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41 Short Stories for High School: Free PDF Downloads

Below you will find the best short stories for high school across multiple genres: horror stories, mystery stories, humorous stories, classic stories, and more. Each story includes a link (READ IT) that will take you to a free copy you can read, copy, download or print.

We’ve also included a free PDF of our favorite short stories that you can download and print (see below) titled The Best Short Stories for High School . It includes stories by Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor, Madeline Yale Wynne, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, McKnight Malmar and Frank O’Connor.

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Best Short Stories for High School: Free PDF

Here are the Best Short Stories for High School (at least according to us).

We’ve taught each of these stories to high school students. Kids of all reading levels (including reluctant readers ) found them engaging and suspenseful. They are thought-provoking with plenty of spectacular twists.

To preview, click the thumbnail image below. You can download a free PDF copy by clicking the download button.

Want lesson plans for these stories? We’ve got those too. See what’s in the lesson plans . Lesson plans include material for 16 stories (the 8 in our PDF plus 8 more!).

Click to download our Free PDF.

Funny Short Stories For High School

Lord Oakhurst’s Curse

By O. Henry Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst Castle.

Machiavelli in Kindergarten

By Peter Schooff A hilarious story told as a series of letters from the kindergarten teachers of young Nicolo Machiavelli.

By Anton Chekhov A young man rushes to his parent’s house to tell them the joyous news about how his name is in the newspaper and he has become famous.

Cannibalism in the Cars

By Mark Twain A train is snowbound and the passengers must find a way to survive. Twain turns the ghastly into the wickedly hilarious.

Mystery Short Stories for High School

Full Circle

By Sue Grafton Private detective Kinsey Millhone witnesses a tragic car accident in which a girl is also shot.

Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

By Patricia Highsmith A man wants to purchase land from his neighbor, but the neighbor refuses. When the man’s daughter runs off with the neighbor’s son, bad goes to worse.

Possibilities

By Bill Pronzini I had been in the backyard no more than two minutes when Roger Telford’s bald head popped up above the boundary fence.

Uncle Auguste

By Andrew Allen No one seemed to know exactly who Uncle Auguste was. There certainly hadn’t been any members of the family by that name. 

Scary Short Stories For High School

Love horror? Check out our page on 40 Scary Stories to Read Online .

Mars Will Have Blood

By Marc Laidlaw “Too much ichor,” said red-faced Jack Magnusson, scowling into a playbook. “The whole tragedy is sopping in it. Blood, blood, blood. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson Markheim enters an antique shop late one night to sell a rare item but ends up murdering the shop owner instead.

The Great God Pan

By Arthur Machen An experiment designed to reveal the spirit world goes horribly wrong, leading to a series of disappearances and deaths.

The Armless Man

By WG Litt I had for some months been trying to find gold or diamonds by digging holes in the veldt.

An Original Revenge

By WC Morrow A soldier intends to kill himself in order to return as a vengeful spirit and take his revenge upon his commanding officer.

The Little Room

By Madeline Yale Wynn A tiny room in a farm house holds a mysterious secret, appearing to be a different room to each person who enters it.

The God of Dark Laughter

By Michael Chabon Thirteen days after the Entwhistle-Ealing Bros. circus left Ashtown two boys stumbled on a body that was dressed in a mad suit of purple and orange velour. 

Literary Short Stories For High School

The Other Woman

By Sherwood Anderson A man struggles with his final days before marriage as he falls for a young barista.

The Scarlet Ibis

By James Hurst The intense relationship between two brothers pushes one boy over the edge into death.

Your Body is a Jewel Box

By Kay Boyle The rain was falling just as it did every day at this time of the year, and when Olive got out of bed she saw that Mildred was sitting on the roof again and crying in the rain.

The Love of My Life

By TC Boyle A haunting story of two high schoolers in love as they enter college, get pregnant and decide what to do about the baby and their future.

A Father’s Story

By Andre Dubus A father frames himself for a potential crime to shield his daughter after she is in a car accident that may have killed someone.

Adventure Short Stories for High School

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

By Rudyard Kipling There is, as the conjurers say, no deception about this tale. Jukes by accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to exist, though he is the only Englishman who has been there.

A Descent Into the Maelstrom

By Edgar Allan Poe A seemingly old man recounts his horrific tale of being sucked into a massive whirlpool at sea and how he managed to survive.

The Boar Hunt

By Jose Vasconcelos A group of hunters stalk wild boars through the jungle. When they begin shooting a herd from the trees, they mistakenly believe it’s their lucky day.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

By Ambrose Bierce A man set for execution escapes his fate when the noose breaks. He flees, desperate to escape from his executioners.

Science Fiction Short Stories for High School

Everything’s Eventual

By Stephen King A young man with very special powers is enlisted to quietly and mysteriously kill people around the country.

The Nine Billion Names of God

By Arthur C. Clarke A group of monks living atop the mountains purchase a supercomputer to help them identify all the names of God and bring an end to the universe.

By Isaac Asimov The planet Lagash has known nothing but sunlight for over 2,000 years. Now they are preparing to experience their first nightfall in millenia.

By Frederic Brown Escalating conflict between Earth and the alien Outsiders must be resolved through single combat between an earthling and an Outsider.

Microcosmic God

By Theodore Sturgeon A brilliant biochemist creates a synthetic lifeform in an attempt to improve mankind, but the results are not at all what he imagined.

Classic Short Stories for High School

By John Steinbeck A man finds his wife in the arms of another man, leading to a horrible murder and its aftermath.

The Tall Men

By William Faulkner Two men arrive at a house with a warrant for the McCallum brothers, but they must first deal with the McCallum relatives, one of whom has had a terrible accident and needs his leg amputated.

The Blue Hotel

By Stephen Crane An intense card game leads to a brutal fight in a blizzard.

The Gambler, the Nun & the Radio

By Ernest Hemingway They brought them in around midnight and then, all night long, everyone along the corridor heard the Russian. ‘Where is he shot?’ Mr. Frazer asked the night nurse.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

By Flannery O’Connor A family finds themselves in dire straits on the road when they run into the Misfit, an insane, murderous escaped convict. 

41 Short Stories for Middle School

8 Diverse Memoirs for the Classroom

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"Charlieeeeeeee, do your homework now!" Wow, his mother was really bellowing at him . Charlie thought, "Well, she doesn't have to do it. It's so boring", and he spent hours with his books , hoping that time would pass and it would soon be time for supper. As usual, he was lying on his bed, busy staring at the ceiling, daydreaming. Suddenly some little elves, no more than a centimetre tall , appeared by the window.

"Good evening, young man, will you please give us your homework so we can play with it?", asked one of the elves, politely.

Charlie laughed.

"How are you lot going to play with homework? It's the most boring stuff there is! Ha, ha, ha... Go on, take it. You can play with it as long as you like" .

Charlie watched his guests, and was so surprised to see what they did. In less than a minute, they had formed teams and were busy playing with the pen , the eraser, the book, and the pad of paper. Very strange stuff they were getting up to. Like with the sums, instead of moving the pen across the paper , they would hold the pen still and move the paper instead. Or like how they had races to see who could do the sums fastest. And then they all dressed up as either Father Christmas, a Halloween pumpkin, or a bag of cheese. And whenever the clock was stopped , the elf who was in the lead got to draw himself in the notepad.

So the pad ended up full of Santas and pumpkins. They were also really funny while learning to read. They used well-known songs, and had to learn the words to them . When they had done that they put on a big concert to sing those songs. Charlie really enjoyed watching those little students, he even joined in with the singing. And time passed so quickly, that suddenly his mother was calling him for supper.

"Aww, what a pain! This is so much fun..." he groaned, as he got up to go to supper. "Of course it's fun! I already told you. Why don't you try it for a few days yourself? We'll all come back to see you again from time to time".

"Deal!" agreed Charlie.

So, every evening, Charlie started playing with his homework , inventing new and crazier ways to make it more fun. He would dress up, sing loads of songs, and do all manner of other things too . Now and again, his elf friends would turn up, although the truth was that he wasn't sure whether they really had come through the window or from out of his own imagination.

Neither Charlie's parents, nor his teachers, nor anyone in the whole school could understand the great change in him . From that day on, not only did he spend a lot more time doing homework, he did it perfectly, and accompanied with lots of drawings. He was very happy, and was always singing. His mother told him how proud she was at seeing him work so hard , especially at something she knew he found boring. But Charlie said to himself, "Well, she doesn't have to do it. It's fun!"

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20 Super-Short Stories Your Students Will Love

As teachers struggle to make the most of every minute in the classroom and appeal to students’ diminishing attention spans, sometimes size does matter when it comes to reading selections. Even short stories can be daunting for reluctant high school readers. “It’s so long!” students may moan when presented with traditional anthology classics like “ The Most Dangerous Game ,” at 8,013 words or “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” at 3,768 words.

Shorter works of fiction are no less rigorous than their longer counterparts. Flash fiction is a genre of literature that demonstrates craft elements and packs thematic punches with a tight word count. While the definition varies, flash fiction most often refers to pieces under 1,000 words but possibly up to 2,000. Average readers can complete 1,000 words in approximately 3.3 minutes if they’re reading at a speed of 300 words per minute, making flash especially appealing.

Students are often more likely to completely read pieces that take under five minutes to finish. It’s also much easier to encourage and facilitate the multiple readings that are often necessary for students to fully understand and explicate a complex text.

Flash fiction selections are great as bell-ringer readings while still being rich enough to settle in for long discussions of craft and theme. You can also frontload longer works of fiction with these little pieces. Since they’re all delightfully short, they’re easy to slide into an existing lesson play, or you can build a day’s lesson around one. Finally, the brevity of these pieces will allow you to make copies on only one or two sheets of paper and work on annotating in class. Here are twenty that students will love.

20 Super-Short Stories Your High School Students Will Love

• “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin This story is popular with teachers not only because it weighs in at just over 1,000 words, but also because it’s replete with literary elements to demonstrate craft. In the story, a young wife, Louise Mallard, is informed that her husband is dead. Rather than mourning, she retreats to her room alone to quietly and joyfully contemplate a life of freedom without a man to dictate her life. The story takes a twist, however, when her husband returns home, oblivious to the news of his death. The shock brings on a heart attack and instant death, and everyone assumes the wife’s heart gave out from the happiness of seeing her husband alive and well. The readers will know better, however, what the source of the “joy that kills” actually is.

Chopin’s trim little story is a masterclass in pacing, dramatic irony, and characterization. Students from middle school up to AP English Literature can find richness and meaning in the text, even after multiple readings.

• “The Flowers” by Alice Walker The plot is simple and horrifying: Myop, the child of Black sharecroppers, goes for a walk in the forest, gathers flowers, accidentally steps on an old skull, and finds the remains of a lynched man. At under 600 words, this compact piece is perfect for repeated readings for analysis of Walker’s syntax along with other elements such as plot structure, characterization, and symbolism and themes of racism and loss of innocence.

This piece pairs beautifully with works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Walker herself. Students will enjoy discussing the symbolic significance of the shift from the farm to the woods, the juxtaposition of light and dark, the flowers, and, of course, the skeleton. They can also explore how Walker creates an entire archetypal hero’s journey in less than one page.

• “Birthday Party” by Katharine Brush At a lean 312 words, “Birthday Party” is rich with elements of characterization and detail. It centers on a scene in a restaurant with a wife having a special dinner for her husband’s birthday that doesn’t go the way she expected or wanted.

There are shifting points of view within the piece that are rich for classroom discussion about perspective. It can also be used for a creative writing model in rounding out a scene and using specific details to illustrate character. This story was the 2005 AP English Literature Free Response Question 2.

• “Currents” by Hannah Bottomy Voskuil This story is just under 300 words and is told backward. It’s the story of a drowning incident at a beach, but the inverted plot makes it interesting for students to discuss narrative arcs, syntax, detail, and characterization.

Students can also try their hand at writing their own backward story, using “Currents” as a model.

• “Being the Murdered Homecoming Queen” by Cathy Ulrich “The thing about being the murdered homecoming queen is you set the plot in motion.” With that first line, Ulrich moves readers forward in a wild ride of ghosts, grief, and girls. Told in second person from the point of view of a dead homecoming queen, this story is a 428-word murder mystery. Ulrich’s use of repetition and powerful imagery make this story incredibly readable and perfect for group discussion.

Students will enjoy drilling into themes of gender roles, performative grief, teenage relationships, and the transience of memory.

• “Entropy” by Andrea Rinard At just under 500 words, “Entropy” depicts an unnamed teenager in her room, struggling with her own mental illness. The story depicts not only the girl’s waxing and waning despair and hope but also her complex feelings of love, guilt, and resentment toward her caretaking mother.

The use of symbolism and repetition will give students lots to discuss. They will also connect with the speaker’s various attempts to find ways to both ground herself and escape.

• “And No More Shall We Part” by Sutton Strother This piece is just under 1,000 words and juxtaposes an incredibly creepy situation with a tender love story. A couple, Joe and Katherine, check into a hotel and slowly experience the complete deterioration of their bodies. Is it a romance? Is it a horror story? Is it speculative fiction? At first students will wonder what the “it” is that’s coming for Joe and Katherine, but in the end it won’t matter as they focus on the relationship that endures even as the flesh dissolves.

Your students will enjoy using what they know about genre and discussing how to characterize this story. They can also talk about the incredible details of the piece and the rising tension.

• “Popular Mechanics” by Raymond Carver Carver is well-known as one of the greatest short story writers. In this story of just 495 words, Carver depicts a marriage at the moment of destruction and an ending that will have students’ jaws dropping as they discuss what might be one of the most horrifying and stunning last lines in all of literature.

Students love discussing the ambiguity of the story and trying to get closure, asking, “Did that really happen?” “Was that what I thought it was?” They can also discuss dialogue, syntax, detail, and understatement.

• “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid Kincaid’s breathless 685-word story is told in the voice of a daughter, reflecting on the perceptions and directions of her domineering mother. Told almost entirely in imperative commands, the story explores the relationship between mother and daughter and the expectations that can be too heavy a weight to bear.

This piece is a great work in which to explore how character and setting are inextricably linked. Students can consider how the spaces and places we occupy create our identity. Students will also enjoy analyzing elements of syntax, voice, and tone. If you’re looking for a creative writing activity, it’s a really fun piece for students to model in their own writing.

• “The Cranes” by Peter Meinke* Students will enjoy the beautiful language and leisurely pacing of this 903-word piece featuring a sweet elderly couple sitting and watching birds and reflecting on their marriage.

After hitting the shocking twist at the end, students can go back and trace the breadcrumbs that were there all along. Meinke’s use of dialogue is masterful, and students always enjoy reading this piece aloud.

*Content Warning—deals with suicide

• “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros This piece is a little longer at almost 1,200 words, but it’s beloved and widely read because it’s accessible and relatable for younger and less confident readers. It’s Rachel’s birthday, and she reflects on what it feels like to turn eleven while facing an embarrassing conflict in school.

Students will enjoy reminiscing about their own dramas and traumas at the hands of teachers and classmates while also analyzing Cisneros’s craft, especially the lyrical language and effective syntax. This story is also a great jumping-off point for creating a believable young protagonist or embarking on a memoir writing activity.

• “No One’s a Mystery” by Elizabeth Tallent Tallent’s depiction of a sordid love affair between a young girl and an older married man is told in the alternating dialogue of its two main characters. In just 927 words, Tallent explores the time before a coming of age moment when a teenager still lacks the wisdom of knowing at least a little bit about how the world works.

The intersection of idealism and realism will give students a lot to talk about along with Tallent’s use of detail and narrative pacing.

• “Powder” by Tobias Wolff This is a longer piece at 1,544 words, but one that students always enjoy. It centers on a father and son trying to get home for Christmas after a day of skiing. After being deterred by a state trooper, a closed road, and heavy snow, the father decides to sneak through and drive home in dangerous conditions, telling his son on their way, “Don’t ever try this yourself.” As the journey continues, details emerge that reveal conflicts under the surface of the family.

Students will enjoy this small moment that reveals a much larger landscape in the life of the characters. The symbolism of the setting, especially the snow, is rich for discussion, and students will connect with their own relationships with parents and other adult figures.

• “My First Goose” by Isaac Babel This story comes in at just under 1,500 words and is a wonderful study in cause and effect as well as character. Set in post WWI Europe, the narrator, Kiril Lyutove is a Russian Jewish intellectual who is struggling to balance his own philosophical beliefs with the brutality of war. He doesn’t feel like he fits in with the huge but violent Cossacks he’s alongside, so he earns their respect with a fake act of barbarism.

There is a lot of ambiguity that allows students to discuss different interpretations of the events. They can also discuss the paradox of war as heroic and inhumanly brutal. The themes of sacrificing one’s values and sense of self in order to fit in will resonate with students. It’s a great pairing with The Things They Carried.

• “The Pie” by Gary Soto At 872 words, Soto’s story of a boy stealing and then facing the guilt for stealing a pie provide students an opportunity to tune their ears to tone. The pacing of this piece is masterful as the protagonist struggles with the tension between his desire to eat the pie and his feelings of shame and guilt for stealing it.

This story always inspires fun discussions of situational ethics and how easy it is to rationalize things that should be objectively wrong. There are also surprising Biblical allusions that students can unpack.

• “Wake Up” by Kathy Fish What would you do if your elderly neighbor showed up naked on your front porch in the middle of the night? The speaker of Fish’s “Wake Up” deals with this situation with details that build and build to create a rich story that will leave readers wondering how all that managed to be communicated in under 500 words.

Themes of community and connection are woven through the story. Put on Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” while the kids read and enjoy hearing them do the “la la la la la la” under their breaths.

• “Sticks” by George Saunders Every family has its own weird traditions. In this 392-word flash by master storyteller Saunders, the narrator’s father keeps a metal pole in the yard which he decorates for different holidays and events.

The ending is poignant and powerful, and it will spark a discussion of characterization and detail. The main character’s bitterness and subsequent transformation will resonate with students.

• “Where Are You?” by Joyce Carol Oates Oates is a prolific novelist, and students may have read her longer short stories such as the widely-anthologized and creeptastic, “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” In this 523-word flash with another question as its title, the elderly couple suffers from an inability to communicate. The husband won’t wear his hearing aids, and the wife is exhausted by his habit of wandering the house, calling out to her.

Students should enjoy considering this depiction of a relationship in all its complexity. The twist at the end is shocking and apt for lots of discussion.

• “The School” by Donald Barthelme At slightly over 1,200 words, Barthelme focuses on the lives and deaths that take place in a school classroom and its community. It starts in a normal day at school with the narrator-teacher talking about how the students are planting orange trees But trees die, just like snakes die. Mice, salamanders, gerbils, dogs, students, their parents… everything and everyone dies. The students start asking questions, and a theme emerges about the meaning of life. The casual, matter-of-fact tone of this piece makes it even more funny than the events being chronicled.

If your class is tackling surrealism or magical realism, this story can be a gateway or a backloading opportunity. Students will also enjoy talking about the big issues in life that are as ineffable as they are incomprehensible.

• “As the North Wind Howled” by Yu Hua It’s a longer story at 1,371 words, but after the slow, contemplative pace of the first couple of paragraphs in which the main character wakes up and spends time observing items in his room, things pick up with a knock at the door. “So that was how, on this lousy morning, a muscleman kicked down my door and lumbered me with a friend I had no interest in having—a friend who was about to die, no less. What’s more, the north wind was howling like a banshee outside. I had no overcoat or scarf, no gloves or hat—all I was wearing was a thin jacket as I went off to visit this friend I knew absolutely nothing about.”

It’s a strange little story that’s great for discussing plot structure, conflict, and themes of community, connection, and grief.

Some Final Thoughts About Using Flash Fiction in the Classroom

The above list includes titles that have been tried and tested by experienced English teachers, but it’s absolutely not an exhaustive list. Online literary magazines that feature flash fiction such as Flash Fiction Online, Word Riot, Everyday Fiction, and Smokelong Quarterly, just to name a few, are treasure troves for teachers to access high quality work for students to enjoy. For many students, flash fiction is a gateway to literature that they can not only enjoy in the classroom but also find on their own. As you try titles from this list in your classroom, explore others by the authors you learn to love and the online magazines that feature many other fantastic flashes.

1 thought on “20 Super-Short Stories Your Students Will Love”

I really appreciated this list. it included stories I was unaware of. I look for literature that my students may not have been exposed to before so that they don’t feel like they are reading the same texts over and over again.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Free social stories about homework, study skills, & tests.

The other day it occurred to me that my kids probably don't really know how to study for a test simply because no one has specifically taught them or shown them how. 

Well, that and there hasn't really been a reason to really study for them yet. But as my oldest approaches high school, this skill set will become more important.

So, quite recently we talked about different ways to study. I showed my kids some different ways they could review their notes and how they could test their knowledge themselves in little ways. That kind of thing.

But I thought it would be helpful to look for some free social stories about homework, study skills, and taking a test  to supplement as needed. And in case someone else might be in the same boat, trying to help their kids learn how to study.

Below you will find a variety of social stories about taking tests, what homework is, cheating and plagiarism, taking notes, writing a research paper or essay, and more. Hopefully you find these helpful!

Free Social Stories About Homework, Study Skills, & Tests

Have you been looking for a social story about doing homework or a social story about test anxiety? Then look no further than these free printable study skills social stories. Some require you to have a Teachers Pay Teachers account (which is free!) before you can download them.

I've rounded up some options for you to explore. That way you find the best homework related social story for yourself or your child. Or you can simply use ideas from different stories below to write your own custom story (free social story templates here to help).

Please note that just because a social story is listed here does not mean I endorse its content. After all, many social stories tend to be poorly written and/or teach autistic masking. Besides, I haven't read all of these stories word for word myself. So please read through the stories carefully before using them.

1. 4 Homework Social Stories from Happy Learners - There are four text-only social stories here about doing homework. No images are included with these stories. The topics include what is homework, why you have to do homework, finding a routine for doing school work at home, and how to keep track of assignments and their due dates.

2. Social Story About Taking Tests at School from Social Stories: Power Tool for Autism - This story includes two clipart images. Otherwise, it's primarily text only. It talks about some test taking rules.

3. Cheating Social Story from Watson Institute - There are lots of stories here, but scroll down until you find the cheating one. It talks about test taking, asking for help, and what cheating is. It uses colorful clipart.

4. Social Stories for Tests & Homework from Watson Institute - There are a number of stories here. One topic that I'm glad to see here is "Sometimes Kids Don't Get 100%" as I know many kids struggle with that.

5. Completing School Work & Assignments Social Stories from Watson Institute - You'll find lots of relevant stories here. Topics include: completing assignments, completing school work, how to start work by myself, and completing work independently.

6. Doing Homework Social Story from Meghan Brice on TPT - This story comes as a PowerPoint so you should be able to edit it. It uses a mix of photos and clipart.

7. Taking a Test Social Story from Mathnolia on TPT - This story looks like it does a good job of explaining what a test is and the different types of tests a child might encounter. It appears to use primarily clipart.

8. Social Story About Taking Exams from Centre for Autism Middletown - Scroll to the bottom and you'll find a one page social story about taking exams. It includes one photo.

9. Avoiding Plagiarism Checklist from Laura Torres on TPT - Okay, it's not technically a social story. However, it's a great checklist for helping kids avoid plagiarism. It would be a great visual to have handy while doing homework or research papers.

Video Social Stories About Study Skills, Note Taking, & More

Here are some video social stories that talk about different aspects of homework, taking tests, and other relevant study skills. You can use these in teletherapy sessions, social skills groups, at home, and/or classroom settings. Videos are always a great alternative to printing off a story.

Like the stories above, some of the wording in these videos aren't always great. But I wanted to make sure you had lots of different options for helping yourself or your child understand different aspects of study skills and completing homework. Remember, many of these videos are geared towards different age groups.

I was surprised by how many free social stories about homework (and related study skills!) are actually out there. Hopefully you'll find one or two that will be useful for your needs.

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13 Entertaining ESL Homework Ideas to Keep Your Students Engaged

Homework may not be many students’ favorite thing, but research says it’s truly an effective learning tool that teachers should use .

The trick is assigning great homework.

To help you do this with ease, we’ve compiled an awesome list of 13 homework assignments that will have your ESL students begging for more.

1. Read a Short Story

2. share a passion, 3. start a chat group, 4. listen to a podcast, 5. write a letter, 6. write an amazon review, 7. do a wikipedia edit, 8. write a short story or poem, 9. share their culture, 10. catch a movie, 11. meet new people, 12. analyze a song, 13. go on a photo scavenger hunt, what makes homework effective.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Have students read a short story for homework and then ask them to tell the class about the story in the next session.

I would recommend giving students some suggestions on what short stories to read, depending on the level of your students.

Here are some suggestions of short story collections for each level of ESL learner:

• “The Very First Americans” by Cara Ashrose: This collection of short stories features Native American culture and history, written in simple language.
• “Oxford Bookworms Library: Starter Level” This series offers simplified versions of classic stories, such as fairy tales, adventure stories and more.
• “Classic Tales for ESL Students” by L.A. Hill: This collection of classic stories from literature is retold with easier vocabulary and sentence structure.

Intermediate

• “The Best American Short Stories” This series features contemporary short stories from a wide range of American writers, so there’s something for everyone here.
• “Short Stories in English for Intermediate Learners” by Olly Richards: This collection of engaging stories is designed specifically for intermediate ESL students.
• “Roald Dahl: The Collected Short Stories” This delightful collection of quirky and imaginative tales has become a favorite of many of my students.
• “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri: This Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories explores the immigrant experience, something which many ESL students can relate to.
• “Dubliners” by James Joyce: This classic collection of interconnected stories captures the essence of Dublin in 1914. But it still feels modern to many students.
• “Nine Stories” by J.D. Salinger: This classic collection of short stories is a class favorite when I’ve used it.

What do your students really care about? Give them a chance to talk about it in front of the class. 

Have each person choose something they’re passionate about, something they might consider themselves an expert on.

Challenge students to think of a creative way to present five must-know facts about that subject. They might make a movie, create a poster or brochure, write a song or even put on a skit.

Have each person present their creative project to the class, and then give the class five minutes to ask questions of the presenter.

Set certain parameters like students must speak in complete sentences or require that every student ask at least two questions at some point during the presentations.

Students will love sharing about their passions, and they’ll get some great speaking, listening and discourse information in the process, as well as teach the rest of the class some interesting vocabulary.

Ask for class for a volunteer to start a class WhatsApp chat group. They can also decide to use another messaging app like Telegram, Viber, Voxer or any other app that has a group chat function. 

Encourage them to send at least one message and to respond to a couple others for their homework. 

This text group has the added advantage of students being able to make friends with one another, and a place to ask about missed homework assignments on days when they can’t make it to class.

Note that if a student doesn’t want to be included in the chat group, you should have a back up assignment prepared for them.

Listening is one of the ESL student’s most difficult skills to acquire, so listening to a short podcast episode is ideal homework.

You can ask students to write a little about the podcast to turn in to you, or you can ask them to briefly summarize what they heard for the class in the next session.

Here are some suggestions for well done podcasts:

The English We Speak : Produced by the BBC, this podcast focuses on teaching commonly used phrases and idioms in conversational English.

The Moth : A storytelling podcast where real people share their personal experiences and anecdotes in English.

Stuff You Should Know : Though not specifically designed for ESL students, this podcast covers a vast array of interesting topics, providing exposure to diverse vocabulary and subject matters.

Ask your students to write a letter . The letter can be written to a friend or family member (which they could then actually mail or email), or it could be a fan letter to a favorite musician or actor. They could even write a letter to Santa Claus or a historical figure. 

For example, a student might choose to write a letter to Marie Antoinette, asking her what it was like to be the queen of France at such a young age. 

You can also choose to have students write letters to one another. Then the next homework can be writing that letter writer back.

Ask you students to review a product on Amazon (or any other shopping website that has reviews). Ask them to select a product they have really used, so they have a genuine opinion on the quality of the product and whether it lived up to their expectations.

Then, in the next session, show the reviews on the overhead projector to the class and ask a student to read the review.

You can then go over any errors in vocabulary, grammar or sentence structure and revise the review together as a class.

Since anyone can edit a Wikipedia article, it’s a great place for ESL students to hone their writing and editing skills, and they’ll have a built-in readership, too!

Ask students to select a person that they know a lot about—a well-known figure from history, pop culture, music or film would all work. Then ask them to read the Wikipedia entry to see if they can add anything else to the article.

Perhaps the article on Ryan Gosling is missing a key detail about his recent Ken performance. If so, the student will revise and edit the article. They should take notes on what they changed, so they can explain it to you or the class the next day.

Ask your students to get creative. Have them write a short story or a poem . This can get them to use descriptive language that they don’t always have a chance to use.

One good activity to do before you assign this homework is an adjective bubble chart. For this, you start with one adjective. For example, write “moist” on the board, circle it and then draw 4-5 lines coming off of the”moist” bubble.

Ask your students to come up with other adjectives that are related to “moist” and so on. They may come up with “wet,” “watery,” “soaked” or “damp.” Then draw lines from each of those. This can lead to words that you never expected to come up.

Have your students select 3-4 adjectives from this introduction activity that they’ll use in their story or poem.

Ask your students to prepare a short presentation on an aspect of their home culture to tell the class about in the next session. 

For example, a student from China may explain the Lunar New Year, a student from Vietnam may explain Tet or a student from El Salvador may tell the class about their quinceañera .

They can use photos, art, a PowerPoint presentation or they can just explain in their own words.

Then open the class up for questions.

Can you legitimately send students to the movies for homework? You can when you’re teaching ESL.

Your students don’t have to commit to a full-length movie. Instead, you can use the videos on FluentU to screen mini-lessons using clips from TV shows and movies, movie trailers, news segments, vlogs or music videos.

Use these videos in the classroom or assign homework to watch a few and complete the subsequent quizzes. You can also ask students to complete flashcard quizzes based on vocabulary words you want them to pay special attention to. These quizzes are adaptable so every student will have a unique experience catered to his learning level.

There are plenty of ways to use a movie for language development. And whether students watch a new release or catch an old Elvis flick on TV, they can do any of the following activities as homework:

• Summarize the plot.
• Describe a main character.
• Note new or interesting vocabulary (particularly slang) they hear while watching.
• Write an interview with one of the characters in the movie.

I’m sure you also have your favorite movie-related language activities and many work as homework assignments. So get creative with how you have students share about what they watched.

For the most part, people are willing to help someone in need, and that is doubly true for someone who needs to complete an assignment for school.

That’s why sending students out to interview native speakers on campus is such a fun homework assignment.

Start by helping your students write a list of questions they’ll use for their interviews. Students can choose a topic or you can assign one, like leisure activities or celebrity news.

Tell students to list five to ten questions they might ask on that topic that will elicit specific answers. 

As a class, discuss how students might introduce themselves to a potential interviewee. 

Then send students out to their interviews after class. They can share the answers they got in the next session.

Music is great for English learners since it stresses many aspects of language that can otherwise be hard to isolate, like the emotion of language, intonation and stress.

Have students choose their favorite English language song to listen to for homework and then ask them to do the following:

• Practice the lyrics to learn intonation and rhythm.
• Note slang and cultural references in the songs.
• Summarize the theme of the song, or just what it’s about.
• Have students share their favorite lyrics and what a particular song means to them.

Give individual students or groups of up to three students a list of items to find on their homework scavenger hunt. But instead of being specific in your list (for example, including items such as cat), be descriptive in your list.

You might include items such as something frightening, something beautiful, something quiet, something cool.

Students find items they think fit the description. For example, someone who is claustrophobic might choose an elevator for something frightening. They then take a picture of it.

The next day, have each person get with a partner and show them the pictures they took for each item on the list.

If the connection is not obvious, students should ask their partner to explain why they chose a particular item, such as the elevator.

Assigning homework that works isn’t as hard as you might think, especially if you focus on the following points.

• Put your homework in writing. It can be tempting to just announce homework assignments to students at the end of class, but language learners benefit when you reinforce what you say with what they can see. So take a minute to write any homework assignment on the board so students can read it as well as listen to it.
• Let students know what goals you have for a particular assignment. Is it practicing a certain grammar point ? Improving their listening skills ? Pronunciation practice ? When students know why they’re doing something, they’ll be able to tell on their own when they’ve successfully completed their homework assignment.
• Keep your homework practical . Your students may not find themselves planning out a menu for Thanksgiving when they leave your ESL classroom, but odds are they’ll have to order food at a restaurant at some point. Think about realistic ways students will have to use English in the real world and try to make your homework practical.
• Let your students be creative . Give your students choices on how they express themselves or present information. It’s okay for students to make a home movie, put on a one-man play or paint a picture to present to the class. Just because you prefer a particular type of creative expression doesn’t mean your students do, so give them choices and let them express themselves.
• Make homework fun! Every class has its own personality, so what’s fun for one might not be fun for another. Tailor your assignments to the personality of your class. Think about what they would think is fun, and go with that.

No matter what you believed in your student days, homework doesn’t have to be boring. With a little creativity when assigning homework, you might find that the activities you assign for outside of class become the highlights of your students’ days.

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Short Story Writing for Students and Teachers

What Is a Short Story?

The clue is in the title!

Short stories are like novels only…well…shorter! They contain all the crucial elements of fully developed stories except on a smaller scale.

In short story writing, you’ll find the key story elements such as characterization, plot development, themes explored, etc., but all within a word count that can usually be comfortably read in one sitting.

Short stories are just one of many storytelling methods; like the others, they help us derive meaning from our world.

How Do Short Stories Differ From Novels?

The reduced scale of a short story explains most of the differences the form has with longer forms such as novels.

Short stories usually have a tighter focus on a single main character and rarely shift between perspectives the way we often find in longer works of fiction.

Space is of the essence in this form, so long passages of exposition are usually avoided and the story starting at the last possible moment.

In purely numerical terms, short stories can be anywhere between about 1,000 to around 20,000 words or so, though many would consider even 10,000 too long.

A short novel clocks in at around 60,000 words, with word counts between 20-60,000 words being taken up by that red-headed stepchild of prose, the novella.

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A MASSIVE COLLECTION of resources for narratives and story writing in the classroom covering all elements of crafting amazing stories. MONTHS WORTH OF WRITING LESSONS AND RESOURCES, including:

How to Write a Short Story

Good storytelling is an art. But, luckily it’s a craft too and, like any craft, the skills and techniques can be learned by anyone.

In this article, we’ll first take a look at some ways to kickstart the short story writing process, before taking a look at some of the structural considerations essential for students to understand before they write their short stories.

We’ll also explore some simple practical activities that will help students to draw on their creative resources and personal experiences to help bring their stories to life.

Finally, we’ll look at some general tips to help students put a final polish on their masterpieces before they share them with the world.

How t o begin a story

Create a Dramatic Question

The first thing a student needs to do when writing a short story is to create a dramatic question. Without a dramatic question, readers will have no motivation to read on as there will be no story .

This dramatic question can take many forms, but as it will be the driver of the plot, it will be the single most important element of the story.

Take the movie Rocky as an example. In it, an aging journeyman boxer, Rocky Balboa, answers two dramatic questions:

1. Will Rocky find love?

2. Can he become the Heavyweight Champion of the World?

Often the dramatic question is of this will she/won’t she type. But, whatever form it takes, there must be some obstacles put in the way of answering it.

These obstacles can come in the form of an external obstacle, such as an antagonist or a negative environment, or the form of an internal obstacle, such as heartbreak or grief.

This is the conflict that creates the crucial element of suspense necessary to engage the reader’s interest.

Whatever form a student’s dramatic question takes, it will provide the plot impetus and how the student will explore their story’s theme.

Practice Activity: Identify the Dramatic Question

It is good practice for students to attempt to identify the dramatic question any time they read a book or watch a movie. Ask the students to think of some classic or popular books and movies that they are already familiar with. Can they extract the major dramatic question from each?

Find Inspiration in the World Around

One of the most common complaints from students, when asked to write a short story, is that they don’t know what to write about. This is the age-old curse of writer’s block.

Figuring out what to write about is the first hurdle students will need to overcome. Luckily, the inspiration for stories lies everywhere. We just need to help students to know where to look.

As writers, students must learn to see the world around them with the freshness of the eyes of a young child. This requires them to pay close attention to the world around them; to slow things down enough to catch the endless possibilities for stories that exist all around.

Luckily, we have the perfect activity to help our students to do this.

Practice Activity: Breathe Life into the Story

We can find stories and the details for our stories everywhere.

Students need to tune their ear to the fragments of stories in snatches of overheard daily conversations. They need to pay enough attention to catch their own daydreaming what-ifs on the bus to school or to keep an eye out for all those little human interest stories in the local newspaper.

Once the living details of life are noticed, students need to capture them quickly by recording them in a journal. This journal will become a great resource for the student to dip into for inspiration while writing their stories.

Those half-heard conversations, those anecdotes of street life witnessed through a bus window, the half-remembered dreams scribbled down while gulping down a rushed breakfast. All these can provide jumping-off points and rich detail for a student’s short story.

Outline and Prepare

Preparation is important when writing a short story. Without a doubt. There is, however, a very real danger of preparation becoming procrastination for our student writers.

Students must learn to make their preparation time count. The writing process is much more productive if students invest some time in brainstorming and organizing their ideas at the start.

To organize their short story, students will need to understand the basic elements of structure described in the next section, but the following activity will first help them to access some of the creative gold in their imaginations. The discipline of structure can be applied afterward.

Practice Activity: Dig for Nuggets

For this activity, give each student a large piece of paper, such as a leaf from an artist’s sketchbook, to brainstorm their ideas. Employing a large canvas like this encourages more expansive thinking.

Instruct students to use colored pens to write sentences, phrases, and fragments, even doodles. Anything that helps them to dump the contents of their mind onto the paper. This is all about sifting through the rubble for those nuggets of gold. Students shouldn’t censor themselves, but instead, allow their mind’s free reign.

To help your students get started, you can provide them with some prompts or questions as jumping-off points. For example:

• What is your basic premise?
• What is the story about?
• Who are your main characters?
• Where is your story set?  

Encourage students to generate their own questions too by allowing their minds ample room to roam. Generating new questions in this way will help them gather momentum for the telling of their tale.

SHORT STORY WRITING STRUCTURE

Even getting off to a great start, students often find themselves in difficulties by the middle of their story, especially if they haven’t achieved a firm grasp of structure yet.

The main elements students will need to master are plot, theme, and character development.

In this section, we’ll take a look at each of these in turn.

Plot refers to the events of the story. This is the what of the tale. It’s useful for students to understand the arc of the plot in five sections: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Exposition: This is the introductory part of your story. It should introduce the reader to the central characters and orientate them to the setting.

Rising Action: Here the student begins by introducing the central dramatic question which will be the engine of the story. A series of obstacles must be placed in the way of the main character that will increase suspense and tension as the story moves forward toward the climax.

Climax: The climax is the dramatic high point of the story. This is where interest peaks and the emotions rise to their most intense.

Falling Action: Now the conflict is resolving and we are being led out to the story’s end.

Resolution: The central dramatic question has been answered, usually in either a happy or tragic manner, and many loose ends are tied up.

Practice Activity: Instruct students to use the five-part plot structure above to map an outline for their tale before writing .

If the plot consists of the series of events that constitute the story, then the theme refers to what those events mean.

The theme of a story is the underlying message of the story.

What is the ‘big idea’ behind all the action of the plot? This is open to a certain amount of interpretation on the part of the reader, but usually, a little reflection by the student writer will reveal what the events of the plot mean to them.

If, as described in the introduction, stories are how we derive meaning from the world, the theme will reveal the writer’s perspective on things.

Practice Activity: Organize students into groups and ask them to list their Top 5 movies or books of all time. Instruct them to briefly outline the main plot points using the plot structure above. When they’ve completed that, instruct the students to discuss what they think the main themes of each of the works of fiction were.

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Character Development IN SHORT STORY WRITING

No doubt about it, characterization is essential to the success of any short story. Just how important characterization is will depend on whether the story is plot-driven or action-driven.

In the best writing, regardless of genre or length, the characters will be at least plausible. There is a lot that students can do to ensure their stories are populated with more than just cardboard cutouts.

One effective way to do this is to reveal a character through their actions. This is the old show, don’t tell trick at work.

A good short story writer will allow the character to reveal their temperament and personality through their actions.

For example, instead of merely describing a character as putting a mug on the table, perhaps they bring it down with a thud that betrays their anger.

Another great way to reveal character is in the use of dialogue. How characters speak to each other in a story can reveal a lot about their status, mood, and intent, etc.

Our students must learn to draw complex characters. Archetypes may serve us well in some contexts, but archetypes are not real people. They are caricatures. If our students want to people their fictional world with real people, they need to create complex, even contradictory characters, just like you and I are.

If their characters are too consistent, they are too predictable. Predictability kills suspense, which in turn kills the reader’s interest.

Practice Activity: Reveal Mood through Action

For this simple activity, provide the students with a list of emotions. Now, challenge the students to concoct a short scene where a character performs an action or actions that reveal the chosen mood.

To start, you might allow the students a paragraph in which to reveal the emotion. You might reduce this to just a sentence or two as they get better at it. Remind students that they need to show the emotion, not tell it!

HOW TO POLISH AND REFINE A SHORT STORY

Now students have already had a look at how to begin and how to structure a story, we’ll take a look at a few quick tips on how they can polish their stories generally – especially during the editing process.

Write Convincing Dialogue:

For students, investing time in learning how to write great dialogue is time well spent.

Not only is well-written dialogue great for revealing character, but it will break up intimidating walls of text too.

Dialogue is a great way to move the story forward and to provide subtle exposition.

 As mentioned earlier, journals are the perfect place to dump interesting snatches of conversation that become a valuable resource for writing convincing dialogue – except, of course, if you are passing through North Korea or the like!

Vary Sentence Length:

 When finished with their first drafts, encourage students to read their work out loud when editing and rewriting.

Often, students will be surprised to realize just how regular the rhythm of their sentences has become.

Like musicians, writers have chops. It’s easy to fall back on the same few favored structures time and again. Students can do a lot to spice up their writing simply by varying sentence lengths.

Shorter sentences are pacier and punchier while longer sentences can slow things down, calming the reader, then, boom!

Varying sentence length throughout a story prevents the writing from becoming stale and monotonous.

Punctuation:

As with varying sentence length above, the rhythm of a story can be altered through the choice of punctuation.

Students can think of punctuation as musical notation marks. It’s designed to help the reader understand the composer’s intention for how it is to be read and interpreted.

Students should understand punctuation as an imperfect but effective tool. Its use affects not only the work’s rhythm but also the meaning.

It is well worth the student’s time to perfect their use of punctuation.

To Conclude                                                  

There are a lot of moving parts to short stories.

From the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation to crafting a plot and exploring big thematic ideas, mastering the art of short story writing takes time and lots of practice.

With so much ground to cover, it’s impossible to address every aspect in a single unit of work on short story writing.

Be sure to offer students opportunities to see the short story in action in the work of accomplished writers, as well as opportunities to practice the various aspects of short story writing mentioned above.

Draw attention to writing best practices when they appear even in work unrelated to the short story.

Lots of time and plenty of practice might just reveal a latter-day O. Henry or Edgar Allen Poe sat in one of the desks right in front of you.

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These 4th grade reading passages are followed by questions which the student is encouraged to answer by writing full sentences in the space provided.  The questions are a mix of 'open-ended" and "close-ended" questions.

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75 Short Short Stories

Stories to enjoy when you have five minutes to spare, grouped by category to suit your mood: Witty Stories , Introspective Stories , Morality Tales , Other-Worldly Stories , Feel-Good/Love Stories , Dramatic Stories , and Political Farce Stories

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Looking for more? Check out our Favorite Short Stories Collection . You may also enjoy 100 Great Poems Read about the authors' own stories in American Biographies

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The short story is a fiction writer’s laboratory: here is where you can experiment with characters, plots, and ideas without the heavy lifting of writing a novel. Learning how to write a short story is essential to mastering the art of storytelling . With far fewer words to worry about, storytellers can make many more mistakes—and strokes of genius!—through experimentation and the fun of fiction writing.

Nonetheless, the art of writing short stories is not easy to master. How do you tell a complete story in so few words? What does a story need to have in order to be successful? Whether you’re struggling with how to write a short story outline, or how to fully develop a character in so few words, this guide is your starting point.

Famous authors like Virginia Woolf, Haruki Murakami, and Agatha Christie have used the short story form to play with ideas before turning those stories into novels. Whether you want to master the elements of fiction, experiment with novel ideas, or simply have fun with storytelling, here’s everything you need on how to write a short story step by step.

The Core Elements of a Short Story

There’s no secret formula to writing a short story. However, a good short story will have most or all of the following elements:

• A protagonist with a certain desire or need. It is essential for the protagonist to want something they don’t have, otherwise they will not drive the story forward.
• A clear dilemma. We don’t need much backstory to see how the dilemma started; we’re primarily concerned with how the protagonist resolves it.
• A decision. What does the protagonist do to resolve their dilemma?
• A climax. In Freytag’s Pyramid , the climax of a story is when the tension reaches its peak, and the reader discovers the outcome of the protagonist’s decision(s).
• An outcome. How does the climax change the protagonist? Are they a different person? Do they have a different philosophy or outlook on life?

Of course, short stories also utilize the elements of fiction , such as a setting , plot , and point of view . It helps to study these elements and to understand their intricacies. But, when it comes to laying down the skeleton of a short story, the above elements are what you need to get started.

Note: a short story rarely, if ever, has subplots. The focus should be entirely on a single, central storyline. Subplots will either pull focus away from the main story, or else push the story into the territory of novellas and novels.

The shorter the story is, the fewer of these elements are essentials. If you’re interested in writing short-short stories, check out our guide on how to write flash fiction .

How to Write a Short Story Outline

Some writers are “pantsers”—they “write by the seat of their pants,” making things up on the go with little more than an idea for a story. Other writers are “plotters,” meaning they decide the story’s structure in advance of writing it.

You don’t need a short story outline to write a good short story. But, if you’d like to give yourself some scaffolding before putting words on the page, this article answers the question of how to write a short story outline:

https://writers.com/how-to-write-a-story-outline

How to Write a Short Story Step by Step

There are many ways to approach the short story craft, but this method is tried-and-tested for writers of all levels. Here’s how to write a short story step by step.

1. Start With an Idea

Often, generating an idea is the hardest part. You want to write, but what will you write about?

What’s more, it’s easy to start coming up with ideas and then dismissing them. You want to tell an authentic, original story, but everything you come up with has already been written, it seems.

Here are a few tips:

• Originality presents itself in your storytelling, not in your ideas. For example, the premise of both Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Ostrovsky’s The Snow Maiden are very similar: two men and two women, in intertwining love triangles, sort out their feelings for each other amidst mischievous forest spirits, love potions, and friendship drama. The way each story is written makes them very distinct from one another, to the point where, unless it’s pointed out to you, you might not even notice the similarities.
• An idea is not a final draft. You will find that exploring the possibilities of your story will generate something far different than the idea you started out with. This is a good thing—it means you made the story your own!
• Experiment with genres and tropes. Even if you want to write literary fiction , pay attention to the narrative structures that drive genre stories, and practice your storytelling using those structures. Again, you will naturally make the story your own simply by playing with ideas.

If you’re struggling simply to find ideas, try out this prompt generator , or pull prompts from this Twitter .

2. Outline, OR Conceive Your Characters

If you plan to outline, do so once you’ve generated an idea. You can learn about how to write a short story outline earlier in this article.

If you don’t plan to outline, you should at least start with a character or characters. Certainly, you need a protagonist, but you should also think about any characters that aid or inhibit your protagonist’s journey.

When thinking about character development, ask the following questions:

• What is my character’s background? Where do they come from, how did they get here, where do they want to be?
• What does your character desire the most? This can be both material or conceptual, like “fitting in” or “being loved.”
• What is your character’s fatal flaw? In other words, what limitation prevents the protagonist from achieving their desire? Often, this flaw is a blind spot that directly counters their desire. For example, self hatred stands in the way of a protagonist searching for love.
• How does your character think and speak? Think of examples, both fictional and in the real world, who might resemble your character.

In short stories, there are rarely more characters than a protagonist, an antagonist (if relevant), and a small group of supporting characters. The more characters you include, the longer your story will be. Focus on making only one or two characters complex: it is absolutely okay to have the rest of the cast be flat characters that move the story along.

Learn more about character development here:

https://writers.com/character-development-definition

3. Write Scenes Around Conflict

Once you have an outline or some characters, start building scenes around conflict. Every part of your story, including the opening sentence, should in some way relate to the protagonist’s conflict.

Conflict is the lifeblood of storytelling: without it, the reader doesn’t have a clear reason to keep reading. Loveable characters are not enough, as the story has to give the reader something to root for.

Take, for example, Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story The Cask of Amontillado . We start at the conflict: the narrator has been slighted by Fortunato, and plans to exact revenge. Every scene in the story builds tension and follows the protagonist as he exacts this revenge.

In your story, start writing scenes around conflict, and make sure each paragraph and piece of dialogue relates, in some way, to your protagonist’s unmet desires.

4. Write Your First Draft

The scenes you build around conflict will eventually be stitched into a complete story. Make sure as the story progresses that each scene heightens the story’s tension, and that this tension remains unbroken until the climax resolves whether or not your protagonist meets their desires.

Don’t stress too hard on writing a perfect story. Rather, take Anne Lamott’s advice, and “write a shitty first draft.” The goal is not to pen a complete story at first draft; rather, it’s to set ideas down on paper. You are simply, as Shannon Hale suggests, “shoveling sand into a box so that later [you] can build castles.”

5. Step Away, Breathe, Revise

Whenever Stephen King finishes a novel, he puts it in a drawer and doesn’t think about it for 6 weeks. With short stories, you probably don’t need to take as long of a break. But, the idea itself is true: when you’ve finished your first draft, set it aside for a while. Let yourself come back to the story with fresh eyes, so that you can confidently revise, revise, revise .

In revision, you want to make sure each word has an essential place in the story, that each scene ramps up tension, and that each character is clearly defined. The culmination of these elements allows a story to explore complex themes and ideas, giving the reader something to think about after the story has ended.

6. Compare Against Our Short Story Checklist

Does your story have everything it needs to succeed? Compare it against this short story checklist, as written by our instructor Rosemary Tantra Bensko.

Below is a collection of practical short story writing tips by Writers.com instructor Rosemary Tantra Bensko . Each paragraph is its own checklist item: a core element of short story writing advice to follow unless you have clear reasons to the contrary. We hope it’s a helpful resource in your own writing.

Update 9/1/2020: We’ve now made a summary of Rosemary’s short story checklist available as a PDF download . Enjoy!

Click to download

How to Write a Short Story: Length and Setting

Your short story is 1000 to 7500 words in length.

The story takes place in one time period, not spread out or with gaps other than to drive someplace, sleep, etc. If there are those gaps, there is a space between the paragraphs, the new paragraph beginning flush left, to indicate a new scene.

Each scene takes place in one location, or in continual transit, such as driving a truck or flying in a plane.

How to Write a Short Story: Point of View

Unless it’s a very lengthy Romance story, in which there may be two Point of View (POV) characters, there is one POV character. If we are told what any character secretly thinks, it will only be the POV character. The degree to which we are privy to the unexpressed thoughts, memories and hopes of the POV character remains consistent throughout the story.

You avoid head-hopping by only having one POV character per scene, even in a Romance. You avoid straying into even brief moments of telling us what other characters think other than the POV character. You use words like “apparently,” “obviously,” or “supposedly” to suggest how non-POV-characters think rather than stating it.

How to Write a Short Story: Protagonist, Antagonist, Motivation

Your short story has one clear protagonist who is usually the character changing most.

Your story has a clear antagonist, who generally makes the protagonist change by thwarting his goals.

(Possible exception to the two short story writing tips above: In some types of Mystery and Action stories, particularly in a series, etc., the protagonist doesn’t necessarily grow personally, but instead his change relates to understanding the antagonist enough to arrest or kill him.)

The protagonist changes with an Arc arising out of how he is stuck in his Flaw at the beginning of the story, which makes the reader bond with him as a human, and feel the pain of his problems he causes himself. (Or if it’s the non-personal growth type plot: he’s presented at the beginning of the story with a high-stakes problem that requires him to prevent or punish a crime.)

The protagonist usually is shown to Want something, because that’s what people normally do, defining their personalities and behavior patterns, pushing them onward from day to day. This may be obvious from the beginning of the story, though it may not become heightened until the Inciting Incident , which happens near the beginning of Act 1. The Want is usually something the reader sort of wants the character to succeed in, while at the same time, knows the Want is not in his authentic best interests. This mixed feeling in the reader creates tension.

The protagonist is usually shown to Need something valid and beneficial, but at first, he doesn’t recognize it, admit it, honor it, integrate it with his Want, or let the Want go so he can achieve the Need instead. Ideally, the Want and Need can be combined in a satisfying way toward the end for the sake of continuity of forward momentum of victoriously achieving the goals set out from the beginning. It’s the encounters with the antagonist that forcibly teach the protagonist to prioritize his Needs correctly and overcome his Flaw so he can defeat the obstacles put in his path.

The protagonist in a personal growth plot needs to change his Flaw/Want but like most people, doesn’t automatically do that when faced with the problem. He tries the easy way, which doesn’t work. Only when the Crisis takes him to a low point does he boldly change enough to become victorious over himself and the external situation. What he learns becomes the Theme.

Each scene shows its main character’s goal at its beginning, which aligns in a significant way with the protagonist’s overall goal for the story. The scene has a “charge,” showing either progress toward the goal or regression away from the goal by the ending. Most scenes end with a negative charge, because a story is about not obtaining one’s goals easily, until the end, in which the scene/s end with a positive charge.

The protagonist’s goal of the story becomes triggered until the Inciting Incident near the beginning, when something happens to shake up his life. This is the only major thing in the story that is allowed to be a random event that occurs to him.

How to Write a Short Story: Characters

Your characters speak differently from one another, and their dialogue suggests subtext, what they are really thinking but not saying: subtle passive-aggressive jibes, their underlying emotions, etc.

Your characters are not illustrative of ideas and beliefs you are pushing for, but come across as real people.

How to Write a Short Story: Prose

Your language is succinct, fresh and exciting, specific, colorful, avoiding clichés and platitudes. Sentence structures vary. In Genre stories, the language is simple, the symbolism is direct, and words are well-known, and sentences are relatively short. In Literary stories, you are freer to use more sophisticated ideas, words, sentence structures and underlying metaphors and implied motifs.

How to Write a Short Story: Story Structure

Your plot elements occur in the proper places according to classical Act Structure so the reader feels he has vicariously gone through a harrowing trial with the protagonist and won, raising his sense of hope and possibility. Literary short stories may be more subtle, with lower stakes, experimenting beyond classical structures like the Hero’s Journey. They can be more like vignettes sometimes, or even slice-of-life, though these types are hard to place in publications.

In Genre stories, all the questions are answered, threads are tied up, problems are solved, though the results of carnage may be spread over the landscape. In Literary short stories, you are free to explore uncertainty, ambiguity, and inchoate, realistic endings that suggest multiple interpretations, and unresolved issues.

Some Literary stories may be nonrealistic, such as with Surrealism, Absurdism, New Wave Fabulism, Weird and Magical Realism . If this is what you write, they still need their own internal logic and they should not be bewildering as to the what the reader is meant to experience, whether it’s a nuanced, unnameable mood or a trip into the subconscious.

Literary stories may also go beyond any label other than Experimental. For example, a story could be a list of To Do items on a paper held by a magnet to a refrigerator for the housemate to read. The person writing the list may grow more passive-aggressive and manipulative as the list grows, and we learn about the relationship between the housemates through the implied threats and cajoling.

How to Write a Short Story: Capturing Reader Interest

Your short story is suspenseful, meaning readers hope the protagonist will achieve his best goal, his Need, by the Climax battle against the antagonist.

Your story entertains. This is especially necessary for Genre short stories.

The story captivates readers at the very beginning with a Hook, which can be a puzzling mystery to solve, an amazing character’s or narrator’s Voice, an astounding location, humor, a startling image, or a world the reader wants to become immersed in.

Expository prose (telling, like an essay) takes up very, very little space in your short story, and it does not appear near the beginning. The story is in Narrative format instead, in which one action follows the next. You’ve removed every unnecessary instance of Expository prose and replaced it with showing Narrative. Distancing words like “used to,” “he would often,” “over the years, he,” “each morning, he” indicate that you are reporting on a lengthy time period, summing it up, rather than sticking to Narrative format, in which immediacy makes the story engaging.

You’ve earned the right to include Expository Backstory by making the reader yearn for knowing what happened in the past to solve a mystery. This can’t possibly happen at the beginning, obviously. Expository Backstory does not take place in the first pages of your story.

Your reader cares what happens and there are high stakes (especially important in Genre stories). Your reader worries until the end, when the protagonist survives, succeeds in his quest to help the community, gets the girl, solves or prevents the crime, achieves new scientific developments, takes over rule of his realm, etc.

Every sentence is compelling enough to urge the reader to read the next one—because he really, really wants to—instead of doing something else he could be doing. Your story is not going to be assigned to people to analyze in school like the ones you studied, so you have found a way from the beginning to intrigue strangers to want to spend their time with your words.

Where to Read and Submit Short Stories

Whether you’re looking for inspiration or want to publish your own stories, you’ll find great literary journals for writers of all backgrounds at this article:

https://writers.com/short-story-submissions

Learn How to Write a Short Story at Writers.com

The short story takes an hour to learn and a lifetime to master. Learn how to write a short story with Writers.com. Our upcoming fiction courses will give you the ropes to tell authentic, original short stories that captivate and entrance your readers.

Rosemary – Is there any chance you could add a little something to your checklist? I’d love to know the best places to submit our short stories for publication. Thanks so much.

Hi, Kim Hanson,

Some good places to find publications specific to your story are NewPages, Poets and Writers, Duotrope, and The Submission Grinder.

“ In Genre stories, all the questions are answered, threads are tied up, problems are solved, though the results of carnage may be spread over the landscape.”

Not just no but NO.

See for example the work of MacArthur Fellow Kelly Link.

[…] How to Write a Short Story: The Short Story Checklist […]

Thank you for these directions and tips. It’s very encouraging to someone like me, just NOW taking up writing.

[…] Writers.com. A great intro to writing. https://writers.com/how-to-write-a-short-story […]

Hello: I started to write seriously in the late 70’s. I loved to write in High School in the early 60’s but life got in the way. Around the 00’s many of the obstacles disappeared. Since then I have been writing more, and some of my work was vanilla transgender stories. Here in 2024 transgender stories have become tiresome because I really don’t have much in common with that mind set.

The glare of an editor that could potentially pay me is quite daunting, so I would like to start out unpaid to see where that goes. I am not sure if a writer’s agent would be a good fit for me. My work life was in the Trades, not as some sort of Academic. That alone causes timidity, but I did read about a fiction writer who had been a house painter.

This is my first effort to publish since the late 70’s. My pseudonym would perhaps include Ahabidah.

Gwen Boucher.

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Free Short Stories

We believe that the key to writing good short stories is reading good short stories.

Below, we have provided an ever-expanding selection of old and new short stories that are free to download.

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Aiken, Conrad ‘Silent Snow, Secret Snow’ (online read: c. 6000 words)

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Anderson, Sherwood ‘The Dumb Man’ (c. 500 words)

Ade, George ‘The Collision’ (c. 1500 words)

Ade, George ‘The Divine Spark’ (c. 1000 words)

Ade, George ‘The Juvenile and Mankind’ (c. 500 words)

Antsey, F. ‘Marjory’ (c. 8500 words)

Baldwin, James ‘Bruce and the Spider’ (c. 500 words)

Baldwin, James ‘The Bell of Atri’ (c. 500 words)

Baldwin, James ‘Casablanca’ (c. 500 words)

Baldwin, James ‘Antonio Canova’ (c. 1000 words)

Baldwin, James ‘Arnold Winkelried’ (c. 500 words)

Baldwin, James ‘Doctor Goldsmith’ (c. 500 words)

Baldwin, James ‘The Endless Tale’ (c. 1000 words)

Balzac, Honore de ‘The Conscript’ (c. 6000 words)

Balzac, Honore de ‘Innocence’ (c. 1000 words)

Balzac, Honore de ‘The Devil’s Heir’ (c. 6500 words)

Bierce, Ambrose ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek’ (c. 3000 words)

Bierce, Ambrose ‘Oil of Dog’ (c. 1500 words)

Brown, Alice ‘Bankrupt’ (c. 7500 words)

Brown, Alice ‘Heartease’ (c. 3500 words)

Brown, Alice ‘The Advocate’ (c. 4500 words)

Brown, Alice ‘The End of All Living’ (c. 7000 words)

Chekhov, Anton ‘The Bet’ (c. 3000 words)

Chekhov, Anton ‘The Lottery Ticket’ (c. 2000 words)

Chekhov, Anton ‘About Love’ (c. 4000 words)

Chekhov, Anton ‘An Actor’s End’ (c. 2500 words)

Chekhov, Anton ‘Art’ (c. 2500 words)

Chekhov, Anton ‘An Avenger’ (c. 2000 words)

Chesterton, G. K. ‘The Blue Cross’ (c. 7500 words)

Chesterton, G. K. ‘The Bottomless Well’ (c. 6500 words)

Chesterton, G. K. ‘The Eye of Apollo’ (c. 6000 words)

Chesterton, G. K. ‘The God of Gongs’ (c. 6000 words)

Chesterton, G. K.  ‘The Hammer of God’ (c. 6500 words)

Chesterton, G. K. ‘The Purple Wig’ (c. 5500 words)

Collins, Willie ‘A Fair Penitent’ (c. 4500 words)

Conrad, Joseph ‘An Anarchist’ (c. 8500 words)

Crane, Stephen ‘A Desertion’ (c. 1500 words)

Defoe, Daniel ‘The Apparition of Mrs Veal’ (c. 3500 words)

De Mille, James ‘The Artist of Florence’ (c. 7000 words)

De Quincey, Thomas ‘Love-Charm’ (c. 13,000 words)

De Quincey, Thomas ‘The Avenger’ (c. 19,000 words)

Dickens, Charles ‘The Black Veil’ (c. 4500 words))

Dickens, Charles ‘Criminal Courts’ (c. 2000 words)

Dickens, Charles ‘Down with the Taid’ (c. 4000 words)

Dickens, Charles ‘The Ghost of Art’ (c. 2500 words)

Dickens, Charles ‘The Baron of Grogswig’ (c. 4000 words)

Dickens, Charles ‘The Child’s Story’ (c. 2000 words)

Dahl, Roald ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ (c. 3000 words)

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor ‘The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man’ (c. 8500 words)

Eliot, T. S. ‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’ (c. 3000 words)

Eggleston, Edward ‘A Basement Story’ (c. 6500 words)

Eggleston, Edward ‘Adventures in Alaska’ (c. 1500 words)

Eliot, George ‘Brother Jacob’ (c. 17,000 words)

Field, Eugene ‘Daniel and the Devil’ (c. 3000 words)

Field, Eugene ‘Death and the Soldier’ (c. 1500 words)

Flaubert, Gustave ‘The Dance of Death’ (c. 3000 words)

Freeman, Mary ‘A New England Nun’ (c. 5000 words)

Galsworthy, John ‘The Knight’ (c. 13,000 words)

Galsworthy, John ‘The Stoic’ (c. 30,000 words)

Goldsworthy, John ‘The Silence’ (c. 8000 words)

Goethe, Johann ‘New Paris’ (c. 5500 words)

Gogol, Nikolai ‘The Clash’ (c. 4500 words)

Gaskell, Elizabeth ‘An Accursed Race’ (c. 6500 words)

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (c. 6000 words)

Greene, Graham ‘The End of the Party’ ( c. 3500 words)

Gissing, George ‘A Capitalist’ (c. 5500 words)

Gissing, George ‘The House Of Cobwebs’ (c. 8000 words)

Gissing, George ‘The Salt of the Earth’ (c. 4000 words)

Hardy, Thomas ‘The Grave by the Handpost’ (c. 4000 words)

Hardy, Thomas ‘The Three Strangers’ c. 8500 words)

Harte, Bret ‘An Heiress of a Red Dog’ (c. 5500 words)

Harte, Bret ‘Under Karl’ (c. 6500 words)

Harte, Bret ‘Who Was My Quiet Friend?’ (c. 3000 words)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel ‘The Wedding-Knell’ (c. 3000 words)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel ‘The Ambitious Guest’ (c. 3500 words)

Henry, O ‘The Gift of the Magi’ (c. 2000 words)

Irving, Washington ‘Conspiracy of the Cocked Hats’ (c. 2000 words)

Irving, Washington ‘Little Britain’ (c. 5000 words)

Irving, Washington ‘The Bermudas’ (c. 2500 words)

Irving, Washington ‘The Birds of Spring’ (c. 2000 words)

Irving, Washington ‘The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow’ (c. 12,000 words)

Ing, Charles ‘Tight Squeeze’ (c. 6000 words)

Ingelow, Jean ‘A Last Want’ (c. 8000 words)

Ingelow, Jean ‘The Prince’s Dream’ (c. 3500 words)

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Jacobs, W. W. ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ (c. 4000 words)

James, M. R. ‘Lost Hearts’ (c. 4000 words)

Jerome, Jerome K. ‘The Man Who Did Not Believe In Luck’ (c. 3000 words)

Joyce, James ‘Araby’ (c. 2500 words)

Joyce, James ‘A Little Cloud’ (c. 5000 words)

Joyce, James ‘After the Race’ (c. 2000 words)

Joyce, James ‘An Encounter’ (c. 3500 words)

Joyce, James ‘Counterparts’ (c. 4000 words)

Joyce, James ‘Eveline’ (c. 2000 words)

Joyce, James ‘The Boarding House’ (c. 3000 words)

Kipling, Rudyard ‘How the Leopard got his Spots’ (c. 2000 words)

Kipling, Rudyard ‘Wireless’ (c. 6500 words)

Kipling, Rudyard ‘A Bank Fraud (c. 2500 words)

Kipling, Rudyard ‘Beyond the Pale’ (c. 2000 words)

King, Charles ‘Starlight Man’ (c. 9500 words)

King, Charles ‘Van’ (c. 8000 words)

Lawrence, D. H. ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ (c. 7500 words)

London, Jack ‘Aloha Oe’ (c. 2500 words)

London, Jack ‘The Story of Keesh’ (c. 3000 words)

London, Jack ‘How to Build a Fire’ (c. 7000 words)

Lovecraft, H. P. ‘The Cats of Ulthar’ (c. 1500 words)

Lovecraft, H. P. ‘The terrible Old Man’ (c. 1000 words)

Mansfield, Katherine ‘The Stranger’ (c. 5000 words)

Mansfield, Katherine ‘The Garden Party’ (c. 5500 words)

Mansfield, Katherine ‘The Voyage’ (c. 3000 words)

Mansfield, Katherine ‘The Ideal Family’ (c. 2500 words)

Mansfield, Katherine ‘Miss Brill’ (c. 2000 words)

Mansfield, Katherine ‘The Singing Lesson’ (c. 2000 words)

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia ‘Eyes of a Blue Dog’ (c. 3000 words)

Maupassant, Guy de ‘The Kiss’ (c. 1500 words)

Munro, H. H. (SAKI) ‘The Mouse’ (c. 1500 words)

Nesbit, Edith ‘Acting for the Best’ (c. 4500 words)

Nesbit, Edith ‘Archibald the Unpleasant’ (c. 5000 words)

Nesbit, Edith ‘Billy the King’ (c. 5500 words)

Norris, Frank ‘A Deal in Wheat’ (c. 5000 words)

Norris, Frank ‘The Wife of Chino’ (c. 5500 words)

Norris, Frank ‘Two Hearts That Beat as One’ (c. 4000 words)

Orwell, George ‘The Shooting of an Elephant’ (c. 2000 words)

Osbourne, Lloyd ‘Ben’ (c. 6000 words)

Osbourne, Lloyd ‘The Golden Castaways’ (c. 3500 words)

Parker, Dorothy ‘A Telephone Call’ (c. 2500 words)

Poe, Edgar Allan ‘The Imp of the Perverse’ (c. 2500 words)

Poe, Edgar Allan ‘The Angel of Odd’ (c. 4000 words)

Poe, Edgar Allan ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ (c. 2500 words)

Poe, Edgar Allan ‘The Black Cat’ (c. 4000 words)

Poe, Edgar Allan ‘Four Beasts in One’ (c. 3000 words)

Potter, Beatrix ‘Ginger and Pickles’ (c. 1000 words)

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Quiller-Couch, Arthur ‘Elisha’ (c. 1500 words)

Quiller-Couch, Arthur ‘The Burglary Club’ (c. 3000 words)

Quiller-Couch, Arthur ‘The Dark Mirror’ (c. 1000 words)

Roby, John ‘The Goblin Builders’ (c. 3500 words)

Ruskin, John ‘The King of the Golden River’ (c. 9000 words)

Skinner, Charles ‘The Barge of Defeat’ (c. 500 words)

Somyonov, S. T. ‘The Servant’ (c. 2000 words)

Twain, Mark ‘Luck’ (c. 2000 words)

Trollope, Anthony ‘George Walker at Suez’ (c. 8000 words)

Trollope, Anthony ‘Returning Home’ (c. 9000 words)

Van Dyke, Henry ‘Ashes of Vengeance’ (c. 500 words)

Van Dyke, Henry ‘The Art of Leaving Off’ (c. 2500 words)

Verne, Jules ‘A Drama in the Air’ (c. 7000 words)

Wells, H. G. ‘The Crystal Egg’ (c. 7000 words)

White, E. B. ‘The Door’ (c. 2000 words)

Wilde, Oscar ‘The Birth of the Infanta’ (c. 7500 words)

Williams, William Carlos ‘The Use of Force’ (c. 1500 words)

Woolf, Virginia ‘A Haunted House’ (c. 1000 words)

Yeats, William Butler ‘Out of the Rose’ (c. 2500 words)

Yeats, William Butler ‘The Old Men of the Twilight’ (c. 2000 words)

Yeats, William Butler ‘The Twisting of the Rope’ (c. 3000 words)

Younger, Charlotte M. ‘The Last Fight in the Coliseum’ (c. 3000 words)

Zola, Emile ‘Captain Burle’ (c. 11, 500 words)

Zola, Emile ‘The Flood’ (c. 8000 words)

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“ killer in the willows ” by kajsa ohman.

🏆 Winner of Contest #236

KILLER IN THE WILLOWSJust do it, so the T-shirts say. Just pick up the gun, pull the trigger—but maybe aim first, aim at the upper sternum and then pull the trigger, congratulating yourself that at last, in your long, passive life, you have shot somebody dead. So she did, and thus she became a murderer. She slipped through the night after that and disappeared into the willows to wash off any blood that spattered onto her clothing. The willows were thickl...

“ The Lantern of Kaamos ” by Jonathan Page

🏆 Winner of Contest #233

The melting Arctic is a crime scene, and I am like CSI Ny-Ålesund. Trond is the anonymous perpetrator leaving evidence and clues for me to discover, like breadcrumbs leading back to him. “Jonna,” he had said, the day we first met at the research institute, “If you are going to make it up here, don’t lock your doors.” It seemed like a life philosophy, rather than a survival tip.It is ironic. Out on Kings Bay, the coal miners came first, then the science outposts. Trond was already out here mining the Arctic when I was sti...

“ No Junior League ” by Mary Lynne Schuster

🏆 Winner of Contest #232

You are sure you want to do this?   Running away. Starting over.  It’s not as easy as people think. You have to give up everything.  Oh, that part’s easy. Everyone thinks we are all traceable, that you can’t really hide. But, see, everything is tied to your identity. Your papers. If you change those, you are a different person.  Fingerprints? If they’re in the system, if yo...

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“ objects in space ” by angelica sophia.

Submitted to Contest #246

They say the moon controls our emotions. E-motion as invisible and real as electrons, protons, and neurons. That stuff life’s made out of, built on. The little things under the surface that collectively make and move masses bit by bit.  Elisa considered her feelings as the shadows around her began to collect and shift. A shadow for the shadow, doubled, darkness magnified. The eclipse was starting. That moment when the moon covers the face of the sun.  But, what was it to her? Why did she care? “C’mon everyone, let’s go outside,”...

“ Like Christmas ” by Samantha Fenton

Note: contains sexual and physical violence.LIKE CHRISTMASThe eclipse came and so did my relatives, in a fashion similar to the Fourth of July or Easter. Casseroles, potatoes, pie. Tin foil. It was not like Christmas. I will explain why.My cousin, Melony, came last, and put a greasy bag of gas station JoJos into my hands. Said curtly, “Muffins burnt up.” Shot a withering glance at her new husband, who refused to meet it.“I’ve been craving these anyway. We should get together more often,” I said.“Of course.”This was the stilted talk of those ...

“ No Mere Mortal ” by Myranda Marie

“The eclipse has come and gone, and I for one am so grateful.” “And why is that?” “People like me are often affected by celestial occurrences. This one was intense.” “How so?” “It started about a week ago; low energy and high anxiety battling for dominance. Have you ever wanted nothing more than to sleep, but couldn’t turn your thoughts off long enough to nod off? When I would finally pass out from sheer exhaustion, the vivid apocalyptic dreams would infiltrate like a jolt of frantic energy, causing me to awaken abruptly with no chance of fa...

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“ all of them ” by ester segal.

“You AT LEAST have to admit that it would make you get out of bed. Even if it was just for the 8 ½ minutes.”“Oh take a hike Charlie. You act like it matters anyways-” He paused to exhale a loud, empty breath, “whether or not I get out of bed.”“For Christ’s sake, Seth, I don’t even like you and I think it matters.” Charlie plopped himself down on the bed and went on, “You’ve been keeping yourself hostage in this room- which smells like absolute horseshit by the way- for the past goddamn MONTH. Because of what? Because of all that student...

“ Lunacy ” by Jeremy Burgess

Standing in the cold stone hallway of Castle Halgar, the High Priestess Assanda assessed Prince Cordus, her amber eyes finding him wanting. "Now that you have returned to court, you will need to do as I say should you wish to remain breathing," she said. She was an imposing woman of generous frame and voluminous robe, white  braided with gold, as was customary for the Church of the Sky. Around her neck hung the holy sigil, a polished stone black circle with a thin gold rim, and a point of silver in the middle. She wore no makeup of any ...

“ Miss Purdy Sees ” by Tanya Humphreys

Though her coat was black, Miss Purdy was predominantly Siamese. When she stretched in the patch of early morning sun, her body was a long, sleek, torpedo, her glossy fur shone like rich satin. Miss Purdy was taking it a bit easy, catering to the needs of eight three-week-old kittens was exhausting.The kittens were safely sheltered in a box tucked into a closet. The closet was in an office high on one of the top floors of a building. Miss Purdy did not know exactly how tall the building was, but from the woman’s desk she could see nothing bu...

“ The Brighter the Light, the Deeper the Shadow ” by Christina Santoro

Thyra surveyed the water around her, diligently waiting for a minnow to reveal itself between the soft glints of reflected sunlight. Her long skirt was knotted around her waist, serving two purposes – keeping it dry and holding in place her bilberry-laden pouch. A faint ripple appeared beside her left foot. Without hesitation, Thyra deftly plucked a small silvery fish from the brook. She had four now, which wasn’t a lot, but with a portion of bread and a handful of berries, it would be sufficient. Cadoc wasn't expected home for another few d...

“ Marbles ” by PJ Town

The children formed a circle in the clearing, chattering and jostling to get as near as possible to Elder Jakintsu. His long white beard and hair spoke of ancient wisdom, but the youngsters were more interested in the stories he told, which were invariably fun. At a loud clap of his hands, all fell silent.“Little ones, you are no doubt wondering why we are gathered here on this rest day, when you might normally be playing,” Jakintsu said. He took a cloth bag from his lap and plonked it at his feet. It made a clinking sound.Sitting opposite h...

“ The Night the Sky Fell ” by Jennifer Fremon

CharlotteWhen Charlotte was 11 years old, she met a boy named Jimmy by the lake. Jimmy had blond hair and blue eyes, and a smile that was as bright as the sun. He was carrying a stick with a fishing line and a hook attached to it. It was not a fishing rod, as those were expensive, for the families who owned the boats docked by the larger lake over in town. The big lake people lived here year round, had winterized homes and generators for the months where the entire town was buried underneath three feet of snow. The people at Smoke Rise Campg...

“ The Red Mirror Project ” by Scott Christenson

Elena waited anxiously at the meeting point in front of the Yuantong Temple gate. Standing outdoors on the high plateau that Kunming is situated on, the refreshing coolness of the breeze brought her senses alive. It was a stark contrast to the relentless heat of San Francisco, where stepping outdoors felt like entering an oven. In Kunming, despite it being the middle of July, the temperature was a comfortable 90F.  Even more exciting than the cool weather was that Kevin was due any minute. She hadn’t seen Kevin, her ex-boyfriend, since ...

“ Avraám & his Sons ” by A.J. Williams

Note: A.E. (After-Event) refers to the new dating system in-universe. In the year 2012, a massive solar flare hit the Earth, sending the human race back into the Dark Ages. A Second Dark Ages. City of Athens, Greek Union of Cities August 17th, 2145 (133 A.E.) "Iakovos, please bring the feather and ink. Tonight's sky is clear, and we need to begin documenting the stars," ordered Avraám, the Star-Gazer of Athens, a respected role held in high regard by the Greek community. "Of course, Father," replied his son. "The Council and the King requi...

“ The Morning Star ” by Nicholas Thomas

      My husband lies in the hallway as a mangled corpse, and only I would ever know why. It is with this morbid knowledge that I am sitting here now, against the wall, preparing to blow out my own brains, out of fear that I should meet the same fate as him.           It was April 8th, the day of the solar eclipse. My husband – John – myself, and our dog, Edgar, sat on the hill behind our house. Edgar chewed happily at a stick he found while John and I sat o...

“ Cassiopeia ” by Elise G

Around the corner of a run-down building, where the red brick is grey with dust and the blinds hang to the windows by a thread, is a large new street, crisp and black, sloping down a gentle hill. Follow that big bright street, turn a few more corners, and there, tucked beside an ice cream store and a parking lot, is a market, running without fail every Saturday evening, popping up at lunch and gone by the time the sun is down. For a few hours each Saturday, it no longer smells of sticky asphalt and cigarette smoke, but popcorn jumping in lar...

“ She’s Right ” by Jonathan Baldie

“So what?” Vijay said. “It’s an eclipse. It gets dark. What’s the big deal?” Robin took a sip from her drink, trying to look anywhere but at Vijay. The taste of strawberries from her daiquiri was a welcome reprieve from this loser.  “People like it,” Robin said as politely as she could. “It brings people together, don’t you think?” Vijay shoved another handful of peanuts into his mouth. Robin watched him munch on them. She imagined kissing that salty mouth, and winced.  “I guess,” Vijay said with a shrug. “So how many of these thin...

“ The Great Hunter ” by Christine Hamilton

The great hunter, Orion rose in the Southern sky as night fell; Winter was coming. The mountain peaks tipped with snow earlier than usual; wind-chilled nights chased away the warmth of the day in camp. Falling amber leaves drifted to the ground and the berry crop had ended.   It was time to move to the Great Plains in the warmer South away from the winter shadows cast by the mountains.As night fell the tribe gathered around the roaring fire to prepare for the migration ahead. The last of the food had been dried ...

“ How We Forgive is Different for Everybody ” by A.R. Eakle

Out on 9, as the locals call it, the highway runs parallel to a flat plain that runs the stretch of road over ten miles. Lines of wire fences, not noticeable from the roadway unless you’re looking for them, block off the plots of land every few hundred yards. Every so often a row of power lines cut gently through the fields. The farm-kept bison and horses catch any traveling eye. Cows, destined for slaughter and dairy production, dot several farms with modest houses on them. There are small ponds and marshes off the side of the road from the...

“ Wildflowers and Moonlight ” by Annie Hewitt

In the open expanse of the desert terrain that stretched ominously under the cloudy moonlit sky, Danny and Christina found themselves unsure of which way to go. Christina was trying desperately to stay calm but failing and Danny was hoping the sky would clear up a bit so he could use the stars to navigate their way out of Joshua Tree National Park. He learned astronavigation when he was a Boy Scout and while he wasn’t always thrilled with his parents for making him stick with everything he started there were times, like this, he was grateful...

The Best Fiction Short Stories

Short fiction stories are a fantastic way to access the literary world in compact, bite-sized reading sessions. The short story as we know it today began in the 19th century, when the increasing interest in print literary magazines led to many authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens writing and publishing stories. Later, with the onset of modernism in the beginning of the 20th century, the fiction short story began to adopt more abstract forms, embracing ambiguity and inconclusivity. The later 20th century brought the increasing popularity of the short story as an artistic and literary undertaking. 

Short fiction stories span every imaginable genre. From literary fiction (the likes of which you’ll see published in The New Yorker ), to crime, fantasy, and romance stories, the form is remarkable for its versatility and adaptability.

Looking for fiction short stories to read?

On this page, you can read fiction short stories for free! These are stories that have been submitted to Reedsy’s weekly writing contest, with shortlisted or winning stories chosen by our judges appearing at the top of the page for your convenience. And if you're looking for more of the contest's best entries, make sure to claim your free copy of Prompted , our new literary magazine.

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Short Stories

• Introduction.
• Sleep Tight
• Take Care Little Red
• The Hardest Day of my Life
• Like Father, Like Daughter
• The Night's Cool Air Embraced Her, Safety, At Last
• Beautifully Bare
• Actions speak louder than words
• That was unexpected
• Save the pain Save the torture
• Too good to be true
• It was love
• Just another push
• Momentarily alone
• Watch your words
• Diary Entries
• Death Angel
• A fostered heart
• It's been days...
• Distorted veiws
• His Friday Night
• Her birthday
• Life Gets Better
• Friendly short stories
• My Dear, My Death
• Accidents happen
• Out the door
• A little murder
• Lovely morning
• Pizza and Coffee
• League of Legends
• A lone rose
• Cliffhanger
• Man Overboard
• Captain James Cook
• A Broken Friendship
• Family Comes First
• Broken Relationship
• Abused by life~
• Wings Clipped
• My Love Is Waiting
• Time For A Goodbye
• White Sheets
• Fearing The Unknown
• Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's Autobiography.
• Performance
• Poor Percival
• Mountains or Maths Test
• You can't fail
• Dead battery
• Cat thunder
• He was broken
• The letter of the past
• Head-Banging
• Shitty City~
• Mornings suck
• Darkest corners of his mind
• Writing with flames
• Their story
• Sleep please
• They Become Everything
• Windy nights
• My Thoughts
• Housing Estate
• Limp Bodies and Bathroom Floors
• New Year Celebration
• Big Celebrations - New Year
• Interrogation Room
• I can't get over you
• She didn't care
• I'm not too sure...
• You didn't understand
• He moved on
• Heartbreaking and painful
• Hold onto me
• You are haunting me
• This is what he wanted
• Morning cuddles
• The pale pills hardly resembled her pale lips, that's for sure.
• Unfinished & Unsunk Titanic
• Shitbox & unfinished
• Boiling Point
• Familiarity is found in bleach and bile
• Extraterrestrial, extramediocre?
• Can I go home now?
• While you're out...
• An Optimistic Pessimist
• Sunsets and Late Night Rambles
• Obviously Obliged
• She found comfort in candle light & hoodies
• For some, identity is chosen, for other it is imposed
• Rosebushes and Red Rivers
• Sleeping with Strangers
• Tell Me You Love Me, When It's 3.47 AM
• all he needed

YOU ARE READING

Almost 200 short stories to get your blood pumping, your skin crawling and your mind racing. Nostalgic, interesting, current, real-life experiences in a creative form. *disclaimer: some of these short pieces reference issues such as mental illness...

# addiction # beauty # blood # crazy # death # funny # girls # gore # hate # him # horror # illness # love # mental # obsession # personal # school # short # stories

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• Report Story

Her hands clenched and un-clenched, staring at the page in front of her. The forming tears began to blur her vision, and as each salty drop fell to the page, the ink swelled and smudged about the white page. Her homework was important, she guessed it kind of shoved her true feelings behind mathematical equations and essays. Her throat dried out, she closed her books and pushed them aside, resting her head on her hands. Her sobs were quiet - quiet enough for the rest of the family not to hear, or to not care. Her homework was far from completed, but she saw no point in finishing homework that will never be handed in. Homework that no one will read. She had a valid argument in her essay, and all the correct answers so far in her maths work. Unlike her homework, her life never went her way, She didn't have the right answers, nor the right path - she had to leave it uncompleted, just like her homework. 

--------------------------------------------------------A/N------------------------------------------------------------------

shitty story, shitty day. hehe sorry

Watch CBS News

Hundreds of drugs are in short supply around the U.S., pharmacists warn

By Kate Gibson

Edited By Alain Sherter

Updated on: April 12, 2024 / 7:49 PM EDT / CBS News

A growing number of drugs are in short supply around the U.S., according to pharmacists. 

In the first three months of the year, there were 323 active medication shortages, surpassing the previous high of 320 shortages in 2014, according to a survey by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and Utah Drug Information Service. It also amounts to the most shortages since the trade group started keeping track in 2001.

"All drug classes are vulnerable to shortages. Some of the most worrying shortages involve generic sterile injectable medications, including cancer chemotherapy drugs and emergency medications stored in hospital crash carts and procedural areas," ASHP said in a  statement . 

"Most of the drugs in short supply are generic, older products, and about half are injectable drugs that are hard to make," Erin Fox, associate chief pharmacy officer, University of Utah Health, told CBS MoneyWatch. "Because the FDA says all generics are equal, the only way to compete is on price," creating a race to the bottom that results in companies either halting production of the drugs or taking cost-saving shortcuts in quality, Fox said .

"The Biden-Harris Administration remains focused on strengthening the resilience of critical supply chains, including for medical products like pharmaceuticals," the White House told CBS MoneyWatch on Friday. The effort to "ensure Americans can access the medicine they need when they need it," with  steps including investing $35 million in domestic production of materials needed to produce sterile injectable medicines.

Drug shortages have plagued the nation's health care system for several decades, largely due to market failures and "misaligned incentives," the Department of Health and Human Services stated in a paper published earlier this month. 

Adderall, which is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is among the medications that are hardest to track down . The Drug Enforcement Administration said last fall that more than a dozen manufacturers planned to hike production of the drug, which has been in  short supply since October 2022 , but the problem persists, the pharmacist group found. 

"Ongoing national shortages of therapies for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) also remains an issue for clinicians and patients," it said. 

Federal agencies have been tackling the shortages by offering pharmaceutical companies their version of carrots and sticks. The DEA, for example, recently announced quota increases of roughly 25% for methylphenidate, another type of ADHD medication, to help manufacturers to increase supply. 

After noting that manufacturers had for years not been using their full quota allotments for amphetamine salts — which include Adderall — the FDA and DEA in August notified manufacturers that they need to produce to quota or return the ingredient so it could be used by another company.  

Contributing to the  Adderall shortage include a spike in prescriptions during the pandemic, while a key manufacturer experienced production delays and other companies fell short on production targets. 

The FDA recently approved several generic forms of a third type of ADHD medication, Vyvanse, or lisdexamfetamine, which could have a meaningful impact on supply, the White House said.

Most drug manufacturers did not disclose the factors behind the shortages, the pharmacy group noted in its quarterly findings . But experts have pointed to demand outstripping supplies, manufacturing constraints and disruptions in supply lines for raw materials. 

As things currently stand, medicine labels are only required to name the company selling the product, not the product's manufacturer — a lack of transparency Fox said the  White House has joined the ASHP in advocating against. 

Because manufacturers make so little on low-cost generic drugs, when there is a shortage, it's only a problem for patients. The "companies are not facing any sort of hardship," Fox added.

Meanwhile, insurance companies, as a matter of course, oftentimes only cover generic medications, putting a financial burden on patients unable to find a pharmacy that can fill the less-expensive version of a drug. "One recommendation is to call your insurance company, and ask for coverage for brand names," Fox advised.

Kate Gibson is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch in New York.

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Billy Joel's 100th residency special cut during pivotal 'Piano Man' performance, CBS apologizes

CBS did not turn the lights back on during the  100th show of Billy Joel's residency .

The network in a statement on Monday apologized for ending the singer's "Billy Joel: The 100th – Live at Madison Square Garden" special two minutes early on Sunday, blaming a "network programming timing error." CBS also said it will rebroadcast the two-hour special on Friday at 9 p.m. ET.

"We apologize to Mr. Joel, his fans, our affiliated stations, and our audience whose viewing experience was interrupted during the last song," CBS said in a statement to USA TODAY Monday.

The special marked the centennial of Joel's record-setting run at Madison Square Garden , which began in January 2014 and will conclude July 25.

Excited fans who tuned in were upset after the broadcast was delayed by 30 minutes due to the 2024 Masters Tournament and ultimately cut off in the middle of Joel's larger than life "Piano Man" for local news programming.

The Barstool Sports account chimed into the discourse on X, formerly Twitter, writing , "How do you cut a Billy Joel Concert in the Middle of Piano Man?!"

"CBS has been promoting the Billy Joel concert special every two minutes for WEEKS. So what better way to air it than to preempt it for a half hour and the cut him off MID-PIANO MAN? C'mon guys," one upset fan posted .

Another wrote , "You couldn't produce a worse product than CBS just did on the Billy Joel special Way too many commercials, didn't play some of his best songs, went extremely out of order in his set list, and then cuts away to the local news in the middle of Piano Man?!? A total flop by CBS."

"Just an absolute disaster by CBS tonight producing the Billy Joel concert. Ineptitude at its finest. Start it late and cut it off early. Just horrible. #BillyJoel100," another dissatisfied viewer posted .

Billy Joel releases new song 'Turn the Lights Back On' ahead of Grammy Awards performance

Where to watch Billy Joel concert special

Joel's special is available to stream on Paramount+ for those that didn't get the full experience.

Billy Joel was happy to 'hang out' with Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, talks 100th MSG show

In an interview with USA TODAY , the "Uptown Girl" singer said the 100th performance, including appearances from pals Jerry Seinfeld and Sting, was different from the earlier shows "because there were a bunch of cameras on stage!"

"I've been playing (Madison Square Garden) since the '70s. The 100 just happened to be a round number and happened to coincide with a Garden show I was already doing," he said.

When it came to including Sting in this particular show, Joel said, "I've known him quite a while,  since he was in The Police.  We became friends right away and I always admired his musicianship. We respect each other as musicians. It's very easy for me to work with him. It doesn't require a long rehearsal process. I hate rehearsal."

"I'm OK with making a mistake. A lot of the fun of it is in the spontaneity of the recovery," he added. "He and I have great bands, and if you're working with good musicians it makes life so much easier. I've written songs with Sting in mind, like 'Big Man on Mulberry Street,' which we do in this show."

Contributing: Melissa Ruggieri , Brendan Morrow

US helps Israel shoot down 'nearly all' Iran-launched attack drones as Biden pledges support

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden lauded American forces who helped Israel down “nearly all” of the drones and missiles fired by Iran and vowed to coordinate a global response to Tehran’s unprecedented attack. The Pentagon said U.S. forces intercepted “dozens of missiles” and drones launched from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that were headed toward Israel.

With regional tensions at their highest since the Israel-Hamas war began six months ago, Biden pledged on Saturday that American support for Israel’s defense against attacks by Iran and its proxies is “ironclad.” The attack marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, risking a wider regional conflict.

Biden made clear in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would not participate in any offensive action against Iran, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on condition of anonmymity.

The U.S. and Israel had been bracing for an attack for days after Iran said it would retaliate for a suspected Israeli strike this month on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed 12 people, including two senior Iranian generals in the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force.

“At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week,” Biden said in a statement late Saturday. “Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement said the U.S. took out dozens of the attacks, but did not provide details on ships or aircraft involved in the operation that commanders had been preparing for over the past two weeks.

“Our forces remain postured to protect U.S. troops and partners in the region, provide further support for Israel’s defense, and enhance regional stability,” Austin said, adding that troops are standing ready to prevent any further conflict.

Biden had cut short a weekend stay at his Delaware beach house to meet with his national security team at the White House, returning to Washington minutes before Israeli officials confirmed that they had detected drones being launched toward their territory from Iran.

He convened a principals meeting of the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room to discuss the unfolding situation, the White House said, before speaking with Netanyahu.

“I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel,” Biden said.

Biden added that he would convene a meeting of the Group of Seven advanced democracies on Sunday “to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

The Pentagon reported that Austin had spoken twice with his Israeli counterpart to praise the “extraordinary defensive measures and strong cooperation undertaken to defeat this Iranian attack against Israel” and again stated clearly that “Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against any future attacks by Iran and its regional proxies.” National security adviser Jake Sullivan also spoke with his counterpart to reinforce Washington’s “ironclad commitment to the security of Israel.”

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement that “Iran has begun an airborne attack against Israel.” She added: “The United States will stand with the people of Israel and support their defense against these threats from Iran.”

Biden on Friday said the United States was “devoted” to defending Israel and that “Iran will not succeed.” Asked by reporters what his message was for Iran, the president’s only reply was: “Don’t.”

He ignored a question about what would trigger a direct U.S. military response.

The U.S., along with its allies, have sent direct messages to Tehran to warn against further escalating the conflict.

During the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, there have been near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group along the Israel-Lebanon border. U.S. officials have recorded more than 150 attacks by Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria on U.S. forces at bases in those countries since war started on Oct. 7.

One attack in late January killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. In retaliation, the U.S. launched a massive air assault, hitting more than 85 targets at seven locations in Iraq and Syria.

Meantime, on Saturday, commandos from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard rappelled from a helicopter onto an Israeli-affiliated container ship near the Strait of Hormuz and seized the vessel.

Watson, the NSC spokesperson, said the U.S. strongly condemned the seizure and urged Iran to release the ship and crew immediately.

“We will work with our partners to hold Iran to account for its actions,” she said.

Also Saturday, the Israeli-occupied West Bank also saw some of the worst violence since Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Price reported from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Mike Balsamo in New York contributed to this report.

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Trevor Story injury update: Red Sox shortstop undergoes successful shoulder surgery on Friday

Story suffered a fractured glenoid in his shoulder.

Boston Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story  will not play again this season after suffering a fractured glenoid in his shoulder, general manager Craig Breslow told reporters on Tuesday . He had surgery Friday and is expected to need at least six months to recover, giving him no chance at returning this year.

"Boston Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story today underwent a successful arthroscopic repair of the posterior labrum, with an open reduction and internal fixation of the fracture of the glenoid rim," the team said in a statement Friday. "The procedure was performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache at the Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, CA."

Story departed last Friday night's 8-6 win over the Los Angeles Angels ( box score ) after suffering what was described as a "significant" left shoulder injury on a diving play. Story incurred the injury during the fourth inning, when he attempted to corral a Mike Trout batted ball. He stayed down and received attention from the training staff before leaving the field. 

Story underwent an MRI in Seattle, and on Saturday the Red Sox placed him on the 10-day injured list with what's termed a left shoulder dislocation. In a corresponding move, the team recalled infielder David Hamilton . 

On Saturday, a clearly deflated Story said "always have hope for that" when asked whether he would play again during the 2024 season: 

Trevor Story says he has a "significant" injury involving his shoulder. Still hopes to play again this year. Looks absolutely crushed. Sucks so much. pic.twitter.com/LMd8qzu16k — Tyler Milliken ⚾️ (@tylermilliken_) April 7, 2024

Story, 31, entered Friday night hitting .241/.313/.345 (94 OPS+) with four runs batted in over the course of his first seven games this season. Friday night's contest marked just the 145th appearance for Story since he signed with the Red Sox prior to the 2022 campaign. He missed significant time last season following surgery to install an internal brace in support of his ulnar collateral ligament. He also missed a chunk of time in 2022 with a hairline fracture in his wrist.

"You go out there and he's in pain and all that, and you start thinking about everything he did in the offseason to get to this point," Cora said. "He's a guy that very quietly has become the leader of this team. He took ownership of what we were trying to accomplish. 

"It's not going to stop, and hopefully nothing is going on and he'll be with us soon. But you start thinking about that. That's the tough part of this job."

Prior to joining the Red Sox, Story had enjoyed a productive career as a member of the Colorado Rockies . Over parts of six seasons he batted .272/.340/.523 (112 OPS+) with 158 home runs and 100 stolen bases. His overall career contributions have been worth an estimated 30.4 Wins Above Replacement and he's a two-time All-Star and Silver Slugger Award winner.

It's to be seen how the Red Sox divvy up Story's playing time. Pablo Reyes represents the path of least resistance, but the Red Sox did also bring up infielder Romy Gonzalez from Triple-A Worcester on Tuesday. Offseason addition Vaughn Grissom is also expected to see more action at shortstop as he continues his own recovery from injury. 

The best shortstop prospect in the system, Marcelo Mayer , began his season at the Double-A level on Friday. 

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