Your character just found out they have a rare disease…that hasn’t been detected anywhere in centuries.Your character is an orphaned 7-year-old who hears voices.When your character’s heart is broken, they must find a way to heal it – any way.Your character hasn’t eaten in days and stumbles upon real berries, and so does a starving bear.Ash floated from the mountaintop and awoke your character from their night’s sleep.Your character lives in a space pod traveling space, and they’re also claustrophobic.Your character’s village wise woman tells the story of how magic was lost due to abuse.The character lost a child years ago but lives as if it just happened the day before.Character accidentally insults their company’s CEO – right before a big promotion.After a devastating fall, your character is learning the hardships of healing after an accident.Your character opens the mailbox to find their biggest fear inside.Here are 20 short story ideas to take your writing to the next level: Ultimately, you’ll have the best results by tweaking any idea you have of your own, but we also wanted to provide some short story ideas to help you get started. That said, we know it can take a trigger to come up with short story ideas that make you want to craft great writing around. Those are the ideas that you’ll care the most about and be able to bring to life the easiest.” You can pull ideas from short stories from everywhere.įormer short story editor and now-published short story author (with 2 collections), Hannah Lee Kidder says, “The best short story ideas will always come from you yourself. #1 – Come up with a strong short story idea Once you get through the steps for writing a short story, make sure to take a look at the short story ideas, tips for writing them, and common questions with answers all about short stories (including how long a short story is). Get your draft done as soon as possible.Start with something out of the ordinary.
If you want to learn how to write a short story or be a better short story writer, you’ll have to go through these main steps: Want to learn how to write a short story, and get better at this style of writing?īe sure to check out our post on publishing short stories once you’ve mastered the writing part. They may be difficult to get good at, but we’re breaking down how to make them much easier, and what makes for a good one to begin with. That’s why we’re showcasing the most important steps for writing a short story. Short stories, and getting good at writing them, can actually set you up for success in other writing ventures as well. īut that’s just not the case (there’s an art to writing an amazing short story)-and I’ll tell you why in just a minute. In fact, you might be the type who assumes short stories are even easier because, well…they’re short. You probably don’t think short stories are very hard to write. Remember that becoming a successful author is a journey, many start with short stories, blogging, or even poetry before going on to writing a book. Your students will thank you.Writing short stories can help tremendously in the process of becoming a successful author. We’ve highlighted our favorites at the top by pulling up stories that have either been shortlisted or won our contests, but each story here offers something unique. So if you want to teach something modern and exciting, pull up a chair and get reading our collection of new high school short stories. Provided by writers from around the world, these stories present a picture of high school life both modern and historical, and are written in more styles than you could ever cover in a single semester. These may not be the same old stories you’re used to teaching, but they’re ones that your teens are much more likely to actually want to read. We at Reedsy use our weekly short story contest to fill a never-ending well of exciting new short stories for high school students. If you’re looking for new and emerging voices to keep your students engaged, you’ve come to the right place. Between the distractions of Netflix, TikTok, and the latest games, there’s a lot of things your high school students may prefer over analyzing a new story.īut what if you offered them stories that were fresh, feisty, and relatable? Instead of only presenting them with famous short stories that are at least 50 years out of date, our collection of high school short stories provides you with a consistently fresh and updated collection teens can actually get behind. Let’s face it, it can be hard to get high schoolers excited about reading short stories. 2 … 83 Next › Last » The Best High School Short Stories