The short story market is booming, with fantasy and science fiction leading the pack. Not to mention, you can make some serious money if your short story is accepted by a high-ranking SFF magazine, you’ll get your name circulating in the literary world, and you’ll improve your skills as a writer.

If you’ve been thinking about starting to write speculative short stories but aren’t sure where to begin, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s everything you need to know.

How long should a short story be?

A short story is generally understood to be any work of fiction up to 7,500 words. A story of 1,000 words or less is called ‘flash fiction’, and a story of exactly 100 words is called a ‘drabble’. You can write a story of any length – there’s even a contest for stories of exactly six words!

A story between 7,500 and 17,500 words is a novelette, and stories between 17,500 and 40,000 words is a novella. Anything over 40,000 words is a novel.

The difference between writing novel vs. short stories

While a novel is a sprawling chronological landscape of dynamic character journeys, socially relevant themes, and thrilling subplots, a short story is a snapshot of a moment in time. It focuses on just one protagonist facing a single challenge or obstacle. Short stories generally have between two and five characters, while novels can have a lot more.

Novels also have more expansive worldbuilding. The shorter a story is, the simpler in construction it will be. Because of its limited space, speculative flash fiction needs to rely on pre-existing worldbuilding: myth, folklore, fairy tales, and broadly understood concepts such as AI. Longer short stories and novelettes have a little more space to develop new rules, and novels have even more.

While a novel is an exercise in emotional depth, a short story is an exercise in concision. Every bit of information – worldbuilding, backstory, motivations, relationships, and so forth – needs to be delivered as acutely and efficiently as possible. This is one reason why writing short stories is a great way to train yourself to write concisely in a larger format like a novel.

How to start writing your own short story

Ready to write a short story of your own? Let’s dive in!

Craft your premise

Every great story starts with a great idea. Many of the best fantasy and sci-fi stories start with the premise, ‘What if?’ What if aliens infiltrated the world’s political epicentre, and found something even worse than themselves? What if a 21st-century cosmetics company began hiring interns as virgin sacrifices to their silent investor? What if a teenage girl born into a shapeshifter family found herself unable to change out of human skin? Etc, etc.

If you find that you’re struggling to come up with ideas, it can be helpful to take a blank piece of paper and brainstorm as many ‘What if?’ scenarios as you can think of. One will jump out as the seed of your short story.

Explore your character and conflict

Now, who is this story about? What do they want? Why is this day different from any other day that’s gone before? Just like a novel, a short story needs an inciting incident that sets things in motion.

Remember – short stories don’t have much room for sprawling battles and subplots. Decide what your character wants, one thing that’s standing in their way, and what they’re going to do to overcome that obstacle by the end of the story. Obstacles can be overt, like a nasty admissions officer of a high-ranking school, or subtle, like a stagnant marriage.

Once the character recognises their obstacle, they make a choice. The plot of the story is all about the ramifications of that choice.

Map out your beginning, middle, and end

Even though short stories aren’t as complex as novels, they should still follow a recognisable story shape. You may find it helpful to sketch out your story’s first, second, and third acts: the inciting incident and rising action, the new complication, the emotional climax, and the denouement, or resolution.

Not all writers like to plan their story’s every detail in advance; some discover them as they go along. If this sounds like you, simply write out what you know about your story so far and fill in the blanks on the way. However, be mindful of creating too many threads of your story, or else you may end up with a novella! Follow one story thread and stay on track.

Write your rough draft

Ready? Start writing! Don’t worry too much about getting the language just right; simply get your story down on paper in a series of plot points, each one leading into the next.

Unlike novels, which can take years of drafting, the first draft of a short story should be done in a fairly compact amount of time. Some writers slam out a story in just one evening of frenetic energy, while others carve it out over one or two weeks. If you take longer than two weeks, however, you might lose the drive and intensity that gives the story its impact. Try to push through the muddy bits and get something down that you can work with.

Revise, revise, revise

Now, it’s time to take that raw material and shape it into something you can be proud of showing to others. First, look at the overall story shape: does it have a beginning, middle, and end? Does your main character make active choices, instead of just letting the events of the plot blow over them? Does the ending feel like a natural culmination of everything that’s come before?

Once you’re satisfied with the way the story is being told, you can examine it on a line level and pick out any awkward phrasing, straggling adjectives, or clichés and make each moment as beautiful as it can be. Many writers find it helpful to read their work out loud so they can hear if the language flows smoothly and if the dialogue feels natural and authentic.

If you’re satisfied that your short story is as stellar as you can make it, it’s time to send it out into the world! Keep an eye out for our upcoming post on submitting to SFF literary magazines.