A great short story is written with direct dialogue and immediately relatable characters. Since a short story has less time to introduce their characters and the plot, the author must quickly create the scene and introduce the main character in the first page of the story. The first step for a short story is to find your characters.
Characters for a short story can't be too detailed and mysterious as you have only so much time for them in the plot before it becomes a novel. It is easiest to choose one character or two characters that have the most personality and are the most "round". Round, in this case, meaning that the character will change in at least one clear way from how they are in the beginning of the story to how they are at the conclusion of the same short story. If you choose to have more than these two "round" characters in your short story, I recommend that these extra characters are "flat". Flat is when a character in your story doesn't change at all and is perhaps more distanced from your reading audience.
Next, you are going to want to plot out your storyline. What do you want to happen in this short story? What genre do you want it to be? Horror, thriller, comedy, romance, etc? Once you've figured out the genre of your short story, you have to come up with a basic layout of the plot you wish to use. Be imaginative! And don't worry about your idea for a plot being unoriginal or done before many times because one plot can happen in millions upon millions of different ways.
What I do in my writing, whether it is for a short story or a genuine novel, is I plan out the plot on a piece of printer paper. You put the main gist of the plot in the middle and circle it and then use lines to branch out and organize what will happen in this plot and you can even include some possible dialogue for you characters to use.
After you have planned out the plot, it is up to you to write everything out like the way you have imagined it within your head. This part is equally the easiest and most frustrating part of the writing process, but it is quite fun to do.
When you begin to near the end of the story, you must begin to think of a good way to conclude your short story. This is tricky because many short stories are left with many lose ends that leave the readers annoyed and confused - don't do this! Make sure you tie up all of the loose ends you created within these few pages.
After that you are basically finished writing your first draft of your short story. I hope this helped some people who are not used to writing creatively and I hope it helped within the 500 words. Enjoy your imaginative writing practice with these short stories!
