The art of writing a short story
The hard part of writing a ‘short story’ is knowing exactly what a ‘short story’ is to start with. Therein lies a problem. Many writers will disagree on what compromises a ‘short story’. It varies from 1,000 words up to as many as 20,000 words. There are also many publishers as well who won’t publish a story of less than 7,000 words period. They won’t even look at it.
However, what most will agree on is there has to be an actual ‘story’ involved. As a general rule, short stories have a quick beginning and a quick end. No, not all of them, but most. They need to convey the main theme in a shorter time frame and compress what otherwise would be a book or a novel. Many short stories do not follow the traditional structure of normal stories and books. They may even have a quick take off with no preliminary introductions to the characters. It may seem to begin right in the middle of something you know nothing about.
What actually compromises a short story is totally up to the writer. He/she may take a route that you have never been on prior to this. This is all part of the thrill of reading a short story and why authors love to write them. They are always an adventure and usually well worth reading.