Tips for Writing a Criminally Good Short Story
Ruth Wykes, Scarlet Stiletto Awards Coordinator and Sisters in Crime Australia Convenor, has provided some handy tips to help you polish your submission.
- Avoid the temptation to populate your story with too many characters. You have 5000 words or fewer to play with, and you need the space to develop the characters you write about.
- Start your story at the last possible moment, then leave it as early as you can. Don’t waste words on lengthy introductions or backstories, those are best fed to the reader in small drops throughout the story.
- Find those filler words and get rid of them. Words such as: really, actually, very, nice, good, look, and fine are examples of passive words that weaken your sentences.
- Delete most of your adverbs and your “ing” words. Too many adverbs will make your work overwritten, and ‘ing’ words will make it passive.
- Use dialogue wisely. Don’t waste words on anything unnecessary to your story. Dialogue serves to either move your story forward or develop your character. Don’t bog the reader down, or sabotage your word count, with unnecessary conversation.
- Show, don’t tell. One of the most important concepts of creative writing is ‘show, don’t tell’. Don’t tell your reader your character witnessed a murder, show them. Walk your character into the scene and describe what they see/feel/experience.
- Create conflicts and give your character an obstacle they need to overcome. This helps develop your character and it creates tension in your story.
- Stick with one character’s point of view in each scene. Avoid writing a scene from multiple points of view as it makes your story messy and sometimes difficult to follow.
- Edit! Don’t rely on your computer’s spellcheck or AI, once you’ve finished writing your story go through it and look for errors. Ask yourself whether your story flows, if your plot is resolved, did your dialogue make sense – and are your characters developed enough for a reader to care about them. Have you repeated or overused words? Find someone you trust to read it.
- Don’t rely on Grammarly or any other AI to edit your story. AI is okay for picking up spelling and grammar but it will never find consistency errors or wrong names of things. You need human eyes on your work before you submit it, someone who will be honest in their feedback.
- Be original. Find your own writing voice and “play” with it.
- Create a main character your readers will care about. They don’t have to be on the side of the angels but for your story to stand out the main character needs to arouse the reader’s interest.
- Resolve your plots. Tell the whole story, from beginning to end. It’s wise to avoid introducing too many subplots as it becomes difficult or messy to resolve them all towards the end of your story.
- And don’t forget: any use of AI to write part or all of your story is forbidden.