Short Story Process

I was recently asked about the process I use to write short stories -- something I seem fairly prolific at.

Of course, it starts with an idea. When I get an idea that I think might make a good short story, I go ahead and open a Word document and write the idea down, usually in one sentence.

Over a period of days or weeks, I'll open that document and I might write down a few more words or phrases, but not begin work on the story in earnest.

For example, my recently published short story "The Last Cowboy," started from this sentence: A modern-day cowboy in Madisonville, Texas gains justice. Over a period of a couple weeks, I wrote down a few other words -- rape, slaughterhouse, revenge, defense attorneys, technicalities. Literally, over two weeks or so, I only spent maybe 5 minutes on paper with the story.

However, during that time, my brain was working. The idea was fermenting and turning over in my head. A plot was developing and more importantly, a couple of characters were starting coming to life. Finally, a rough outline appeared in my head.

My short stories tend to be short -- shorter than 3,000 words and often less than 2,000 words. When I finally sit down to write the short story, I write the entire rough draft in one sitting, as I did with the Last Cowboy, which came in at 1,300 words.

After I write the rough draft, I'll quickly go at it again -- this time primarily working to eliminate passive verbs and grammatical errors. Then I set the story aside and let it sit for a little while, usually a week to two. I then do my final revision, which is a "smoothing" out, a revision to make sure the story flows smoothly and makes sense.

The off it goes.

In the case of The Last Cowboy, that story was rejected by two magazines -- Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. After those two rejections, I did one more revision, which I think did the story a lot of good. The improvements must have been obvious as the highly regarded Shred of Evidence, an online magazine, accepted it.