Start with Action: A Revision Strategy for Short Story Writers

How do you hook readers and keep them engaged?

A fiction writing student of mine recently asked for some feedback on his story. He said I should be “brutally honest.” I told him he could cut everything before page 5. (The story was 7 pages long).

Well, he didn’t like that. “I need that stuff,” he insisted. “I need the reader to know all that background.”

Maybe. But was there a way, I asked, to present the background a little more strategically? Like throwing some frozen kale in your smoothie or zucchini in your chili, was there a way to make that info dump go down a little easier?

Look, I’ve been there myself. Sometimes, as writers, we need to write our way into the story. But once we’ve found the story, we also have to be able to let go of all of the explication that is weighing our narrative down. You’re right — some of it probably is beautifully written. Maybe it’s even some of your best writing.

Regardless. It’s time to cut, cut, cut.

Here’s an exercise to try:

1. Look at your story. Find the place where the thing — the conflict, the meeting, the mistake, whatever it is — happens.
2. There is no thing? Is your work experimental? No? And still no thing? Literally nothing happens? Address this first. We’ll wait.
3. Okay, you found the thing. Now, cut everything before it. Start with the action.
4. Select which parts of the context and background are necessary. Weave those in carefully.
5. Reread. Does it work? Is the story is better this way?

Kelly Fordon’s “Superman at Hogback Ridge” — which I think is basically a perfect story — is an excellent example of beginning with action. Here’s the opening:

“I called my wife, Teri, to tell her the car had conked out on the road to Hogback Ridge. ‘Serves you right,’ she said. Then she hung up on me.”

This story starts with action (a phone call; a car breaking down) and provides a glimpse of a problematic family dynamic (which will of course play an important role in the story).

In subsequent paragraphs, the situation becomes more dire. At the same time, the narrator fills us in a bit about what’s going on with him and Teri, as well as why he’s on the road to Hogback Ridge in the first place. This info increases the tension in large part because now we care about these characters and what happens to them.

(Check out Fordon’s collection, I Have the Answer, to see read this expertly crafted story for yourself.)

Similarly, the first draft of my novella Great Expectations started out with a long description of one of the main characters; my editor immediately suggested I cut the complex (and, I thought, incredibly important) explication and get right into the story. I took her advice and the narrative now begins with the arrival of a terrified and terrorized young woman on her estranged aunt’s doorstep. How she got there is revealed only gradually — and is important to building the narrative tension.

So, give it a shot. Cut the context and leap into the action. Even if you don’t wind up sticking with this new organization, this exercise will, at the very least, make sure that you yourself are aware of the movement of your narrative, of whether or not anything actually happens and, if something is happening, if you are burying it too deeply and asking your reader to wait too patiently.

Start strong. Start with action.