Writing Wining Short Stories

Award winning short story writer Martina Devlin says ‘ Joyce calls them epiphanies. William Trevor calls them glimpses. I'd call short stories snapshots…because a snapshot is the most important photograph in an album, the one that tells you all you need to know about its contents.’

It takes discipline and constant re-writing to see what should stay in a short story and what can be re-phrased or left out. Every word counts and every word must earn its place.

Entering short story competitions is a marvelous way to raise your profile as a writer - it gets you noticed. I know several writers who have got publishing deals for their long fiction as a result of winning a competition or having a story placed in an anthology. Read Brian O’Connor’s story here on writing.ie to see how talent really does win through.

One of the keys to entering – and winning - short story competitions is taking your time to find out who the judges are, finding out what they write, and looking at previous competition winners work to see if there is a theme to the type of stories that win.

When I entered the RTE/Poolbeg ‘Do the Write Thing’ short story competition, I very deliberately set out to write a character-centered story. Poolbeg are renowned for publishing women’s fiction – they launched the careers of some of Ireland’s greatest female fiction writers, and their books tend to revolve around central female figures. With this in mind, I wrote a story about a woman with a secret in her past, caught in an emotional and moral dilemma.

I did the same thing when I entered a competition being run by Mills and Boon, the RTE Guide and Pat Kenny’s Today programme.  Mills and Boon were looking for new Irish voices, so I set the story Dublin city with an iconic Dublin landmark, the Ha’penny Bridge, at its heart. The key with both competitions was to think about who was judging the story, about exactly what they might be looking for, and respond with an appropriate story.

So what are the key qualities of a short story? A short story:

• Gets off to a fast start – with a catchy first paragraph, ‘the hook’ that draws the reader straight into the action. A line of dialogue for instance, is a great way to bring us straight into the story with a bang.

• Has a limited number of characters and scenes – sometimes as few as one character in one scene. Short stories are like photographs of an event or episode, and sometimes one character can tell us all we need to know.

• Short stories always start just as the action begins – and as close to the conclusion as possible.

• They often deal with one problem or situation – you are not writing a novel, you are showing the reader a scene or series of scenes in which an event takes place that changes the central character.

• Bearing in mind your limited word count, only use the detail necessary for understanding the situation – great passages of description are for your novel.

• Usually cover a short time period.

• Have a clear theme. What is the story about? The theme is the message underlying the story – the message behind the words. Give your story a strong theme and it will have more resonance in the minds of your readers.

• In a short story every word counts and must be made to work for you. Go over and over your story refining every sentence as if you are making gravy – reduce and reduce until the flavours are rich, intense, and memorable.

Writer Claire Keegan says ‘The short story is like a poem in that there is nothing lost. Everything is savoured. There is a strictness about it which I really admire and it takes your breath away if it's good. It leaves you more breathless than poetry in some ways. Poetry runs off the tongue. A story doesn't. It resonates in your head’

The skill in short story writing comes in crafting the words on the page and making sure all the points on your check list are covered:

• Description:  Show you reader what you characters look like – paint them a picture, but keep it to pertinent, succinct detail. Show the reader what kind of person your character is through their actions. How do they make a cup of coffee? How do they pack when they’re going away on holiday? Use action to inform the reader.

• Dialogue: Let your reader get to know your character through their dialogue. Important plot details must be worked in rather announced just because you are short of space.  This misquote was inspired by the hit CSI show: Police Officer (supposedly a forensics expert, but not one who has thought to don his white overall) : ‘Look at the footprints leading from the window to the car – he must have gone this way’ Argh!

• Ensure too that characters do not tell each other something they must already know for the benefit of the reader. This is unnatural and will jar the reader out of your story.

• Thought. Bring the reader into your character's head, to show them your character's unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

If you are entering short story competitions and submitting short stories for publication in anthologies or online, be professional about it. Create an Excel sheet listing which story has been sent where and when it was submitted – include the title and word count in case you adapt a story for a particular competition. Ensure you have a column at the end that shows if the story was published and if/how much you got paid for it! Remember that a lot of competitions require that your entry has not been previously published or entered elsewhere, so it’s important to keep track.

There are many websites that list competitions and publishers looking for submissions of short stories – here on writing.ie we list them in the Forum and add in new items daily, so keep an eye out!

One of the most important things to remember about entering short story competitions, and in fact any sort of writing competition is to follow the guidelines. It sounds obvious, but if the organisers want 1000 words, don’t go one word over. If they want it double spaced in hard copy and your details on a separate sheet, don’t email everything in one document. If they DO want it in one document by email, don’t send four attachments! What could be a winning story may not even be read if the competition guidelines aren’t followed to the letter.

And my last piece of advice? Don’t forget to NUMBER your PAGES!

Good luck!

(c) Vanessa O'Loughlin, extract from Writing to Get Published: Bringing the Dream Alive, now available on Kindle and soon to be  available as an App for Apple.

Vanessa O'Loughlin runs Inkwell Writers Workshops providing services and workshops to writers, is the founder of writing.ie and PRO for Irish PEN.

If you found this article useful, get more tips on getting published in our Writers Toolbox. Where you can also find a full list of Irish Literary Agents and Irish Publishers