One of the most popular writing genres these days is the short story. In a time when people are rushing about in their ever-busy lives and everything has to be shrunk down into headlines, summaries and bullet points in order to get someone’s attention, the short story stands out as a medium where people can be quickly entertained.

This is in comparison to a novel which takes far too long to complete and which requires a huge investment of time, energy and deep thought. Three values which are becoming increasingly rarer as everyone’s attention span turns into the length of a SMS message.

But its short duration does not mean that a short story is easy to write. Many a person have attempted to write short stories only to end up in the rejection pile of an editor’s desk. As someone with some experience in writing short stories, here’s four creative writing tips to make your short story more attractive to a book or magazine editor.

1. Don’t get too ambitious – Remember, a short story is in the region of 5000 – 10,000 words. It isn’t a novel which can be in the region of 100,000 words. Therefore if you are planning a mini Lord Of The Rings-type epic with wars, fantasy worlds, sword fights and magic, the short story may not be the right format and you should adjust your sights accordingly. If you are determined to make it a short story, scale down the plot and make it less complicated. Otherwise you are only letting yourself in for grief later.

2. Plan Beforehand – The short story is the one format where planning is absolutely essential. If you are restricted by a certain amount of words, you really need to make a framework of your story before any serious writing gets underway. If you are writing a crime short story (for example), you don’t want to get to 10,000 words and discover that your criminal hasn’t even been caught yet. So your framework could consist of the first chapter where the body is discovered and the last couple of chapters where you wrap everything up. In the middle, try and allocate certain important parts of the story to certain chapters. That way, you are working to a rough plan and should help you keep the story to an acceptable length.

3. Don’t waffle – Since your short story is constrained to a certain length, your prose has to be concise and to the point. Cut out all unnecessary scenes and keep things moving along briskly. Don’t succumb to the temptation of flowery wordy language. Instead of ten words, use five. Don’t show off with your linguistic prowess. You’re writing a short story, not a Shakespeare play.

4. The story should stand on its own – The ideal short story should be one where someone can read it and immediately understand what is going on. It shouldn’t refer to scenes and incidents from past stories and your story shouldn’t be seen as the prequel to the next one. Keep each story individual and separate so your readers won’t need any prior knowledge to be able to understand what’s going on.

The short story ironically requires a lot of work, compared to other genres but the potential payoff at the end is quite attractive as there is a huge insatiable market for short stories, especially in the fields of crime, science-fiction and romance. But try and stick to the four creative writing tips above to cut down on your writing time. After all, time is money right?

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Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer of 20 years experience, and also the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com, since August 2007. You can see his personal website at markoneill.org Mark has 21 post(s) at Free Writing Center