Although the short story is in essence a well-oiled machine, mastering the art of composition is a little too abstract to write a manual. There is a certain finesse to writing itself that usually comes not with classes, professors, or reading every novel ever written, but with plain and simple practice. Flex your muscles, and don’t give up. More specifically, the key to the short story specifically, especially in this day and age, is more fulfilling than mastery of language: it is the wisdom regarding how to communicate clearly. Make the “things” in your mind and soul into words, preferably with a plot, subplot, tension, tragedy, comedy, and a bit of nudity. You have to grasp your wonderfully unique reaction to the wonderfully unique elements of your human experience (death, birth, love, freak accidents) which no other author can accurately replicate.

It is very important as well to pinpoint your purpose, or your motivation. What are you trying to say? It’s ok if you aren’t sure at first, as long as the question is fueling the writing process. It’s even more ok if your purpose has changed by the time you conclude your piece, as long as your starting point was relatively solid. Finally, the main essence of the short story, which differentiates it from the novel (and even then only to a certain degree) is to not waste words. Frankly there just isn’t enough space. Every word has to move forward either the plotline or the character development (that is, the reader’s understanding of and relation to your characters) and you have to grab your reader by the third paragraph at most. Here are some more specific areas of fiction:

Character: Your main character(s) cannot simply be you, or you will be too biased and self conscious. If they are different than you, somebody you can’t fully relate to, you will be curious about them and cause them to develop and change. Of course they will inevitably represent a certain part of you, as will every other part of the story. But, it is helpful to try to make the main character someone you see from a distance, someone you don’t relate to entirely, so that their mystery will end up being as compelling to the reader as it is to you.

Plotline: It is our first instinct as writers to be very descriptive, but the element of plotline deals with the active attempt to not waste words. In most cases it is assumed that the characters have lives previous to the story that weren’t worth writing about; the short story deals with the parts of their lives that is phenomenally interesting and moving. Thus, every part of your short story should in some way deal with plot depth, that is if it doesn’t deal with character depth. With that said, the plotline should essentially be based upon transformation whether negative or positive; stark or subtle. If nothing has really changed from page one to page three, you’ve got problems. The same goes for the entire piece. The ways writers deal with tension, climax, and resolution are of course infinite in number, but change and transformation, movement, are universal to every story.

Narrator: The presence of the narrator is a crucial aspect of every short story. To execute effective narration requires the writer to consider its limitations If it is in first person (or in some cases a blend of first and third person), given by a character, what are their biases? How much does the narrator know about the entire situation? This rides a fine line with the next question: how much should be revealed to the reader? If, especially, the narration is third-person omniscient, the writer will have to consider among other things the scope of reality within which the reader becomes enveloped. Scope of reality includes mostly our knowledge of a character’s personality traits, history, and beliefs. Also important, scope of reality deals with the balance between a) what your character is aware of within the world of the story and b) what the reader is aware of within the world of the story. All of these aspects need to be carefully balanced against one another in terms of narration; how are you telling this? How is it read? Finally, is there a chance you’re telling it through the wrong person? If you reach consistent roadblocks, consider switching points of view and/or central character focus; it might be another character’s story.

Time: the beauty of fiction is your ability as a writer to dance through the universe without any constraints of linear time or aging progression. Use this freedom wisely; break out of a character’s timeline and reveal important aspects in an aesthetic manner. A fun temporal exercise is revealing the future outcome of events long before they happen within the world of the characters. Regarding time, consider the effects of Kurt Vonnegut’s chronological manipulations within “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Breakfast of Champions.”

Language: The language you use within narration and dialogue (slang, academic, simplistic, dialect, choice vocabulary, etc.) subtly sets the tone of the world within the story. Only time and practice will reveal your unique language that sets you apart as a writer, and you can also work to make the unique language of a story nicely affect its tone and setting.

Mental Associations: By this, I mean "reminders." This last category applies to every word, sentence, hidden meaning, character; every aspect of the story: within everything, try to sense “what does this make one think about?” For instance, with “the ticking clock sounded like a nun tapping her ruler on the desk,” the reader will think about religion, discipline, school uniforms, rosaries, time, all at once. Word/object associations, as well as the subtle mental associations within dialect, setting, and language, are some of the most powerful tools a writer has to convey meaning, as subtle as they may be.