What was your favorite dream as a kid?

Flying dreams? Candyland dreams? Dreams in which you saw old friends, old pets, a joyful reunion where nothing else mattered? Dreams that made you powerful, a hero in a story?

One of my favorite dreams was one I only had once. And actually, it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare. I dreamed that I’d found a portal to another world—a steampunk city inhabited by clever but suspicious aliens. My friends had gotten Lost, and there was nothing I could do about it. But there were parentless children who got caught in the traps, having been deceived by an evil Trainmaster who ate their souls. I could do something for those kids. Protect them. I sang Happy Birthday in hell. Woke up in a cold sweat, feeling the City’s mechanical arms reaching for me. And then, this summer, I brought that City to life. I trekked in its train stations, had a drink in one of its pubs. Negotiated for fantastical berries at the market. Sat on an airship launchpad, thinking about how times had changed. I explored its tunnels, its nature, its heartbeat, and came out from the other side having known something both terrible and beautiful. So, here’s what I learned about writing a short story. Or, a novella, depending on how you consider it.

Connect with the Creator. Writing is not for the faint of heart. It is a passionate thing, both intimate and vast. We receive our gift of creating from the Almighty Creator. Ask Him what He wants to say through you, and, as the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writer’s conference would say, “Write His Answer.”

Keep the dream alive. When I awoke in my grandmother’s house all those years ago, I grabbed my Kindle and wrote a poem, recalling dialogue, characters, scenes, and places that I felt like I’d spend months immersed in. I read it to myself every few months, keeping the memories fresh in my mind. I ended up writing poems into the story—possibly as a result of this initial conveyance. When you are writing a story, no matter if it’s based off a dream or not, remember why you are writing it. Is the world worth exploring, or that character worth displaying? Are you experimenting with writing style? Whatever your reason, keep the dream alive. For a short story in particular, keeping a specific dream (a bit of dialogue, a song lyric, a Big Feeling) remains crucial to this process, or else you’ll get lost in too many dream elements and fell off the edge of the world.

Research. This may seem like a boring part of the process, but if you’re keeping the dream alive, it won’t be. Discover your passions and research them through multiple forms of media and levels of consumption. If you are writing a short story for a BA English requirement at Cairn, you will need at least 15 sources. They can be books about writing (like Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg), articles found on the JSTOR database (with long titles like “Disrupted Expectations: Young/Old Protagonists in Diana Wynne Jones’s Novels” by Deborah Kaplan, movies like Treasure Planet (if you want to explore the steampunk aesthetic) playlists like “No Write Way” by Victoria Schwab, books about elements you plan to put in your story (like The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery, which definitely didn’t make me cry)… the possibilities are endless. Go wild, have fun with it, and find friends who will be supportive about your newfound knowledge.

Chat with your characters. When you’re creating a short story, your goal is to use as few words as possible to convey your point. Usually, that comes in the form of character-driven circumstances. If you view certain fictional characters as role models, or talk to them when pick up your favorite book or movie (“You tell him, Padme”) then you’ve had at least a glimpse of this. Talk with your characters—give them space to write, even if what they write won’t end up in the story itself. Ask them questions, get to know their voice. Are they funny? Awkward? Verbose? Most importantly, consider Point of View (or, POV). Why are your characters in the story? What do they contribute to the narrative or theme? Who is the narrator and why is she/he telling it?

Consider the end. The end is one of the hardest aspects of writing a short story, because it must feel final, not a beginning, like a chapter in a story. Sometimes that comes in the form of something explosive and dark, like Shirley Johnson’s “The Lottery.” Other times it’s something more ballad-like, such as J R. R. Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle.” Whatever sort of piece your short story is, you don’t have to know the ending before you start writing, but rather, open the gate to this dreamed world with the other side of the gate in mind, if not in sight. After all, God tells us at the beginning of His story how it’s going to turn out (Genesis 3:15)! We bear His image. Let us also bear His love for story.

I hope these tips were helpful! Feel free to chat with me about the beauty of language. Blessings in your writerly adventures!