How to start writing a story: finish your first short story in 6 steps

You've wanted to start writing a story for a while, but when you open a blank page, you stall: what would you even write about, and is it all right to try when you're not a writer?

Fiction tells a story through characters and events you make up. This guide is for anyone who wants to write one as a hobby or just for themselves, and it goes in six steps from picking material out of your own life to finishing one very short story.

At a glance

1. Pick one memory, feeling, or scene from your own life
2. Build a character who is like you, but isn't you
3. Cut the story down to one scene and one event
4. Show the feeling through what the character does
5. Write to the end without fixing anything
6. Let it sit for a day, then revise once

Why a story and not a diary

In a diary or a personal essay, you speak as yourself. The more honest you are, the better it reads, and that's exactly why some things never make it onto the page: something you never said to your family, something you've been embarrassed about for years, a feeling you can't quite name.

In fiction, someone else says it. A person with a different age, job, and town goes through what you went through, and that step of distance lets you write what you couldn't put in a diary. Readers won't know whose story it is. Only you will.

So your first story doesn't need a big premise or a twist. It can start from something you already have.

Writing as a hobby: what you need to start

Writing fiction as a hobby asks for very little. A notebook or a blank document will do, and so will twenty minutes on an evening when you have them. Nobody has to read what you write, and you don't need a class or a book idea before you begin.

What helps most is a finish line you can reach. A whole novel is a long way off for a first try, and one short story isn't. Once you've finished one, you know how to get from a first line to a last one, and the next story is easier to start. The six steps below work on your own; if you'd like company later, step 6 has a few places to find it.

1. Pick one thing from your own life

If you look outside yourself for material, you can stay stuck on “what should I write about?” for a long time. Look inside and it's already there. Jot down whatever comes to mind under these three:

• A memory: a day that still comes back to you now and then. It can be small, like the empty room on moving day or the first time you rode a train alone.
• A feeling: something you feel often but rarely say. Swallowing what you meant to say and walking away, or feeling uneasy when someone praises you.
• A scene: an image that stuck with you for no reason. A shop with its lights on late at night, someone crying in the back seat of a bus.

Then choose just one. Mix several and the story grows, and a big story is hard to finish the first time out.

For this guide, say you picked “swallowing what you meant to say.”

2. Build a character who is like you, but isn't you

If you write what you picked as something that happened to you, you get a diary entry. To turn it into a story, you need a character to go through the feeling in your place.

Here's the rule: keep the feeling, change everything around it.

Changing the surface details helps in two ways. People who know you won't easily recognize you in it, and you can write more honestly because you're thinking, “This is Amanda's problem.”

Decide just three things about the character before you start:

• What does she want? Amanda wants to leave the shop and do something else.
• What's in the way? Her father has kept the place going on his own for years, and she's afraid that telling him would break him.
• One habit: when things get awkward, she does whatever she's doing more carefully.

You don't need a personality chart or a long backstory. Both grow as you write. If you want to work out the character in more detail, try the character sheet template.

3. Cut the story down to one scene and one event

For a first story, aim for flash fiction: a very short story, usually under 1,000 words. At that length, shrink the story like this:

• One place: inside the dry cleaner
• One stretch of time: the evening, at closing
• One thing that could change: does Amanda say it or not?

Next, decide how it ends before you write. Maybe she finally says it, maybe she swallows it again, maybe she gets it across some other way. Any of these works. If you know where you're headed, you won't get lost in the middle.

Here's the example plot in three lines:

1. At closing time, Amanda decides today is the day. She flips the sign to CLOSED.
2. Her father talks about a regular customer, then about plans for next year. Amanda starts ironing again.
3. She never says it. Instead, she picks up a pen and writes something in the ledger he left on the counter.

Three lines are enough for one story.

4. Show the feeling through what the character does

The most common place beginners get stuck is right after writing “Amanda was sad” or “She felt frustrated.” Once the feeling has a name, there's nothing left to say. Name a feeling and you get one line. Show it through action and you get a scene.

Amanda felt frustrated that she couldn't tell her father she wanted to quit.

Here's the same moment written as action:

Amanda spread the shirt she'd already ironed across the board again. She pressed the tip of the collar flat with her fingers, over and over. While her father talked about getting a new sign next year, the iron let out two puffs of steam.

“Frustrated” never appears, but the reader knows she's holding something back. The habit from step 2, doing whatever she's doing more carefully when things get awkward, is what carries the scene.

You don't have to write every sentence this way. Show the single most important moment through action, and the whole story reads differently.

5. Write to the end without fixing anything

Once you start going back to fix earlier sentences, a whole day can disappear into the first paragraph. The goal of a first draft is to reach the end. Writing it well can wait.

• Leave awkward sentences alone. You'll look at all of them together in step 6.
• When you get stuck, mark the spot and move on. Write something like “[Dad says something here]” in brackets and go to the next scene.
• Write toward the ending you chose in step 3. If the last line comes to you early, write it down.

You don't have to finish in one sitting. A couple hundred words a day, headed for the ending you picked, is enough.

6. Let it sit for a day, then revise once

If you revise the day you finish, the scene in your head fills in whatever the page leaves out, and you won't see the gaps. Wait a day or so, then read it as if for the first time. Reading it out loud makes the clunky sentences easier to catch.

This time, check just three things:

1. Can you tell what Amanda wants, and what's stopping her, from the page alone?
2. Is there a sentence that names a feeling where action would work better?
3. Did you fill in the brackets from step 5?

Once you've made those fixes, your story is done. You don't have to show it to anyone. If you'd like readers, r/shortstories on Reddit is a community for posting finished short fiction, and on Scribophile, an online writing workshop, you critique other members' work to get feedback on your own. If your local library runs a writing group, that's another place to bring it.

If you're just starting, do one thing today: pick a memory, a feeling, or a scene from step 1 and write it down in one line.

Common mistakes

• Planning a novel first. Map out a whole world and ten characters before you start, and you'll be worn out before the first sentence. For a first story, the best length is one you can finish.
• Making yourself the main character. With your own name and situation on the page, it's harder to be honest, and the story slides back into a diary. Change the surface details and keep only the feeling.
• Adding more sentences that explain the feeling. Writing “sad” or “lonely” more forcefully doesn't make the feeling bigger. Show what the character does in one scene.

Finishing your first story in TypeTak

TypeTak is an AI writing editor where you write alongside an agent. It's for taking the one thing you picked from your own life and writing it all the way to the end of a short story.

• Amanda stays Amanda. Write down Amanda's want, obstacle and habit from step 2 in one place, and the agent reads them before it answers. Ask “What would Amanda say here?” and the answer fits the person you described.
• You can see how far you've come. Set a daily goal of 300 words and today's count shows below the editor, like 180 / 300. While you push on to the ending without fixing anything, as in step 5, you know how much is left.
• A second read after a day's rest. After your own reread in step 6, ask for Feedback. You get an overall take, strengths and the passages to work on, each with a note on how to fix it. If you wrote Amanda against the habit you gave her, that shows up separately.

What to write, and how much of yourself goes into it, is up to you.

FAQ

Can I write a story if I've never written anything before?

Yes. A first story needs you to get to the end more than it needs polished sentences. Once you've finished one short piece, the next one comes much easier.

If I write about my own life, will people I know recognize it?

Change the character's age, job, and town, keep only the feeling, and it's hard to recognize. If something still worries you, swap out any event or line that only that person would know.

How long should my first story be?

As long as you can finish. A piece of flash fiction under about 1,000 words holds one scene and one event, and that's enough for a complete story.

Do I have to write every day?

No. Reaching the ending you chose matters more, and everyone's pace is different. A couple hundred words two or three times a week will get a flash fiction piece done within a month.

I want to write a web novel. Can I start the same way?

Building a character and settling the ending first work the same way. A web novel, though, is posted chapter by chapter over a long run, so you'll need to plan chapter length and pacing separately. That's covered in How to Write a Web Novel with AI in 7 Steps.