1) Rule No 1: there are no rules. As I mention in the Preface to The Truth in Fiction, many great authors have waxed long and lyrically about the rules of writing short stories. Ignore them if you can. I like to think each short story possesses its own individual form - its signature, and it is in the form as much as in the content that grace and elegance should be found.
Peter Crawley
2) Evolution: the chicken or the egg, and which comes first? The first line or the idea? For me, it doesn't matter. If you've got a first line, run with it. If you've got an idea, explore it. Be free. Write until the nucleus of your story is plain to see, and then mould it.
3) Enchant, don't disenchant: Even when the denouement of your story proves pessimistic, like those of Maupassant and Maugham, ensure the journey is worthwhile. There can be great beauty in sadness, but try to avoid cliché or mawkish sentimentality. If you love your story, others will too. And the reverse very surely applies, for we're not writing to depress, we're writing to entertain.
4) Let your characters do the walking: give them a voice and allow them to set the theme, the mood, the pace and the tonality of each scene.
5) Infer and imply: you don't always have to pick the readers up by the scruff of their necks and rub their noses in the plot. Because a short story is simply that, short, leave the reader to watch through the windows of your writing and apply their own colour to your countryside.
6) Content and technique: create moral dilemmas, and conjure struggle, conflict and confrontation. But, be generous too: solve the riddles. Deliver hope, gratitude, relief and elation through redemption. Most short stories finish with what's become known as an O Henry Twist - the twist of fate, the irony, the surprise, but they don't always need to. Hemingway wrote a story about a boy, who strolls down to a brook to fish: however, on this day he meets with no luck so he goes home. The story is delightful in its simplicity. Keep it simple.
7) Write it then finish it: this sounds obvious, but it isn't. Begin at the beginning, write the middle and finish it. By all means put your story aside occasionally, but try to get your original idea down before it becomes diluted by second thoughts.
8) Sleep on it: with the first draft complete, and ignoring the temptation to correct errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation, sleep on it and come back to it in the morning.
9) Read it out loud: too much punctuation stilts the narrative. Vonnegut advised against the use of semicolons. He's right. Your story needs flow. It is a progression of poetry - an extended verse, if you like.
10) Polish it until it sparkles: make it a gem you never tire of admiring. Whereas a dozen words may obfuscate, two or three can dazzle. Polish your story, and polish it again and again until you are happy with it.
