If you have trouble with starting, finishing or structuring your short stories, you might want to go through the following checklist.

Getting Ideas

If you are interested in writing short stories, having ideas for them is probably not the problem. But if it is, the only tip to get those ideas flowing is to look around and observe your surroundings when you’re out and about in the world, and preferably do inspiring things yourself. Exciting ideas come from exciting lives – be it your own or somebody else’s.

Flowing Text

Do you have a great idea and a complete story in your mind, but you don’t seem to be able to execute it in the way you would like? This is not something you can work out by taking a course, but there are some tips that might help. First, read a lot. You might find a writer whose style intrigues you and decide to write your story in a similar style. When this is decided, writing is bound to be easier. Secondly, if you’re having writer’s block and everything you write seems to be of low-quality, the only way to get something done is to keep writing. You can always go back and rewrite the whole text if you like, but at least you will have something concrete to work with.

Planning

If you are the type of writer that gets a great, but vague, idea and starts writing immediately, you will probably hit a wall at some point. This is why planning is essential. There are different ways to plan the text. You can make a timeline with the most important events on it, or if the story is more of the pondering kind, you might want to write down the most important ideas you have for it, in the order that you think you are going to include them in the writing.