Use short story format as you get started

The Lockdown Creative Writing Challenge with Christopher Mlalazi

We continue with our creative writing tips for budding writers today, and we hope you are working hard on your story as we also continue with the Covid-19 lockdown in order to mitigate the impact of this dreadful global pandemic.

We are going to use the short story format for this exercise, but which also applies to all other genres of story writing, or telling.

Firstly, most writers who are dreaming about being writers have this belief that a story is written in one sitting, but this is the myth that we will try to dispel today.

Of course a story is not written in one sitting. I think we learned that fact way back in the good old days of high school composition writing, where we were taught to first write a draft, and then expand on it, so the English teacher would try to drill this into our heads.

The same goes in short story writing. We start with the draft, and then numerous re-drafts until we finally arrive at the desired outcome — the complete short story ready for a willing publisher and the glory that comes with seeing your work in print.

Drafting a short story is a very interesting process, and when you are still a beginner, you might need advice on how to do this before throwing everything away in frustration when it seems not to click.

As we mentioned that a story is not written in a single sitting, what you must strive to do once you start writing for that first time is just to keep on writing whatever comes into your head until you reach a point that you think you cannot go any further. As simple as all that.

Don’t be shy of including even things that seem silly in that first draft, the point here is to just unload all those crazy ideas that are filling up your mind, for in the long run they might prove very useful.

As you are piling in things into the manuscript, also remember that no one else is going to read it at that point except for yourself, and so nobody is going to laugh at you or something like that.

You might try to laugh at yourself by the way, as that is a super way of getting the creative juices running. Writing is not all about being serious, but also having fun as well.

Also again in the first draft, we like to worry about spelling and grammar. This is not the time to worry about that, so just write and write and keep on writing like there is no tomorrow.

As we made the short story our example, maybe you might finish that sometimes nonsensical-sounding first draft in one sitting, or maybe several days, and once done with that, now is the time to stand back and assess it by reading through.

As you read through, think about this. Have you ever gone to a construction site when the construction crews are ripping up the earth to start working on their new building?

If you have never done so, just give yourself time one day to visit there, and you will discover that the place is a total mess and not representative of the elegant building (if they are good at their job), that will stand there one day.

That is your first story draft, and how it all begins, so don’t give up on it yet.

Now that you have done your first assessment of the draft, it’s now time to roll up the sleeves and get to serious work.

You are now ready to carve out the story from all the ‘scattered’ ideas you were throwing in.

Personally, in the first drafts I usually like to align my story idea without caring much about grammar or spellings. If you are writing about character C going from point A to B, let’s see the straight movement, and the conflicts that they meet in their quest to get to their destination first.

Once you know where your character is going, how they do it, and whether they achieve the goal or not, then now comes the time to delete unnecessary things from the manuscript that you threw in during the first draft when the story concept was burning in your mind.

At this point you must be merciless — no matter how good something sounds, if it does not fit into the holistic story arc, just hit the delete button and send those darlings to the recycle bin.

At this point you are somewhere where your story is beginning emerge, where the light is beginning to glimmer through.

And at this point too I have to say adios, till the next installment of the hot tips for budding writers.

Please stay home, stay safe, and stay writing!