What's up everyone! Hope that all are doing okay.

In my last article, i've given some tips or advise on what to do if you're running out of ideas. Now, for readcash users out there who wants to explore more of their imagination and writing skills. Here are some tips on how to write short stories.

So How to Write Short Stories

According to Brittanica, Short story is a brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters.

A typical short story looks like usually starting at about 1,500 words.

I'd say the average of my short stories a, 8,000 and 10,000 words. So just experiment and play with it. Also if ypu're taking a class, your teacher might have a specific word count goal or they might have a page count goal, so be very mindful of that.

1. Keep it simple

Start with a simple idea or premise. I write predominantly horror, so i always try when i am creating a story to not do something that has too many bells, whistles and strings attached to it. Instead, try to pick an idea that starts out really simplistic and then build off of that idea. That way you're not complicating things, focus on capturing one small moment as opposed to gigantic history or long timeline. I usually have short stories only take place in the course of a night or a day or even a week but try to limit your timeline because that's definitely going to make the story shrink down quite a bit and it's going to give you a lot less details that are going to accidentally over bloat the story

2. Limit the Number of Characters

Limit the size of the cast. If you have a lot of characters in your story, it's gonna get complicated very quickly. A short story is more about trying to capture that single moment that with a single character or a very small band of characters. Try to focus on only a handful of characters because one, it's gonna be less character to develop and try to get into their hands and two, it's going to limit the size and and the scope of the story. Always think small when you're going with short stories. The smaller of your cast, the smaller your setting, the smaller your time line, the more you're gonna be able to shrink things down and keep them within that shorter word count.

3. Experiment with Mundane Problems/Situations

Try focusing writing about mundane problems. I write horror like i mentioned before and a lot of times, i try to capture a very mundane problem and then find the horrific in it. To use a real short story for an example, the story "greased" by Gingy Ito, who is a horror manga arist, it takes place with a family of three and the father owns a restaurant that the family lives in and they have a house that is just full of grease because he makes really greasy food and it deals with the mundane problem of that. The oldest brother is getting really bad acne and it is making him act out and making him miserable. And it's all about how the grease is making the family kind of slowly lose their minds but it's starting with a really mundane problem. Try to find a small little blips in life and use that as your jumping off point for what you can do with your story.

4. Start with Realoty, then add the Magic

Do not over complicate things with overly large and world building or overly large magic systems. I know a lot of times when i started writing short stories, i would start with problems based in reality and then i would slowly add the magic in. Fantasy is a very complicated genre to write and if you are new to writing, in general, you might want to practice with writing things that are contemporary just to get practice with writing and then slowly add fantasy into it later. Once you have more confidence in your skills as a writer, you'll have more confidence to be able to a world built into stories that take place in dofferent worlds and have high fantasy elementz. A lot of times, i recommend if you are brand new writing short stories, start with reality and try to observe the world around you and try to capture things on the page very realistically and then slowly add the fantasy edge. I know a lot of people might get upset and say "wait a minute, writing fantasy is the genre i want to write not." I'm not telling you that you can't do that, i'm just satyibg starting with some short stories that are based on reality might help you practice your writing skills ang get them stronger so that way when it's time to go the more comolicated things like world building and magic system developing and all of that, it'll be a bit little easier and a little less overwhelming.

Controlling all your ideas in a short story is overwhelming. That's okay, it just takes a lot of practice and a lot of focus. So hopefully, you were able to get a little of insights into how you can start writing short stories especially if you're new to this.

Thank you so much for your time.