: Re: Cutting down the length of a short story I'm writing a short story for an assignment at school - but I'm having trouble keep it short. I have a habit to go off on a tangent quite a bit,

The more elements your story has, the longer it will be. That means that every additional character added makes your story longer. Every additional location and scene makes the story longer. Every unique viewpoint makes the story longer. Every additional conflict makes the story longer.

Combine and axe until all the unnecessary elements have been trimmed away.

Additionally, short stories are fundamentally different from novels in that readers expect to have to fill in gaps themselves rather than getting all the information in exposition. Write all of the interesting details you want, but then cut out anything that isn't required to understand the story.

Even then you've probably kept too much. Cut out all the exposition you can find until you think that the story is unreadable. Then give it to a friend (preferably one who reads short fiction) and find out what confused then and slowly add it back in.

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: Re: Cutting down the length of a short story I'm writing a short story for an assignment at school - but I'm having trouble keep it short. I have a habit to go off on a tangent quite a bit,

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: Way to write rapid mental trauma During the climax of my fantasy story, a massive, god-like creature awakens, coming straight for the characters. However, this creature has massive amounts of

: Is it necessary to use words like "said", "asked," etc in dialog? I am writing a novel. I'm not sure if the below sentence structure is correct. I have not used any word like said/replied/asked.

: Do self publishers need to support punctuation differences for different markets? I am an Australian, first time author, intending to self publish. I have prepared the manuscript using the Australian

: How do I mislead readers about a character in a story? I am writing a story about a war, and there is this particular character whom they are a traitor to their own side. The traitor's identity

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