AboutWilliam Sternman Expertise My short stories have been published in the U.S., England, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, South Africa, Japan, and Pakistan. My essays, movie and book reviews have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Boston Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Drummer, Films in Review. I took courses in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and copyediting at Temple University.
Question Hello, for some have said I make my friends jealous because I can write over 100 pages singlespaced and constantly do. It wasn't always that way when I was little. Now that I'm older, I'd like to know how to take a story and cut it down. It seems I aim to go no longer past page 5 and end up at 80. My downfall is that I plan character's on paper, get the general idea and outline just a bit; too much of it and I feel trapped in my story ends up being flat.
Answer
If you’re writing a short story, you should delete everything that doesn’t carry the story forward. In other words, if the reader doesn’t need this information to understand your story, get rid of it.
Just because you have information in your outline or character study you don’t have to spell it out in your story. As long as you understand your characters and they are consistent, you don’t have to describe them in detail. Let their words and actions reveal their inner selves.
Follow the advice of the White Knight in “Alice in Wonderland”:
"Start at the beginning, go to the end, and then stop."
On the other hand, you may be trying to squeeze a novel into a short story.
