How to structure a short story

A short story isn't a small novel. It has room for one character's moment of change, seen up close, and almost nothing else. The short story structure in Mythforge is a five-part shape for that: hook, complication, crisis, climax and resolution, laid out as the scenes of a single chapter. It owes something to the classic dramatic arc and something to Edgar Allan Poe's argument that a short tale should aim at a single effect, with every part working towards it. The idea that makes it distinct is the one in its description: in late, one turn, out early. Start as close to the change as you can, let one thing turn, and leave before the reader's attention does.

The scenes

These are scenes rather than chapters, and in a story of five thousand words, some of them may be a single page.

The hook has more to do than its length suggests. In a novel you can spend a chapter on someone's ordinary life before anything happens; here the first paragraph should already show a character who wants something, in a voice the reader wants to keep listening to. Many good short stories open in the middle of the situation that will change, and let the reader catch up.

The crisis is the heart of the form. It's the point where the character has to choose, and in a short story that choice is often all the plot there is. It doesn't need to be dramatic: whether to answer a letter, whether to tell the truth at a funeral, whether to stay on the train. What matters is that it shows the reader who this person really is.

The resolution is short by design. A short story rarely explains what its ending means. It stops on an image or a line and trusts the reader to carry the rest.

Where it shines

The five-part shape suits almost any short fiction: literary stories, genre stories for magazines and anthologies, flash fiction stretched a little longer, competition entries with a word limit. It's especially useful when you're new to the form, because it pushes against the commonest problem in early short stories: too much setup. When the hook is only fifteen percent of the story, there's no space to explain the world before something happens.

It's also a good fit for stories set in a larger world. A short story is a way to visit a corner of your setting, a minor character or an event from the history, without committing to a book. If you build worlds in Mythforge, a short story can draw on your lorebook as readily as a novel does.

Where it struggles

The structure assumes a story that turns on a choice. Some fine short stories don't: vignettes, slice-of-life pieces, stories built on a mood or a slow revelation rather than a decision. For those, kishōtenketsu, which builds through contrast rather than conflict, may be a better fit.

It also won't stretch. If you find the complication needs several problems, or the story needs a second viewpoint to make sense, it may be a novelette or a novella trying to get out. That's not a failure, just a sign to choose a different shape.

Tips for using it

• Start later than feels comfortable. Draft your opening, then try cutting the first page. Often the story begins on the second.
• Keep to one problem. The complication should tighten one knot, not tie several. If a new problem appears, ask whether it's really the same one in a different form.
• Give the choice a cost both ways. A crisis where one option is clearly right isn't a crisis. The reader should understand why the character might choose either.
• Let details do double duty. In a short story, a description of a room should also tell you about the person in it. See how to write a scene.
• End on something concrete. An image or a line of dialogue lingers longer than a summary of what the character has learned.
• Read it aloud. At this length, rhythm matters as much as plot. You'll hear the sentences that don't earn their place.

A worked example

The hook: Petra, eleven, stands at her grandfather's funeral holding the harmonica he left her and can't play. The complication: her uncle, who is selling the house, wants it back, saying it's worth money, and over the afternoon he asks again, then insists, then makes her mother take his side. The crisis comes when she's alone in her grandfather's shed and finds the box it came in, with a price tag of a few pence still on it. She can hand it over and keep the peace, or keep it. The climax: she walks into the wake and plays it, badly, the one tune he taught her, and the room goes quiet. The resolution is her uncle, leaving, pausing at the door as if to say something, then going.

Short story in Mythforge

When you start a new manuscript from Short story, Mythforge sets up a single chapter rather than a book of them, with the form set to short story:

• A target of 5,000 words for the whole story, which you can change before creating it.
• One chapter, whose scenes are the five beats: Hook, Complication, Crisis, Climax and Resolution, each with its synopsis. Because the beats are scenes, the chapter count is fixed at one.
• No acts: a short story doesn't need them.

Everything stays editable: rename the scenes, add or cut them, and give the chapter a title if you like. On the corkboard the five scenes sit side by side as cards, so you can see at a glance whether the hook is doing too much. For how the feature works, see Story structures, and to compare every structure, choosing a story structure.