How to Write Prose

Fiction is invented; characters, plot, and world are made up, even if inspired by real experience. Creative nonfiction uses real events and real people but applies literary techniques like scene-building, dialogue, and narrative arc. The facts are true; the craft is the same.

A short story typically needs a character with a want or need, a conflict that gets in the way, rising tension, a turning point, and a resolution. Compression is everything; every scene has to earn its place, there is not enough space to develop side stories, novellas, and novels are where to go if you want to expand further.

Read it aloud. If it sounds like a speech or an essay, it’s not dialogue yet. Real dialogue is indirect; people talk around things, and rarely say exactly what they mean. Especially on paper, it forms a truncated speech; descriptions, plot, and setting are all competing for space.

Showing means rendering a scene concretely, what characters do, say, and perceive, so the reader draws their own conclusions. Telling summarizes or states directly. Showing is usually stronger for emotional moments. Telling is fine for transitions, backstory, and pacing. They weave in and out, but mostly you want your reader to think for themselves.

There’s no single answer, but common ranges are: flash fiction under 1,000 words, short stories 1,000–7,500 words, novelettes up to 17,500, and novellas up to 40,000.

Our writing tools include story structure and character development tools, writing prompt generators. They are all free and interactive, no account required.

Creating your writing voice comes from reading and writing a lot. It’s the complex combination of your own opinion, skills, and desires that creates a unique sentence length, word preference. You write what you notice and cut away what you leave out, and that is your story. You can’t force it, but it comes with practice.