Write a 400-word short story that actually feels finished

Four hundred words isn’t much, and it feels like even less once you have to fit a complete story into it. You can certainly describe an event in that space, but an event by itself doesn’t make a story. Something has to be at stake. So a short story needs conflict, and by the end, something also has to have changed. Try pulling that off.

The usual advice for a short story is not to take on too much and to get to the point quickly. So: keep the cast small, limit the locations, and don’t put off the decisive moment for too long.

That decisive moment does have to change something, though. It can change the situation the character is in, or it can give your reader a new insight. If neither happens, the story feels “unfinished.”

Example: You write about someone who tells a lie and then walks home. But does that lie actually have a consequence? And does it change how your reader understands the first sentence? As the author, you know what your story is getting at, of course, but your reader has to be able to follow every development on their own, without explanation.

In this writing exercise, you write a short story about one choice and its consequences. It’s not necessarily about a surprise ending. It’s about an ending that grows out of what happened before.

The assignment is below. After that, you can submit your own story at the bottom of the page for feedback. You don’t need an account.

Intermediate exercise: One choice, one consequence, one ending

Write a short story of no more than 400 words in which a character tells a small lie to hold on to something or to prevent something. Within that same story, show the concrete consequence of that lie. End at the moment when there’s something the character can no longer undo. Limit yourself to one main character, one continuous situation, and at most one important secondary character. So don’t write a lengthy backstory, don’t skip ahead in time, and don’t end with a sentence that explains what the reader should think of the story. The story has to stand completely on its own.

• Length: no more than 400 words
• Time: 1 hour

Learning Objective

Practice writing a self-contained short story in which one choice causes a visible consequence and the ending follows logically from the beginning.

Criteria

• Stakes: the text makes clear what the main character is trying to achieve or prevent with the lie.
• Consequence: the central choice has a concrete consequence, and it doesn’t come out of nowhere.
• Ending: the ending sharpens the meaning of the earlier event without explaining that meaning.
• Economy: every element serves this one storyline; there’s no unnecessary buildup and no second plot.

Now write your own short story. So: no more than four hundred words, one lie with a consequence, and an ending that doesn’t need explaining.

Paste your story into the widget below. ViaScripta checks it against the four criteria. You don’t need an account.

Also check out the other writing exercises on ViaScripta.