: Re: How to plan a short story for a given word count? Many short story competitions, at least in Israel, set a theme and a word count: up to 2500 words, 2000-5000 words, etc. I often find myself

@Holmes449

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I would write to shorter limits. Following roughly the three act format.

Use 30% for the first act.

introduce the world and your MC; 5% to 10%.
Write your inciting incident; begin at the 15% mark. This will typically introduce your villain; sometimes remotely (by name, or on TV, or a story being told by somebody).
The first act concludes at the 30% mark with a transition to Act II, this 30% is when your MC leaves their familiar world (physically or metaphorically) and begins their journey.
Within 10%, MC meets any friends / sidekicks on their journey.
At 50% introduce your first main turning point or discovery.
In the second half; you progress to the 90% mark (4500 words for you), to make the final discovery, and set up the final confrontation.
At 93% to about 97% is your final confrontation, followed by the wrap-up, victory is done, all is well, and back to the Normal World.

Obviously you don't have to follow this budget religiously; but if your setup is running over 10%, rethink it. It will be better than rethinking the whole story. You have a budget, try to stick to it. If you can do your setup quicker, you have extra words to play with for the other parts.

When conceiving of very short stories you should minimize the number of characters and simplify the problem; often you want just a protagonist and a villain.

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