Donal Ryan shares some encouraging ideas on how to write a great short story with the sound advice of just getting your story out, being truthful, not worrying and taking risks.

Maria Popova's article links to several different articles which include some sound and varied advice from an assortment of known writers from the past and those writing today.

Find stories to inspire your students from this collection of stories curated by the open website 'We Are Teachers'. There are also links to the stories that are included in teh collection shared.

This open website provides many stories with audio versions of a read aloud for you to listen to or to choose to read aloud yourself. "Read Me a Story, Ink is offered for the use of teachers, educators, parents or anyone who enjoys reading to children. At readmeastoryink.com you will find both printable and audio stories by award winning authors, numerous recommended reading lists for various ages, links to other wonderful and diverse children’s sites, and an index of 1,761 short stories perfect for reading aloud."

This resource can help you to understand the key components of the form of the short story, so you can plan out your own stories to include each element. It is freely available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

What different methods are there for writing a short story?

YouTuber, Reedsy, shares their advice and tips on how to draft out your short story covering five writing methods including The Flashlight Method, Writing Line by Line, Free Writing, It also covers how to cut redundant scenes, avoid making unintentional symbols, developing characters and their motivations and goals and bridging your start and end in your story.

YouTuber Reedsy, shares advice and tips on how to conceptualize a short story including the length of a short story (1500- 8500words ), what you want to accomplish in a story, what theme you wish to explore, the purpose of your story, choosing a key event, building characters, and brainstorming first lines to open a story.

This podcast features new short stories from living writers written exclusively for Radio 4, a UK public radio station, and leading commissioner of new short stories.

It is produced by the team who created the BBC National Short Story Award and other in-house reading teams at Radio 4.

This weekly picture from The New York Times could be a good starter for students to get ideas for a short story. There is a 'back catalog' of previous images used which are easy to access also, and it is possible to search for certain images on the open website.

What components should a short story have?

How do I start to write a short story?

What kind of environment would be good for me to write in?

What different methods are there for writing a short story?

How long is a short story?

What do the terms setting, characterization, rising action, climax, resolution, conflict, denouement mean? Can I listen to some examples of short stories?

How do I write a great short story?

YouTuber Reedsey shares ideas and techniques for generating a short story such as starting with a character type that can be turned into an idea by combining it with something unexpected, or starting with a setting into which you drop a specific character to see what the setting brings out of the character. Another technique covered is a story that explores a relationship or from starting from form such as using an unusual point of view such as from the point of view of an object.

This is a blog that includes plenty of writing prompts that can help you to get started with a short story. Every week, new prompts are added and it is possible to search by genre.

Irving Short Story Competition Requirements

This documents explains the requirements for your short story to be submitted to the school competition.

Irving Short Story Competition Rules

This document lays out the rules that must be followed if you wish to enter your short story to the school competition.

This rubric will help you ensure your story has all the required elements to create a strong story and also score highly with the panel of judges in the short story competition.