Do you love to write?
Do you look at things from a different angle?
Do you find interesting things in every situation?
Do you see yourself as an author or storyteller or want to be?
Do you express your feeling via writing your own diary, notebook, or story?
Well, this is not your weakness actually it is your biggest asset to make money out of it.
Yes, people are making $500, $1000, or more just by selling short stories.
Then why don’t you make money writing short stories?
Even, people write their own blog posts and for that, you need to become a blogger to make a living writing short stories.
It is one of the best impressive side hustle ideas for working moms, students, adults, children. It is best for making a passive income from home.
Well, you will have thousand of doubts about how to get paid to write short stories.
Here, this post will are going to cover the following points step by step to give you complete knowledge on how to make a living writing short stories.
So, stay focused and tuned with our key points-
- What is short story writing?
- What are the short story elements? ( Four main elements )
- What are the tyes short stories?
- How to get ideas to write short stories?
- How to write a short story? ( In simple 5 steps )
- How to make money writing short stories ?
- How to get paid for writing your own stories?
- How much you can earn from selling short story?
Keeping these key points in your mind you can write your own best story to make money online.
What is short story writing?
Some people mix or understood short stories and novels as one thing.
While these are two different concepts having different benefits and conflicts. These are totally poles apart.
A story is basically a brief novel, series of stories, literature.
A novel is a bundle of chapters, characters while short stories are specific about one character ( or few characters ) and events.
Short stories are designed to deliver specific emotional feelings and specific experiences to readers.
Readers read short stories to shift their mental identity and to impact their mood and brain for a specific feeling and experience.
And a story can be read in a very short time.
But short stories and novels are totally different. Mainly, in short stories, the whole focus relies on one character or few characters.
But in novels, there is nothing like that.
Do you ever have the vision to become an author?
It is not when you write a novel or book then only you will be an author.
You can become an author just by publishing short stories on amazon also.
It’s like dream come true for you.
Here, in short stories, you can write about real or imagery events by involving imaginary incidents, characters, talks, programs, and people and creates a complete scene.
Your story can be real as well as imaginary based on your thoughts.
A story is a series of events where readers find interesting facts.
So, you need to keep in mind that your story should be interesting having some facts.
You can choose any category to write short stories.
It can be fiction, romance, business and investing, comics, thriller, teens, and young adults.
But we suggest you choose in which you are quite interested or relate with yourself.
Because in that category you will never feel bored. And you will be able to think more creatively and effectively.
And you can earn a good amount of money just to sell a short story.
Now let’s move forwards-
What are the short stories elements?
Elements mean the base of your story upon which you build your stories. There are four main elements in every story.
Every single story is designed on these four pillars.
Which are as follows-
Characters-
Character means all people who are involved in your story. It can be one single person or more.
One lead character will be while the other can be major, minor, dynamic, or static.
Major character means who has the biggest role and impact on your story and minor means who has very little presence in your story.
It is like a side role or supporting cast. Dynamic character means who changes his identity in the story.
It means a person who was very rigged in the beginning but in the end, becomes polite.
It’s like behavioral change in any character. While static means who has the same image throughout the story.
Plots-
Plots play a vital role to make your short story impactful. Plots stand for the series of events in your story.
It means how your story begins and then conflicts occur then climax and again-conclusion.
This is all about how you organize your story step by step with a good ending.
Setting-
In the section, it stands for the place from where your story starts, where ends. It also includes where your character plays their roles.
It is like the demographic of your story.
Themes-
Themes mean what is the message behind your story is called theme. It may be love, emotion, crime, investigation, or any moral lesson.
What are the types of short stories?
There are different types of stories available.
But every story is defined as per its message, character, word length, and writing style.
But the main factor to classified a story is the word count and character with the message.
It also depends on how many words, characters are there in the story.
Mainly stories have 10 types.
Here, is a quick brief about each type of short story. So, that you can easily define for yourself what kind of story you are going to write.
Anecdote short story-
This kind of short story has a short entertaining, comical, laughable, or interesting account of a real incident or person.
Yes, this kind of story is all about reality which is already present or happened.
Fable short stories-
A story that delivers a moral relation and shows relevance with animal characters is known as a fable short story.
In this kind of story, the writer creates a sequence of scenes with animal characters.
Parable-
A story that is based on religious background and gives you a religious message. All religious stories are in the parable category.
Myth short stories-
A story that is very conventional and habitual for us.
A story which is very common and regular and we are habitual from them.
These stories were organized in the earliest olden time.
The story which we hear in our homes from our grandparents about horror places ( hahaha, it gives a childhood feeling ) is myth stories.
Legend short stories-
This type of short story haves a historical base but that may not be true.
Legend stories give you a feeling of historical facts and history but the data can be modified as per the narrator.
Fairy tale-
These types of stories are about magical things.
These stories are related to children and are imaginary. These types of stories are imagery-based.
Tragic Tale-
A story that has an unhappy ending is known as a tragic tale story. It is also as per their name.
In this category, the story writer gives you unhappy, terrible, and emotional content.
The best example of this category is an emotional story like a heartbroken, relationship failure.
Fiction stories-
A story that is untrue but seems a realistic story is know as fiction. People love reading fantasy stories and books.
farce stories-
A story that has excessive and overstated comedy is known as farce stories.
Basically, comedy stories, cartoon stories fall into that category.
Satire stries-
A story that has stupidity, foolishness, or talks about people’s character rather than their qualities.
A story that contains immorality, wrongdoing, badness is falling into satire stories.
How to get ideas to write short stories?
First of all, you need to understand that stories are made to change. You always have thoughts to add something or to change something.
So, never hesitate to change something in your story.
Well, when it comes to how to get ideas for shorty writing. Then three strategies do best to find an idea for your story.
Observe and write-
In this method what you need to do is observe things very closely. When you observe something then you can generate your thoughts to narrate a story as per the events.
And for that shake, you can observe your neighbors, characters in a play, news channels, people around you, people buying or selling things, activities happening in the park, etc.
There are endless things to observe. Find an idea, create characters around that ideas with the best-fitting event and setting and your story is ready.
Ideas from relationships-
You can take ideas from your relationship with your girlfriend, wife, parents, kids, friends, and neighbors.
You can also create a story about your life and struggles. Feel that what if your loved ones will not be around you one day. Have that feeling and express it on paper. Your story will be ready.
Take ideas from settings ( Places )-
Yes, places can help you to get a story idea. For that you can visit different-different places and find that idea, You can easily notice why people come to that place and accordingly make a character and publish a short story.
Apart from that, you can take inspiration from whatever you love like birds, animals, pets. And write best stories.
How to write a short story without any experience?
Story writing is an art. This is how you represent a series of events with proper plots.
To become a writer and make money from it is your ultimate goal.
Then we have a suggestion for you. It is not compulsory that you need to write to become a writer.
By writing short stories you can achieve your dream but here is a suggestion for you.
Writing a novel in starting phase is like getting admission to college without having elementary education.
Your direction should be short stories ( like elementary or pre-school) to writing a novel ( Higher school or degree).
It’s an upward process. SO, take it that way. Writing short stories is the first step towards your writing career.
So, the question is how to write stories? Let me tell you it in simple steps-
Read story stories-
Yes, you heard it right. Before writing any kind of story I recommend you to read at least dozens of short stories and come up with a novel.
It will help you to understand the main concept of writing a story. Then find your own voice and develop your own writing style.
Some of the best short stories which I recommend you to read are-
All short stories are written by the masters of the short shorties game. They are like a legend when comes to writing short stories.
So, being a write and your host I highly recommend you to read these books to skyrocket your short story writing career.
The Tell-Tale Heart,
The most dangerous game,
The necklace,
The gift of the magi,
The lady and the tiger.
Genrate a winning ideas-
We have already learned above how to generate ideas for your story.
But the main key is to find a germ and then build character and events around it and get your story down.
Narrow your scope-
It means don’t overwrite like a novel with dozens of characters and events.
Always remember that the average short story length is only 2% of a novel in pages, characters, and events.
You must choose an appropriate word for a short story delivering a specific feeling and experience.
Satisfying ending-
It means you have to conclude the last. There should be a meaning to the story in the end. Don’t make it confused.
Edit aggresively-
As a writer, it is very common to make some grammar mistakes in your story.
After completion of your writing job done. Now it’s my turn to edit it aggressively.
It means you have to take a look to edit grammar, production, sentence.
And being a writer I recommend you to use the Grammarly tool which auto-correct your words, sentences.
It also gives you suggestions to make your story perfect in grammar.
I personally recommend you to choose Grammarly for instant grammar and spellings checks and the best available in free and premium options.
Its free option is the only correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation while premium gives you to correct your sentence tone, clarity focus, word choice, formality level, fluency, advanced suggestion, etc.
So I recommend you to choose the Grammarly premium option to make your writing great.
You can also add a free Grammarly extension to your browser.
After this next question which comes to mind is-
How to get paid to write short stories?
Well, this is not a problem. Getting your money in your account is quite easy these days.
There are many platforms like Paypal, offline checks, Payoneer are the best available option to get your amount in your bank account.
PayPal-
PayPal gives you $5 rewards when you join the first time. Here, you can pay your client, get payment globally, can shop.
So, it is one of the best options to make your payments.
Here, also you need to add your bank account with Paypal and pay or receive directly to your account.
Offline Checks-
To use this option you can provide your home address to the buyer company. And can request them to send your checks to your home address.
It is an easy process but it can take weeks to reach out your check to you. Apart from that if you want then can use this facility.
Payoneer-
It is the only portal to receive your payments. Yes, using this app or website you can receive payment globally with a simple click.
Here, Payoneer creates your own virtual account on Payoneer. After that add your bank account and get your payment. After that confirm your email address and start taking payment.
How much you can earn from selling short story?
Well, this depends on your story and the website or company you are working with.
But here is a quick overview of how much you can earn. On average you can make $100 to $500 per story which is a quite good amount for short stories. But detailed income as per the companies is listed below.
How to make money writing short stories?
Making money should be your first goal. You should concentrate on writing a good story first. Always have feelings of serving people.
Then only you can make a good amount of money.
But there are many ways to make money with your short stories.
Here is a list of ways to make money with your short stories.
By selling-
Yes, you can sell short stories for money online and offline.
There are many apps, websites, magazines, and newspaper are ready to buy your stories.
Even the biggest e-commerce company like amazon also buys short stories.
Don’t know how to sell short stories on amazon?
Then you can miss out on your golden opportunity as a writer.
And for that, they will pay you a good amount of money.
By self publishing-
Yes, you can publish a short story on your own and can make money out of it.
Amazon kindle publishing is the biggest platform for publishing a short story.
Magzines and apps-
There are more than 20 magazines to sell short stories for money that publish short stories. You can also submit your story and get paid.
Now comes the conclusion of the story-
Now you have understood the story writing concept very clearly. A story is only 2% of the novel in character and events.
Making money with your writing passion is quite easy.
Now get an idea, create characters and events and get down your thoughts in form of a story with a satisfying ending.
People are making $500 for a single story having 20 or 30 pages. Always
Here, I have presented for you what is short story writing, what are types, elements, how to publish a short story, how to get paid, and how to make money with short stories.
Now I again suggest that if you have a little bit of interest in writing, you must write stories and get paid to write short stories.
I hope you like the post.