How to write a short story

Before you start to write, you need to think about the type of genre you want to write. For example, you might want to write a mystery, western, comedy, science fiction, fantasy, fairy tale, suspense, thriller, or another type of genre. After you have selected the genre you want to write, you need to think of the setting.

Settings can take place anywhere. However, you need to think of the genre you chose for your short story and select the right setting.  For example, if you chose a legal thriller, you would want a setting in a courtroom or a lawyer's office.

After you have your setting chosen, you need to describe the building. What kind of outside environment is it? Where is the building located? What does the inside of the building look like? What is the interior decoration like?

You can describe your setting as you move your characters from room to room. Readers want to visualize what the characters see.

Now that you have selected the genre and the settings for your short story, you need to focus on the characters.

You will have a main character who will come against some obstacles that he or she will have to overcome in order to reach his or her goal.

What is your character's name? What does he or she look like? What is his or her personality characteristics? What does he or she do for a living? What is his or her goal that he or she wants to reach in this short story? Who will come against him or her?

Once you have your character outlined, you can think about the other characters, which should be just a few characters since you are writing a short story.

Now, you are ready to develop your plot.  It will help you to outline your plot or summarize it before you start writing.

You can outline your plot by summarizing what you want to write in the beginning, in the middle, and in the ending.

What you write in the beginning needs to be something that will grasp readers' attention so they will want to continue reading until the end of the story. If you have a boring beginning, you will lose your readers.

After you have developed an outline for your short story, you are ready to write.

The final step after you have written your short story is to read it over again and check for any errors such as typing, English Grammar, punctuation, or sentence and paragraph structure and see if it reads smoothly. 

Once you have your setting and your characters for your short story, you need to think about the narration and dialogue.

These two elements are used to describe your characters and to move the plot to the end.

When you think about writing your story, you want to have in mind who will tell the story. Will it be told in first person (your main character) or will it be told in third person (the narrator).

If you choose the first person point of view, the main character will tell his or her story, how he or she feels about the circumstances, and what he or she observes throughout the story.

If you choose third person point of view, the narrator tells the story and can describe the characters and what each one observes as the enter specific rooms.

As you write a narrative scene, you can describe the main character's background so readers know more about the main character. However, since you are writing a short story, you can't expand too much on this because you don't have as much room as you would in writing a novel.

Dialogue is another way to describe the main character. You can do this by revealing a character's emotions, how he or she speaks to another character, or showing a character's background.

You want to make your characters realistic because readers want to relate to them, especially the main character.

Improving Writing Skills : How to Write a Short Story