One Great Way to Write Short Stories

by Ben Nyberg

Explains the structure of a story, provides writing assignments, and demonstrates each step in creating a story

Genres: Writing

200 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1988

Reviews

[Karen GoatKeeper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any fiction writing involves characters, plot and setting. The intended length of the piece affects these as a short story doesn't have the time to develop these the way a novel does.
The author has the reader/writer begin with a personal incident between two people and create character, plot and setting of a fictional short story from it. The steps seem simple, but challenge the reader/writer to see the same incident through other eyes, create setting quickly along with mood and see how the different parts (beginning, inciting incident, climax and ending) of a short story fit together. These steps are then explored in how they can be used in a variety of genres.
This book is not really for reading. It is easy to read. The real worth of this book is in doing the writing even if the resulting short story is only for practice. Practice is a way to improve writing abilities.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finding myself in a rut with the two stories I'd been revising I decided to give the book a try, just for something different. Nyberg has a nine step process (ten if you count revising after you've completed the first nine steps) although he never presents it that succinctly—I had to create the list of steps myself. The process is a bit mechanistic. And it is designed to create a particular type of story, one roughly following a three-act structure: introduce a situation, escalate the conflict, resolve it. His approach is interesting in that he has you start with the core incident (the middle), then write the ending, and finally you write the beginning. I thought the first four steps of the process were actually quite good at producing a core incident that originated out of character. And by the time you've completed the fourth step you've revised the core incident four times, which I think is a particularly useful process for beginners to follow because it slows them down, gets them used to the idea of revision, instead of just rushing ahead to tell the rest of the story. At that point, having produced a character and core incident that I was interested in, I was ready to part ways with Nyberg and work on the story in my own fashion. But I didn't. I decided to just follow through Nyberg's process to see what it would produce. His remaining steps are on shakier ground simply because, although it is quite easy to come up with a way to get people started writing about core incidents, there really is no clear technique for producing endings and beginnings. He mostly offers a lot of Thou Shalt Not advice, which is to his credit. Unfortunately I think that leaves a beginning writer few places to turn. Maybe just getting something that avoids the Thou Shalt Nots would produce a decent story. Although I doubt I would follow this process again (because it produces a fairly determined outcome I think the stories would all start feeling the same) it did produce a new short story. And I learned a lot just going through the process and thinking fairly mechanistically about what I was doing from the first word to the last.

[Therese Gilardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love this book. the author gives terrific ideas about how to build a character and develops a "story" throughout the book to prove his point.