SHAPE UP
Help your short stories stand out from the crowd with ten suggestions and ideas from Alyson Hilbourne
FICTION
Alyson Hilbourne
So you’ve written a story, slaved over the characters and setting, refined the plot and that all important first line, and then rewritten the ending ten times, at least, until it really packs a punch.
What next?
Print it off and post with all fingers and toes crossed?
Stop!
Maybe there is more you can do to make your story stand out.
The way the whole story appears can be important too. Magazine editors can often tell by looking at the layout of a narrative whether it is likely to work for them. They see the white space on the page – the changing lengths of paragraphs and amount of dialogue – and know if the ratio is right. A literary journal will take a piece with less white space than a woman’s magazine but either way, the first thing the editor notices, is the layout of the text.
The same goes for competition judges. Do their hearts sink as they pull another script from the pile, only to find solid blocks of narrative with no rest for the eye?
How can you make your work look different on the page without resorting to green ink, a fancy font, perfuming the paper or rolling the offering up like a scroll — none of which will endear you to an editor or competition judge?
Below are ten suggestions to help your story or flash fiction shape up.
Make its appearance distinct and hopefully it will stand out from the heap. Of course the content is down to you, but if the text looks interesting and grabs the attention of editor or judge, then hopefully it will get through the first round of reading without a knock out.