How To Write A Good Story

Writing a short story is a great way to get creative, express yourself, and produce something you can be proud of. And the good news is you already know how to tell a story—you do it all the time in your everyday life. Unlike playing the violin, painting a bowl of fruit, or carving a young man from marble, all you need to write a story are the skills you already have: your words, your sentences, and your innate storytelling ability you draw upon every time you crack your friends up at a bar, explain to your boss why you’re late, or complain to your mom about being fired.

But how do you write a good story? How do you hook your reader, keep them engaged, and leave them satisfied or even awed? There is no fixed rulebook, no set of commandments to obey. But most good short stories follow a compelling character, in a convincing setting, as they go on a journey, face and overcome challenges, and end up, in one way or another, changed. 

To help you along your way, here are some tips on how to write a good story. 

How to Write a Good Story: Compelling Characters

Your story can follow one hero, a pair of lovers, or a group of friends. It can feature humans, hobbits, a farm full of animals or a lonely robot. But if your characters are vivid and interesting, they will tend to influence the world around them in vivid and interesting ways. In other words, compelling characters make for compelling stories. 

But what makes a character compelling? How can we get our readers to connect with our characters, and root for them?

A good character should be:

• Recognisable. Our characters don’t necessarily have to be likeable—they don’t need to have everything we might hope for in our three-year-old’s preschool teacher. They can be flawed. They can be mean or even cruel. But there should be something about them we readers can recognise, either in ourselves or in someone we know. Maybe that’s a virtue, like generosity or courage. Or a flaw, like selfishness or cowardice. Or a quirk of their appearance, like pants that are too short, or glasses that keep slipping down their nose.
• Complex. Our characters’ recognisable traits don’t always have to line up, or make sense together. In fact, if a character is loaded with contradictions and conflicting impulses, that makes them more lifelike and compelling. And it can make it easier for you to confront them with tough decisions. If your character has two options and really wants both, that creates a dilemma, and dilemmas are great for stories. 
• Magnetic. Whether it’s attraction or repulsion, our characters should be able to exert some kind of force on the people around them, and on the reader. Maybe they’re charismatic, and always know the perfect thing to say to put others at ease. Or they’re enigmatic, and exude an aura of strangeness and mystery. Maybe they’re irresistibly confident, or disarmingly vulnerable. If they have to be dull or bland, aim for an emphatic dullness, a remarkable blandness. There should be at least one thing about them that makes them strikingly different from everyone else.
• Proactive. If your characters tend to sit around doing nothing, it’s unlikely that anything interesting will happen to them. If they wait for other people to take the lead, they’re likely to get pushed aside or left behind. If, on the other hand, they refuse to accept the situations they find themselves in, and attempt to impose themselves upon the world around them, their stories will be more compelling. If they hope, and if they try, then we will root for them.

There should be at least one thing about your character that makes them strikingly different from everyone else.

Learn more about the craft of good characters here: 

Character Development Definition: A Look at 40 Character Traits

How to Write a Good Story: Convincing Settings

Your story might be set in a science-fictional universe with talking saucers and flying pigs. Or it might be set in a regular kitchen, with a grimy sink. Either way, a good short story will create a fictional world your reader can believe in.

But what makes a setting convincing? How do you write a good story that feels vivid and authentic? Here’s how to write a good story setting. 

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A good setting should be:

• Recognisable. Just like with characters, if your reader recognises something about your fictional world that they can connect to their own life, that will help them immerse themselves in your story. This could be the way the popular kids in class are mean to the nerd kids, even if all these kids are talking saucers.
• Consistent. Even if your pigs can fly, your reader should feel like they have solid ground to stand on, from where they can make sense of what is going on around them. And once you establish the rules of your fictional world, it’s usually best not to break them. (Your flying pigs should probably not, for example, suddenly and inexplicably gain the ability to teleport three-quarters-way through your story.)
• Challenging. There should be at least one or two things about your story’s setting that makes your characters uncomfortable. It could be a dystopian secret police. It could be a set of social norms that stifles their creativity, or limits their dating options. It could be expensive. If the pressures your setting places on your characters pull them in opposite directions—say, if your character wants to quit their tedious job and also to be able to afford that new iPhone all their friends have, that’s even better.

There should be at least one or two things about your story’s setting that makes your characters uncomfortable.

Learn more about the setting of a story here:

What is the Setting of a Story? 5 Functions of Setting in Literature

How to Write a Good Story: A Gripping Plot

So you have your compelling characters, you have your convincing setting. Now something needs to happen! Hopefully your characters are already so different from one another, and are so unsettled by their challenging environment, that all sorts of conflict is bubbling under the surface, ready to escalate… 

Leo Tolstoy told us: “All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” 

“All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” —Leo Tolstoy

But even if your story doesn’t neatly fall under one of these two categories, your characters should go on some sort of journey—either a literal, physical journey from one place to another, or an emotional one, where they start off feeling one way, and end up someplace else. 

Your flying pig may never leave her grimy kitchen, but you should still confront her with challenges that she will need to overcome. This will help hook your readers, keep them engaged in your story, and leave them with the feeling that they have gone through something along with your characters. 

And it will provide your characters with an experience that renders them, in one way or another, changed forever. Here’s how to write a good story plot.

How to write a good story plot:

1. Start with a fragile equilibrium. Your characters may have their problems, but right now they’re willing to put up with them. 
2. Disrupt that balance. Do something to your characters that knocks them out of their routine, or shatters whatever fragile peace they had been able to cling to. 
3. Give your character a particular goal, or set of goals. Ideally, in every moment of your story, you should know what your character wants to happen next, or what they are trying to achieve in the long run. Even if this particular goal might not be in their best interests.
4. Confront your character with obstacles, which they will need to navigate in order to get what they want. Make those obstacles increasingly more difficult—as soon as they have overcome one problem, present them with a new challenge that is even more arduous.
5. Provide your characters with the resources they need to navigate these obstacles—but make them work for them. This could be the inner courage they need to defeat a minotaur, which they can finally summon after being chased and beaten up for several hours. Or it could be the money they can steal from their dad in order to buy that new iPhone.
6. Make your characters take charge. At the beginning, they might have little or no control over what is happening to them. But as they progress through these escalating conflicts, they should probably assume more and more responsibility, so that by the time they are confronted by their most difficult challenge—or the climax of your story—they feel like they are in control of their own destiny.

As soon as your character has overcome one problem, present them with a new challenge that is even more arduous.

A good plot should have:

• Stakes. As your characters set about trying to get what they want, your readers should understand what succeeding will mean for them, and what they have to lose if they fail.
• Jeopardy. This journey your characters go on should not be an easy one. Threats can appear from all sides, lurk in all corners. If your characters fail, the consequences should be, in one way or another, grave.
• Momentum. If you keep your quiet and peaceful moments short, and escalate the challenges your characters face, then your story should gain momentum. Your readers will be racing to get to the end, to learn what happens.
• Surprises. There is something pleasing about inevitability in a story, when we are moving inexorably towards a climax, or when we have arrived at an ending and feel like things couldn’t have gone any other way. But if a reader thinks they know what is going to happen, and then that happens, exactly in the way they expected it to happen, it makes for a dull read. Look for ways to introduce the unexpected, and disrupt your readers’ assumptions. And if your biggest surprises can, in retrospect, seem inevitable, that’s even better.
• Consequences and change. Even if your characters end up back where they started, they should be irremediably altered by their journey, in one way or another. And if you have taken your readers along for the ride, then they too will feel altered, in some ineffable way, by reading your story.

Your character should be irremediably altered by their journey, in one way or another.

Learn more about plot here:

https://writers.com/what-is-the-plot-of-a-story

How to Write a Good Story: Clarity

On a basic level, your reader should be able to understand what is happening.

They don’t need to understand everything. Arousing your readers’ curiosity is a great way to hook them, and make them keep reading. And a good story will raise questions in its readers’ minds, that they will want to see answered later on in the story.

But one way to prevent your story from getting too confusing is to ensure that you—the writer—know what is going on. 

Often, we writers don’t know what is going to happen when we begin to write a story. This is usually a good thing, as it allows us to harness our imagination and creativity to explore the possibilities of our story, and arrive at new ideas we would never have been able to think of when we set out.

But before you reach a final draft of your story—before you add that last period, or remove that comma, and call it done—you should probably have a clear sense of what you are trying to achieve.

This means that you should know the answer to the question: ‘What is my story about?’ For example: A flying pig makes breakfast in her mother’s kitchen, but has to scrub the sink, clean all the pans, unjam the window, and decipher the hoof-written recipe before she can sit down and enjoy her meal.

You should know the answer to the question: ‘What is my story really about?’

And it means that you should know the answer to the question: ‘What is my story really about?’ For example: A daughter has to come to terms with her grief after losing her mother before she can move on with her life.

If you want to write a good short story, you should probably be able to answer both these questions—‘What is my story about?’ and ‘What is my story really about?’—in one sentence. If you can articulate your vision for your story in this way, it will make it much easier to identify the changes you need to make in order to achieve that vision. And it will make it much easier for your reader to understand what has happened in your story, and why.

A good short story should be:

• Clearly written, so that all the sentences make sense.
• Coherent, so that the events of the story feel logical and consistent.
• Cohesive, so that all the elements of the story feel like they form a united whole.

How to Write a Good Story: Break Rules

A short story can be anything. Even the words ‘short’ and ‘story’ are open to interpretation. And writers have performed all sorts of experiments, and assembled all sorts of strange and wonderful collections of words and called them stories.

Get creative, set your imagination loose, and see where it takes you.

All the above tips for how to write a good short story can often be useful, but you should also feel free to disregard them. Especially if you have a good reason for doing so. Most great short stories are different in some important way than every other story ever written before. And the best advice for how to write a good story is: Get creative, set your imagination loose, and see where it takes you.

How to Write a Good Story: Read Short Stories!

If you are wondering how to write a good short story, the best way to learn is to read a lot of short stories. Read long short stories and short short stories. Read short stories in different genres, like horror or mystery or romance. Read old short stories, in collections by famous authors and popular anthologies. Read new short stories, in small press magazines and new online outlets. 

If you have some favourite short stories, go back and read them again. Pay attention to the choices the authors made when writing them. What makes the characters compelling? What makes the setting convincing? What journey did the characters go on? What kept you riveted? What was surprising and unexpected?

By studying stories we admire, we can come up with our own solutions to problems.

By studying stories we admire, we can come up with our own solutions to problems like how to write a good story plot, or how to write a great ending.

And if we read a story we don’t like, for some particular reason, that can also be an important lesson when we start trying to write our own short stories.

How to Write a Good Story: Write Short Stories!

Ray Bradbury told us: “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write fifty-two bad short stories in a row.” Even if you don’t want to commit to a whole year, if you can make the time to set up a consistent practice of writing short stories, you will find that your natural storytelling instincts will sharpen, and your own individual style of writing short stories will emerge. 

More Resources on How to Write a Good Story

Here are more craft tips from the Writers.com site on the craft of successful fiction:

• How to Start a Story
• Freytag’s Pyramid
• The 6 Core Elements of Fiction
• How to Write a Short Story
• How to Come Up With Great Story Ideas
• Stories Vs Situations

How to Write a Good Story: Take a Class at Writers.com!

The classes at Writers.com will help you generate new ideas and turn them into successful stories. Take a look at our upcoming fiction writing courses and write your best story yet in our community. 

Colin Corrigan is a writer and a writing teacher from County Kildare in Ireland. He’s spent a decade working all sorts of jobs in Irish film and television, and another teaching all sorts of writing classes at American universities, including Northeastern University, the University of Michigan, and University of Massachusetts Boston. His short fiction has been published by Amazon and The Fiction Desk, and anthologised in Surge: New Writing from Ireland and Stinging Fly Stories. He has an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin, and an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Michigan. He’s won a Delbanco Thesis Prize, he’s been a Zell Fellow, and he’s received generous funding from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Elizabeth George Foundation. You can find him writing about The Story Energies on Substack.