommend it. She's currently working on her next book and I hope that us here at ASB will be handling its publication.