7 hour short story sharath komarraju final

Contents

A Note to the Reader ..........................................................................................................................1

The First Hour .....................................................................................................................................3

The Second Hour ................................................................................................................................ 6

The Third Hour ....................................................................................................................................8

The Fourth Hour................................................................................................................................ 11

The Fifth Hour ...................................................................................................................................13

The Sixth Hour ..................................................................................................................................16

The Seventh Hour ............................................................................................................................. 19

Final Words .......................................................................................................................................21

The 7-Hour Short Story – Sharath Komarraju

sharathkomarraju.com Page 1

A Note to the Reader

Welcome to the seven-hour-guide to writing a short story.

You must have received this eBook from my blog. Or a friend must have passed it on to you. Eitherway, I’m glad you’re here. If you’ve opened this guide, it means that you’re interested in writing fiction– whether professionally or for fun.

There are two main reasons for writing this guide.

1. Writing short stories is excellent practice for writing novels. If you want to be a novelist andif you haven’t explored writing short stories as a means of developing your craft, then you’remissing out. Especially if you’re just starting out, just beginning to learn, writing short storieswill hone your skill at plot, character, dialogue, setting, theme and all the other nice things thatyou will need to write a good novel.

2. Writing short stories will get you into the habit of finishing a piece of work. You will learnmore from finishing stories than you will from abandoning them. Novels are harder to finishbecause even a short one takes a good four months to write. A short story takes seven hours.



You begin. You finish. You learn. You write another one. Then when you’re ready, begin yournovel. And then finish that too.

This eBook will focus completely on writing a short story, around the neighbourhood of 2000-2500words, from start to finish. I will be as detailed as I can, and wherever possible I will break down the‘theory’ into actionable steps. If I do my job well enough, you should be able to use the content in thisguide as a blueprint to generate decent short stories.

What I cannot do is write for you. I can only show you the path (or what I think is the path). Taking it –and indeed the decision of whether or not to take it – is up to you.

I also cannot guarantee that your work will become immediately publishable if you follow this guide. Itwill improve. Of that I have no doubt. But it may need a certain time of improvement before you hit thenecessary standard that readers demand of a good story.

If at any point of reading this guide you have questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contactme. My email address is [email protected]. I will be more than happy to hear your feedback onthis eBook, and also if you’d like me to help you with your writing.



The First Hour

Right, so you’re set. You’re sitting in front ofyour word processor, fingers poised over thekeyboard, expecting to fire away and writeperfect copy from first word to last.

Wait a second. It won’t work out that way.

Before we begin to write the actual story, let’sspend the first hour to do some thinking,planning and note-taking.

More specifically, we need to know more aboutthe following things.

1. Your Main CharacterYour story is going to be about one person.Since we’re writing a short story, we will nothave a cast of characters. You will have justone main character. In the first hour, all you

need to do is write down the following detailsabout him.

• Name, age and gender• What does she do for a living?• What are two of her hobbies? In other

words, what does she do for fun?• What is her ‘problem’?

The last point is the most important. You musthave heard the quote: Fiction is all aboutcharacters in conflict.

Well, that’s just another way of saying it’s allabout people with problems.

So the first thing that you should know aboutyour main character is what her problem is thatshe’s trying to solve in this story.



Here are a few examples that can get youstarted.

• She wants to buy a pair of shoes butcannot afford them.

• She wants a raise but her boss does notlike her.

• There is a piece of meat stuck in hertooth but she cannot get it out with hertongue.

• She wants to take a holiday but she hasused up all her leave.

In each of the above examples, notice thatthere are two things: there is a problem, andthere is a reason why she cannot surmount itstraight away.

At this stage, stay nimble. Don’t fret over thedetails just yet. Write your character’s problemdown in one sentence.

2. The Helper and the HindererHave a maximum of two secondary characterswho are going to either help or hinder yourmain character’s ‘quest’.

The easiest way is to have one of themhelping, the other hindering.

You can have two hinderers too, but you musthave at least one. Otherwise, where is theproblem?

For each of these also, write down thefollowing details.

• Name, age and gender• What do they do for a living?• What do they do for fun?• What are their ‘problems’?



Pay particular attention to the hinderer. Definetheir problem with more care than you woulddefine the problem of the helper. Generally thehelper is a mentor figure or a kindly brother orparent who wants to see the main characterhappy. Their motivation is often altruistic.

The hinderer, on the other hand, is pure evil. Atleast your heroine must think so.

3. The SettingThe last thing we will do in the first hour is writea few words about the place and time in whichthis story occurs.

All stories happen somewhere and sometime.Let’s call this macro-setting, for now.

With time, realistically, you have only threeoptions: past, present, future. With place, you

have choice of country, and then you havechoice of rural or urban.

Examples:

• Rural India, present time.• Urban India (Bangalore), circa 1950.

A note of cautionUnless you’re confident of your storytellingabilities, stick to times and places that youknow. For most of us it means ‘current’ placeand ‘current’ time.

I know that sounds vanilla, but it’s better to tryour hands at something simple first, isn’t it?



The Second Hour

The second hour of our writing time will beused to develop our characters and our settinga little further. Notice how in the first hour wejust made generic notes? Here we will expandon them a little bit.

1. Know Your CharactersWe will do a bit of ‘free writing’ on our threecharacters to get to know them better. There isno word limit on this, but I would suggest youkeep the ‘notes’ down to a maximum of 200words per character. For now, at least.

The four main things you want to know aboutyour characters are the following.

• Physical appearance• Speech

• Action• Thought

Here you’re almost spoilt for choice. You canmake your character short or tall, fat or thin oranything in between. She could have a moleunder her right eye, her one ear may besmaller than the other, there may be a blackspot on the back of her neck.

The kind of speech you give your story peoplealso tells your readers something about them.What kind of voice does she have? Low andshy, or loud and vibrant? Does she speakquickly in bursts, or in slow, measured tones?

With action and thought you have the option tobring in some inconsistencies. Your charactermay be an animal lover and yet be a staunchnon-vegetarian. We’re all contradictory in oneway or the other. By observing your character’s



actions and by comparing them to theirthoughts, you will find out their inconsistencies.

RememberYou’re ‘free writing’ here. So don’t worry toomuch about whether you’re writing sense ornot. Let the only guiding force be in thedirection of the four elements listed above.

Trust your sub-conscious, and power through.

2. Know Your SettingIn the first hour, we wrote down a basic macro-setting for our story. Now, we’ll take twentyminutes to flesh it out just a little bit.

Write down 100-word descriptions of thefollowing micro-settings.

1. Your main character’s place ofresidence

2. Her place of work3. Her ‘hobby’ place. This could be a bar or

a tennis court or an art studio.

Hopefully your story will happen in one or moreof these three places. Your helper and hinderermust also be part of these places.

For example, if your helper is the character’smother and the hinderer is the boss, the formerwill be part of the place of residence and thelatter will be part of the workplace.

Work them into your little micro-settingdescriptions. Just remember:

Do not choose places where your helperand hinderer cannot be present.



The Third Hour

Are we ready to write yet? Not quite. But soon,I promise.

In this hour, we will write summaries of thethree scenes that will make up our story.

You may ask: Why three? What if my story hasonly one scene? What if it has five?

The answer is it’s up to you. Your story canhave as many or as few scenes as you want.But my recommendation would be three.

Why? Because it’s simpler. We’re going for a2500-word-story, so three scenes of 600-800words each gives you the best chance todevelop each one and to make sure they followone another logically.

So let’s go with three scenes for now, shall we?If you’re feeling adventurous, you can write onemore story as soon as you finish this one.Deal?

Right, so we’re going to make notes on thefollowing elements for each scene.

1. The PurposeScenes exist to move the story along.

More specifically, scenes exist to move yourcharacter along on her journey.

So for each of your scene, the very first – andthe most crucial – thing you should know ishow far and in which direction your characterwill move by the end of it.



Say I’m the character. My big problem in life isthat I don’t have time to write. My boss isalways asking me to work on weekends.

In Scene 1, say I hatch a plan and lie to myboss, that my mother is sick and that I have toleave town. My boss agrees to this andsanctions my leave.

The purpose of this scene is to push me a littlecloser to my goal of having the weekend off towrite. I have moved closer to my goal, becausemy boss has bought my lie, and he has givenme a day off.

But in Scene 2, on Saturday morning I go outto buy the daily groceries and I run into myboss. He sees that I’m in town, and he asks if Ican take a call from home. Unable to say no, Irelent.

The purpose of this scene is to push me a littlefurther away from my goal of having theweekend off to write.

So your job is to do something similar: writedown the purposes of your three scenes withrespect to your character’s goal. With eachscene, you make her move, either towards oraway from her objective.

2. The SettingHere you will make notes about where eachscene takes place. In my stated example,Scene 1 occurs in my office, probably in myboss’s cubicle. Scene 2 occurs near my home,at the local grocery store.

You already know the three micro-settings ofyour story. This step could be as easy asmatching one of them to each of your scenes.



But if your story is refusing to be bound by thelist of settings you made in Hour 2, then nowmay be a good time to dream up a new one.

But whatever you do, make sure that you’veassigned one micro-setting to each of the threescenes.

3. Characters in each sceneHere we will make notes about whichcharacters will be involved in which scene.

There is an overwhelming temptationsometimes to chuck your main character into aroom by herself and have her think all sorts ofdeep, philosophical things.

Resist this temptation.

Make her interact with her world. This includesthe inanimate objects that make up her setting.

But it also includes the far more interestinganimate objects that inhabit her world.

Make her interact with people.

Design your scenes, therefore, such thatpeople are talking to one another, thinking bad(sometimes good) things about one another,and generally behaving like real people.

So in your final scene summaries, you shouldhave at least these three elements:

• Purpose of the scene• Setting of the scene• Characters in the scene



The Fourth Hour

Yes, we’re finally ready to write. In this hour,we will write our first scene.

Just a tiny little reminder before we do, though.We haven’t yet decided on the viewpoint inwhich we will write.

This is not a hard choice. You effectively havetwo options: first person or third person. Mostfirst-time authors pick first person because theythink it’s easier.

It’s not.

Both have their advantages anddisadvantages. For now, don’t let it bother youtoo much. Just pick one. Since our story hasonly one main character, it will work equallywell (or badly) regardless.

1. The BeginningMuch has been said by writers greater than meabout how to begin a story. In effect, it boilsdown to this:

Don’t get to the point. Start at the point.

We have no time to waste getting to the point.By the time you begin writing your story, yourcharacter is already at the point of disturbancein her life.

2. The character and her worldIntroduce us to your main character. Unlessyou have a good reason not to, use her nameas the first word of your story.

Then give us a few lines about her world, andthe disturbance that has ‘rocked’ it. By the timeyou’re three hundred words into the story, the



helper or the hinderer must have made anappearance.

Remember to use all possible characterelements: action, thought, speech and physicalappearance.

3. The DecisionTowards the end of this scene, your maincharacter makes a decision that will seeminglymove her towards her goal.

Like how in my example I lied to my boss andwas granted a day off, leading me to think that Ihad moved towards my objective.

But of course, something will happen at thebeginning of Scene 2 which will pull me away.

Alternatively, you could make the decision inScene 1 pull the character away from her

goal, and get her to start fighting from Scene 2onwards.

The choice is yours. How you play with thepush-pull dynamics is up to you.

If in doubt, err on the side of ‘more’. The moretrouble your character is in at the end of Scene1, the better.



The Fifth Hour

In this hour, we will write our second scene.This can be loosely called ‘the middle’. Thestructure of this scene will be similar to the first:at the beginning, something will happen toeither push or pull the character on her journeyto her goal.

In the course of the scene, the charactermakes another decision, which will makematters decidedly worse. This could be on theadvice of the helper, on the goading of thehinderer, or through the character’s ownthoughts.

At the end of this scene, the protagonist isfarthest from her goal that she had ever beenin the story. Readers should wonder at this

point how she’s ever going to succeed inachieving her objective.

The end of scene two, therefore, marks the lowpoint of the character’s journey.

A short note on narrativeThere are four things any writer can do toinstantly improve and deepen his narrativestyle.

1. Write in Active VoiceThis may sound frivolous at first glance, butmany novice writers make the mistake of usingthe weak active voice or the passive voice intheir descriptions. Especially when they’rewriting about inanimate objects.

For example

There was a water bottle on the table.



A better way of saying that is: A water bottlestood on the table.

Just by switching from passive to active voice,the verb has become stronger (‘was’ versus‘stood’), the sentence has become moreassertive, and the language is tighter.

2. Include specific sensory detailWhen you visualize your scene, force yourselfto go past the sights and sounds. Remember tonotice the smells, the tastes and the touches.

We all know how a rose smells, but can youdescribe to us the reedy texture of its stem? Orthe way a petal tastes when you place it onyour tongue? Or the sound it makes when itsways to the breeze?

We identify almost every object by perhaps oneor two main senses. But what about the

secondary, unused senses? Can you bring toyour writing that dimension and make itdeeper?

You can, and you should try.

3. Use Descriptive AdjectivesUse adjectives that reinforce the sensoryimage of the object you’re describing, not theemotion you want to convey.

So a ‘ruddy’ face is descriptive whereas a ‘sad’face is emotional and judgmental. Try and bedescriptive almost always.

4. Be InvisibleOne of the hardest things for a writer to do is tobecome invisible. But we must, especially whilewriting fiction.



It’s not about us. It’s about the story. It’s aboutthe people who live in the story world. We’rejust narrators. We’re not important.

The temptation is forever present to slip in awisecrack here, a philosophical aside there, anaphorism here, a quick ‘look-at-me’ there.

Resist it.

Stay out of sight. Focus on your characters.Their struggles. Their wants. Theirexperiences. Don’t worry. Your readers won’tmiss you.



The Sixth Hour

This is the home stretch.

We will finish writing our third scene in thishour, and with it the story as well. What oughtto happen here is self-explanatory; yourheroine will find a way to surmount thechallenge posed to her and come outvictorious.

The only point to note here is that ideally, thisswitch from being down in the dumps to beingvictorious should come about as a result ofinternal change.

The idea is that the main character has a flawthat has so far caused her to be defeated, butthe low point in her experience has forced herto undergo deep internal change to claim

victory over her obstacles and reach herobjective.

An ExampleHave you seen the first Matrix movie? Do youremember the last act? Neo tries everythingthroughout the course of the story to overcomethe machines, but at the end, with almost tenminutes to go, he is being pummeled into awall, and he lies at death’s door.

But then he rises, and he resolves a deepinternal conflict: his reluctance to believe.

Once he overcomes this basic ‘flaw’ in hischaracter, he is able to see the Matrix for whatit really is: a computer program that cannottouch him unless he allows it.

So armed with his new-found inner strength,he defeats the machines.



In most stories, you will find that the ultimatevictory graces the hero only after he grits histeeth and corrects an internal flaw that hasbeen his biggest obstacle.

Does your story not have this?If it doesn’t, don’t worry. It will be ideal if itdoes, but it is by no means necessary,especially for a short story.

It’s a good thing to keep in mind for your nextstory, though. Make a habit of thinking in termsof internal and external changes.

A short note on dialogueJust to balance the four tips on narrative in theprevious section, here are three things that youshould keep in mind while writing dialogue.

1. Use ‘said’ in dialogue tagsI know. ‘Expostulated’ sounds better. ‘Stated’,‘answered’, ‘gasped’, ‘sighed’, ‘smiled’ and allthe other nice words that you think should beused instead of boring old ‘said’ – don’t usethem. Use ‘said’ instead. This is probably theone time in your writing that you should use thegeneric verb over the specific.

Why? Because your dialogue stub itself carriesall the emotion. The ‘he said’ is just a tag. Youdon’t want readers to focus on the tag. Youwant them to focus on the speech itself.

2. Minimize irrelevant dialogueMost of human speech in real life is pointless.We uhm and aah a lot. We speak in banalities.We make a lot of polite, irrelevantconversation.



If fiction is to mirror real life, one may askwhether dialogue in fiction should be the same– pointless and rambling.

No.

Fiction is not a mirror to real life. Fiction is reallife with the dull bits taken out. (Yes. Hitchcocksaid that.)

So take out the dull bits from your dialogue.Give your readers only the bits that arerelevant to the story or to the character.

3. Use dialogue for rhythmOne of the strongest tools available to thefiction writer to achieve rhythm in his prose isthe use of dialogue and narrative incombination.

Narrative is slower to read than dialogue.

So if you intersperse your dialogue with piecesof narrative, depending on how you combinethem, you can achieve different rhythms.

If you use all dialogue, your reader will be leftbreathless. If you use all narrative, your readerwill get lulled into a slow sense of comfort.

So play around with your narrative-dialoguecombinations. Experiment. See how it affectsthe pace and rhythm of your prose.



The Seventh Hour

What is this, you ask? We’ve already finishedour story, haven’t we?

Well, not quite. We’ve just done the first draft. Ifit’s like most first drafts in the world, it’sprobably not that good.

It’s almost certainly not publishable.

What we need is to edit it. In this hour, I willgive you a quick overview of what an ‘edit’looks like – whether you’re editing a novel or ashort story.

The Line EditThis is the lowest level of an edit. As the namesuggests, the focus here is on the clarity ofeach line. Grammar, punctuation, style – theseare all questions you must answer at this level.

Is every line in my story grammatically correct?Is every line in my story tight enough? Is everyline in my story clear in meaning?

Obviously, in cases where you answer no, yourephrase, you cut down, you clip.

The Copy EditIn a copy edit, the smallest functional unit ofcomposition is the paragraph. Does oneparagraph ‘flow’ into the next? Does eachparagraph have a self-contained meaning andtheme? Do the breaks come at the right times?

That last bit is quite important. In fiction, themain function of paragraphs is to generate apause in the reader’s mind. You want to besure that the pauses are coming at exactly theright times. If they’re not, re-structure.



The Substantive EditHere you’re looking at each scene of your storyas a unit. Is the story consistent from onescene to the next? Are the meaning, purposeand theme of each scene clear? And do theyall come together to deliver a unified message?

Because of all the planning work we did, youmay find that your scenes are all right. But thenyou may not.

The ‘Fiction’ EditFor fiction writers, there is a further level ofediting that looks at all the fictive elements ofthe piece. Are the characters well-rounded?Does the plot flow smoothly? Is the pace of theprose too jerky at places, perhaps? Is there toomuch dialogue? Is there too little dialogue?

Many of these are subjective questions, towhich the right answer is just your answer. Youjust go by ‘feel’. Maybe you can take theopinion of a person you trust at this stage.

A word of cautionIt is possible to get stuck in what I call the‘editing loop’. You edit, you take another look atit, you’re still not happy, you edit again, youtake another look at it, you’re still not happy,you edit again…

And so on it goes.

Give it one, maybe two edits. And then moveon to the next story. Learn to let go.

You will learn more by writing new stories thanby editing written ones. So keep moving.



Final Words

If you have a finished short story in your hands, congratulations! If you’d like feedback on your work,please don’t hesitate to send it to me. I will give you my opinion (for what it’s worth) of where youstand and how you should proceed going forward.

If you haven’t finished your story, don’t worry. There is absolutely no need to beat yourself up. Goback to the first page of this guide and try to work through it again. If you’re still finding it hard, write tome and I will help you.

Tell me what you thinkI wrote this guide for you. If it didn’t help you – or if it did – and if you have ideas on how to improve it,let me know. I promise not to take it personally.

Pass it onIf you know anybody who is looking for guidance or a step-by-step approach for writing short fiction,and if you think they will benefit by reading this guide, pass it on to them.

And if you’d like to keep in touch, visit my blog and drop me a note.

Click here to visit my blog

http://sharathkomarraju.com

7 hour short story sharath komarraju final

Documents

hour short story sharath

short storieswill

decent short stories

writing novels

writing fiction

finishing stories

youre ready

im glad youre