I want to address the online path here. The Internet has many locations where you can find information about the traditional path. There are also multiple locations where you can publish your stories online.
The rewards of publishing via these methods are different. The traditional path can provide you income, if you are good enough to get published. This normally requires years of working before you break through to success. Some online publishers may offer income but most do not. Later I plan an article describing the online locations that I am aware of, but for now, I will just be discussing StoryStar.com.
StoryStar accepts stories for publication from anyone. The only stipulations are that the story must be written in English and comply with the Submission Agreement (https://www.storystar.com/submission-agreement)
Why would anyone wish to go to the work of creating a story and then let everyone read it for free? The short answer is: Experience. The full answer includes, Feedback, Forcing yourself to just get it done, The joy of telling your family and friends that you are a published author. Each person probably has their own additional reasons, but those were mine.
So how do you go about writing a short story to get it ready to publish? Once again, there are individual answers to this question, but the general answer is:
(1) Come up with an idea of what your story will be about. Short stories, such as are published on StoryStar are usually just that, SHORT. The story is expected to be only two or three typed pages, cover one conflict or theme, and encompass a few characters and scenes. Read a group of stories to see for yourself how all that fits together in our stories.
(2) Choose to just start writing (Seat of the Pants style) or write the summary of the story all out and then fill in the blanks (Planning style). A poll of writers on StoryStar shows that far more are Pants style with only a few Plan style writers. Neither style is intrinsically better than the other. It really does boil down to what works for you. Some people need to structure of planning the story all out for force them to cover everything that they wanted to, while others feel cramped by that structure and just start with the first sentence and go on from there.
(3) Characterization. You want to have characters in your story that your readers will become interested in, either to like them or to dislike them. Both types of characters are good choices for short stories.
(4) Description. You need to paint a picture with your words to let your reader know where the story is happening. Describe what the reader would see if they were watching a movie of your story. Since it is not a movie, you have to spell it out for them.
Later I plan to expand on each of these items with separate articles, but this brief article will serve as a beginning for that effort.
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