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How to write short fiction
BY Maya Fernandes
5th Mar 2025
Writing short fiction is unlike any other style of writing. It’s a lot of fun, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. The short form pushes you to be creative, concise and make every word count.
Whether you’re wondering where to start or trying to squeeze a big idea into just a few pages, it’s normal to feel stuck sometimes.
Here’s some valuable advice from our expert tutors and former students to help you find your way.
1. Getting started
Cynan Jones, BBC National Short Story Award-winner and tutor of our Writing Short Stories – Advanced course.
- Often, the most difficult part of writing is starting a piece. The fear of the blank page, or the white screen if you work on computer. Suddenly, it’s just you and it. And the story in your head.
We’re anxious we’ll fumble the story by not writing well enough, and so we dither. Here’s the thing: it’s rare that inspiration alone will fix that. In my twenty years or so of writing fiction, I could count the pieces I’ve got right first time on the fingers of both hands. Everything else took a lot of work.
Inspiration comes from all manner of places, and often not when you’re on the hunt for it. Carry a notebook. Write down observations. Scribble down different ways of recording an event or character that catches your imagination. Tell it from different angles. Sometimes, do the opposite of ‘writing out’ an event or character, and jot down only key words that sum up the thing you want to capture. See where your imagination takes you!
This advice comes from our Writing Short Stories course, led by Cynan Jones.
2. Understanding your story
Julia Armfield, former Writing Your Novel student, winner of the White Review Short Story Prize and author of salt slow, Our Wives Under the Sea and Private Rites.
- For all that the brevity of short stories means you leave a lot to suggestion, it’s important that you know what’s going on, even if you show the reader only a fraction of that. Knowing details of a character, even if you never reveal them, will allow you to write without contradiction, and will give your story depth.
As a general rule, I am only ever mildly concerned with plot. Short stories, to me, are at their best when they work as an invocation of tone or mood, a small slice of something tangible. This doesn’t mean that a through-line isn’t important, as you still need enough urgency to drag the reader to the end, but spending time on descriptive elements – smells and tastes and textures – is what makes a short story memorable to me.
For more writing short stories tip, check out Julia's advice blog.
3. Seeking feedback
Vanessa Gebbie, Bridport Prize-winner and popular CBC tutor & editor.
- Read. As much as you can. Write, as much as you can, while firming up how you like to write, and what you like to write. Don’t be afraid of learning. Be as good a writer as you can be. Seek quality feedback from trusted others who know what you are trying to do. Preferably, not your best mates, or family, who will just tell you that you are wonderful.
Offer quality feedback yourself, on the craft exhibited in anything your colleagues show you – analyse, let them know precisely where it isn’t working for you. But don't try to rewrite – ‘why don’t you have this happen…?’ it’s not your story.
Be your authentic self – don’t try to copy anyone else’s style. Your voice, your stories and how you tell them, are just as important as anyone else’s.
Read more of Vanessa's advice for budding writers in her interview.
4. Finding your ending
Tessa Hadley, two-time winner of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and tutor of Writing Literary Fiction with Tessa Hadley.
- I need to have a sense of the ending I’m writing towards – I need it urgently if I’m writing a short story. Here the final paragraph is absolutely crucial. The shortness of the form means that the reader can hold everything in their head and is actively waiting for that last paragraph to tell them what the story is really about, and what it says . . .
Of course, one big choice we all have to make, whether you’re writing a short story or a novel, is whether you’re going to give it a happy ending, a dark, sad one or something in between. The decision comes down to your temperament and also to your sense of where you need your story to go. Perhaps predictably I steer somewhere between the two – I absolutely don’t want my reader thinking, ‘Oh phew, everything’s turned out for the best.’ I’d find that a bit silly. Equally I don’t feel I want my story going to a very dark place – that’s not me, temperamentally. I’d say I want to have the dark note singing in the background rather than foregrounding it.
This advice comes from our Writing Literary Fiction with Tessa Hadley course.
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