John Paxton Sheriff
Mention formula to short story snobs, and aspiring fiction writers risk putting their hard-won reputations in jeopardy. Yet formula in traditional storytelling of any kind has always existed. Travelling troubadours told their stories in a way that grabbed and held the listeners’ attention by using tried and tested methods: they began with ‘Once upon a time…’ and the listeners were hooked. You need to do the same with your writing to have any hope of catching the eye of magazine editors, and if it takes a formula to get you started, where’s the problem? After all, when the story is written, the formula you used to create the plot will be hidden beneath your sparkling, imaginative prose.
The six steps