![]() ![]() If there’s a funny story you always reach for at a party or a family dinner, you could repurpose for a piece of writing or let it serve as a launchpad for your imagination. While you might not have lived through an epic saga akin to Gulliver’s Travels, you probably have an anecdote or two that would easily form the basis of a short story. When it comes to establishing a story’s premise, real-life experiences can be your first port of call - “write what you know”, as the old adage goes. By limiting yourself to a few characters and one or two locations, you may find it easier to keep your story from getting out of hand and spiraling off into tangents. While Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has a larger cast of characters, the story takes place perhaps over one hour in a town square. John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” is about one character: a suburban American father who decides to swim through all of his neighbor’s pools. ![]() Short story writers often find it fruitful to focus on a single character, setting, or event - an approach that is responsible for some true classics. There’s less pressure to have a rich narrative mapped out from A to Z before your pen hits the paper. Short stories, by their very nature, tend to be narrower in scope than a novel. Start with an interesting character or setting Here are some tips and tricks that will get your creative juices flowing and have you drumming up ideas in no time. Some writers can seemingly pluck interesting ideas out of thin air but if that’s not you, then fear not. Before you can put your head down and write your story, you first need an idea you can run with.
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