Christopher Fielden has published quite a number of short stories and can claim wins in prestigious competitions. He knows a thing or two about how to write a readable short story. More importantly, how to write one that has a high success rate for being published and/or winning. Christopher offers a free course as a taster for his full course on how to write winning short stories.
To check out his courses, go here (not affiliated) – https://learn.christopherfielden.com. His website has a ton of useful information – https://www.christopherfielden.com and he has written a craft book called “How To Write A Short Story” – available from his site.
I took his free course and the content was great, delivered with high production values and in a. friendly, professional manner. The course comprises video presentations totalling around 40 minutes so easily completed in under an hour. He includes a very useful exercise which will keep you busy as long as you’d like by doing it in different ways but the core exercise is simply 6 minutes long and well thought out. I’d recommend it’s worth anyone’s time to spend an hour doing this material.
Here are my takeaways from the course.
Read a lot. Every writer tells you to do that and Christopher is no exception. The more you read what you intend to write the better you will become at writing it. So grab some anthologies, some recommended short stories and gift yourself the time to read and learn from them.
Write. It has surprised me in running writing groups how people will read voluminous material on how to write, but don’t actually take time to write. I think it was Ray Bradbury who recommended writing a story a week on the basis at least one of them will be good 🙂 You need to write, to practice, to be able to develop your own style and voice. Find magazines and websites that have prompts and exercises and do as many as you can. Find critiques of short stories from judges and editors and notice what they identify as issues and improvements. Experiment with different techniques and styles. Finish your stories (I’m guilty of having lots of ‘story starters’ I need to go back and finish).
When you write, make sure your characters are consistent, clear and identifiable from each other. Ensure your endings are satisfying to the reader. (Hint from Christopher: satisfying endings win more competitions and submissions). Double check that your main character has got through the dramas and has changed in some way. Your title is valuable – make it count as part of the story rather than being a boring heading. Don’t be afraid to edit, and edit some more. Cut words/sentences/paras whee needed, rewrite sections to make them snappier, make every word deserve its place in the word count. Everything has to drive the plot forward and keep the reader hooked to the end.
Cliches – avoid, avoid, avoid. Find more unique and original ways of saying things, characters who don’t fulfil stereotypes, express different opinions, use plots that are not trite. On your first draft don’t panic, just write what comes to mind but when you edit watch out for these cliches and ramp them up with words, sentences and ideas that set your story apart form the rest.
Beware of overwriting. Repetition and long descriptive passages run the risk of dropping your reader out of the story. When editing, be ruthless in revising the story to make sure it is believable, and is moving forward. In short stories you don’t have the luxury of wasted words. Read the story out loud and strip out anything that you falter on, that doesn’t make sense, or that seems repetitive.
Dialogue has to be convincing and believable. For example, use contractions like ‘they’re’ instead of ‘they are’ – that’s how people speak. Make sure each character has its own voice. In my writing groups it’s surprising how many people have dialogue/language/phrases that don’t change no matter which character is talking. Dialogue can be used to advance the plot but it can slow it if you include unnecessary dialogue.
Show Don’t Tell. It’s an old adage because it’s something that makes the reader passive rather than an active participant in the story. Use dialogue and actions to demonstrate rather than stating what the reader should know. Follow Chekhov’s advice: ‘don’t tell me the moon is shining: show me the glint of light on broken glass,’
Point of View. Unless you’re writing in first person mode, it’s easy to accidentally slip between characters heads. Don’t switch points of view. I’ve done it, many times, and it’s hard sometimes to pick it up yourself in editing. Have an independent reader review your story and ask them to look for POV. Romeo can’t read Juliet’s mind and interpret her feelings and thoughts: he can only see her actions and reactions to the situation. Keep that in mind when you edit.
Suspension of Disbelief. As writers we rely on readers becoming engrossed in our story so much that they take it as reality. Be careful of throwing the reader out of this state. Make sure everything in the story is logical and believable. To paraphrase Christopher, there has to be a believable reason behind every character’s action, reaction, thought and feeling as the plot develops.
Research Your Market. If you’re planning to enter competitions or submit to magazines, and why wouldn’t you, then it will pay you to do some digging before you submit anything. For any organisation you’re submitting to, read back issues, past competition winners, judges reports, anthologies published. Notice the type of story they like, the style, the genre, the amount of dialogue, the type of ending etc, anything that will improve your prospects of writing to that market successfully.
Submit. Before you press the submit button or hit send on the email, make sure you’ve met the terms and conditions, met the editorial guidelines and have submitted on time. Don’t take any rejection personally and don’t complain to the organisers if your story didn’t get up – ‘the judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into’. Some competitors will provide basic feedback for an extra fee but most don’t. Rejection is just a sign that your story didn’t meet the standard of competition at that time. Revise it and resubmit elsewhere. Meanwhile, join an active writing group to get feedback on your stories and to provide support when your story doesn’t make the cut.
Christopher delivered all this information from the perspective of someone who has worked through the hard yards, and continues to do so, of writing, revising, editing – and he might edit a piece twenty times before he’s comfortable with it.
To reinforce the importance of practice, he ran a guided free writing exercise which had three options and two approaches. That one 6-minute exercise gave you the option to practice it at least five different ways. On completion, he recommended we edit the piece and submit it to one of his competitions which, after 100 entries, becomes a published collection with proceeds to charity.
Finally, Christopher recommends that the more you have your work out there the higher your chances of being published and/or winning competitions. Keep at it, keep writing, keep editing and keep submitting.
I can’t speak to the value of the paid course as I haven’t undertaken it but based on the quality of what was provided in the free course, and Christopher’s credibility as a short story writer, it looks to be well worth it. The content looks to be much more intense and provides options for critiquing and feedback which is invaluable.
The material in the free course wasn’t ground-breaking. It’s sound, solid, motivating advice for those who want to do more than dabble in short stories. But it did its job of providing a taster for what the paid course might provide. Follow the advice then build on your craft through continuous improvement.
Now, go write a short story 🙂
melanie wass 