Tips for Storytelling

So how is your short story coming along? Are the characters believable and the dialogue brisk? Does the plot incorporate intriguing conflicts and move irrevocably towards the climax? Is the theme meaningful?

Try some of these creative writing excercises to push you in the right direction. They come from one of my favorite creative writing books entitled "Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively" by Hans Ostrom, Wendy Bishop, and Katharine Haake. Pick and choose a few that work for you?

1. Try writing all or part of your story in the form of a letter from one character to another.
2. Give the main character in your story an unusual health problem or affliction, real or imaginary.
3. Use the weather in a scene to reflect a character's mood.
4. Give your main character an obsession or phobia.
5. Make your first line a little bit mysterious. Then make it a one sentence paragraph.
6. Build a famous poem or lyric into your story (just like S. E. Hinton did in The Outsiders).
7. Write a super long, rambly sentence with lots of conjunctions (i.e. and, but, or) and then follow it up with a two word sentence.
8. Include more food in your stories. Be specific.
9. Add a little side character we barely get to know: a homeless man on the street, a cashier, a bus driver.
10. Add a metaphor. Compare your character to something. (i.e. She was a snake in the grass.)