Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Things You’ll Need:
- A computer
- Vivid imagination
- Ability to write coherently
Step1
Developing engaging characters for your short story could make the difference between being good and bad, between being published or not published. The breath and the depth of a character or characters are paramount to an engaging story.
Step2
If you have superficial characters that do not possess any depth to them, how will it read to people if you have them do fantastic feats, save someone or triumph in any way? They have to be believable whether or not they are based on truth or are made up. One of the best ways is make them more engaging.
Step3
Making them more engaging or attractive (not necessarily in the looks department either) to the audience means making them alluring and believable. If you have the main character, or a secondary character, as not being bright, then how credible would it be to have that person decipher something outside of his or her realm of thought? Gaining insight to a problem and finding a solution is one thing, but to have him or her being able to read Greek to learn a clue or something germane to the story line would not be engaging. It would be unrealistic to the point of me putting down the short story. While realism can be question in some of the stories I have read, as long as the character was believable, I could live with the fact that he or she had done something I questioned.
Step4
Additionally, I know creating an engaging short story can be difficult sometimes because of the brevity of the story. Oftentimes it can be a daunting task to show the effectiveness or believability to a character if you only wrote fifteen pages. Take special care of your choice of words to describe his or her actions. For example if I want a character to hold on to something for dear life, I would write that he grasped something instead of took hold of something. Grasping something means the grip was essential to the story. If you took hold of something it doesn’t state the necessity of the situation. Word choice is essential in trying to lure a captive audience and make them believe what you are trying to convey.
Step5
Developing an engaging character in a short story is more difficult than writing one for a novel. In a novel you have ample time to make the characters enthralling; in a short story you are limited. Take that into consideration.
Step6
All in all, creating charming and glamorous characters takes the length of the story into consideration, coupled with word choice and you will be well on your way in writing an engaging story with believable characters.
Authority 
Comments
Rockney said
on 4/12/2008 Great article for writing short stories! Thanks for sharing.