: 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,

@Vandalay250

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It is important to keep the story in the scope of your limit. What I mean by this is don't try to tell an epic tale in 800 words. When I write flash or microfiction I do two things:

1) I start in the middle of the action.
2) I keep things tight, focusing on an instant instead of a scene.

If you set a goal and keep that in mind and only tell what the reader needs to know to make sense of what is going on, it is possible to write impactful fiction with a minimal of words. For me these tend to be emotionally evocative without being heavy on action, focusing on a change in the character rather than a change in events.

I wrote a good article on this a while back which you can find on my blog:
lit-handyman.livejournal.com/14869.html
In the article I talk about word economy in relation to a flash fiction contest where you had a limit of 55 words to tell a story. I hope it helps.

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