short story sample

100 Great Short Stories

Okay, I lied. There are so many great short stories that I was unable to trim the list to 100 titles; so here are 160 Great Short Stories for you to enjoy. Click a button to find the best short stories from the authors below. We also have a great collection of Short Stories for Students and a library full of Children's Stories .

The Boy And The Filberts The Night Came Slowly One Summer Night The Coming of the King A Blunder Ex Oblivione Fat And Thin Hearts And Hands Amy's Question My Financial Career The Aged Mother Hermann The Irascible The Man in the Brown Coat The Death Of A Government Clerk The Father The Little Match Girl Louisa May Alcott: A Child's Biography The Terrible Old Man A Vine on a House The Open Window Witches' Loaves The Cats of Ulthar Mark Twain: A Child's Biography The Romance of a Busy Broker A Dead Woman's Secret A Chameleon A Respectable Woman On The Day of the Crucifixion The Dreamer Henry David Thoreau: A Child's Biography The Student The Unkindest Blow The Night Moth With a Crooked Feeler Alexandre The Thorny Road of Honor The Vendetta The Looking Glass The Selfish Giant Vanka The Merino Sheep A Duel The Cripple A Defensive Diamond The Wolves of Cernogatz Esme The Child's Story The Yarkand Manner The Diary of a Madman What Christmas Is As We Grow Older The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh The Schartz-Metterklume Method A Baby Tramp The Boarded Window Sredni Vashtar The Man In The Moon Eveline The Veteran The Log The Huntsman An Alpine Divorce A Defenseless Creature What You Want A Cosmopolite in a Cafe A Holiday Task The Model Millionaire Bertie's Christmas Eve The Colonel's Ideas The Tell-Tale Heart Transients in Arcadia Gentle Hand Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas The Sphinx Without a Secret The Hand A Lickpenny Lover The Interlopers How the Leopard Got His Spots Two Friends A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It The Lumber Room Babes in the Jungle The Unrest-Cure After the Race The Last Dream of Old Oak Springtime a la Carte Hyacinth According to Their Lights How I Edited an Agricultural Paper The Fly The Princess And The Puma The Striding Place The Nightingale and the Rose The Cop and the Anthem Federigo's Falcon The Masque of the Red Death The Mockingbird The Notary of Perigueux A Telephone Call Hands The Last Leaf The Cask of Amontillado Gabriel-Ernest The Way to the Dairy A Father's Confession The Furnished Room Chickamauga A Horseman in the Sky The McWilliamses And The Burglar Alarm Aloha Oe The Shoemaker And The Devil How the Widow Won the Deacon The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County A School Story The Necklace A Retrieved Reformation The Bet The Doll's House Christmas Every Day Turkeys Turning The Tables The Last Fight In The Coliseum The Story of Keesh The Nice People The Affair at Coulter's Notch The Laughing Hippopotamus Berenice The Picture in the House One Autumn Night Pigs Is Pigs The Shed Chamber The Happy Prince Keeping Watch Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp The Moonlit Road The Alchemist "Girl" The Pimienta Pancakes The Enchanted Bluff Two Gallants The Old Man of the Sea Man From The South The Olive The Velveteen Rabbit A Hunger Artist Miggles The Tomb The Wind's Tale The Girl Who Got Rattled The Ransom of Red Chief Extracts from Adam's Diary Gooseberries "His Wife's Deceased Sister" The Star Gentlemen: The King! The Egg Mademoiselle Fifi The Namesake The Hungry Stones A Call The Darling A Little Cloud

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10 of the Best Very Short Stories That Can Be Read Online

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

One very short story – often attributed to Ernest Hemingway but actually the work of another writer – is just six words long: ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’. And some of the greatest fiction-writers of the last two centuries have written memorable short stories which stretch to little more than a few pages: short enough to be read in a coffee break.

Below, we introduce ten classic short stories – very short stories – from some of the finest authors in the literary canon. All of the stories can be read online: follow the links provided to read them.

1. Anton Chekhov, ‘ The Student ’.

A key device in many Chekhov short stories is the epiphany : a sudden realisation or moment of enlightenment experienced by one of the story’s characters, usually the protagonist. In many ways, the epiphany can be said to perform a similar function to the plot twist or revelation at the end of a more traditional (i.e., plot-driven) short story.

In ‘The Student’, one of Chekhov’s shortest stories, a young seminary is travelling home on Good Friday. He meets two women, a mother and her daughter who have both been widowed, and joins them around their fire, and the conversation turns to the Gospels, since it is Easter.

The student begins telling them about the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus, and this tale reawakens painful memories in the two women. Here, the emphasis is more on character and emotion than plot and incident, as we discuss in our analysis of the story .

2. Kate Chopin, ‘ The Story of an Hour ’.

Some short stories can say all they need to do in just a few pages, and Kate Chopin’s three-page 1894 story ‘The Story of an Hour’ (sometimes known as ‘The Dream of an Hour’) is a classic example. Yet those three pages remain tantalisingly ambiguous, perhaps because so little is said, so much merely hinted at.

Chopin’s short story is a subtle, studied analysis of death, marriage, and personal wishes. Written in April 1894 and originally published in Vogue in December of that year, the story focuses on an hour in the life of a married woman who has just learnt that her husband has apparently died.

We have analysed this story here .

3. Saki, ‘ The Lumber-Room ’.

Saki, born Hector Hugh Munro, is one of the wittiest short-story writers in English, a missing link between Wilde and Wodehouse. Yet he remains undervalued.

‘The Lumber Room’ is a classic short story about a child who is too clever for the adults: a mischievous boy, Nicholas, seeks to outwit his aunt so he can gain access to the lumber-room with its hidden treasures and curiosities. The story is also about the nature of obedience and the limited view of the world adults have, when contrasted with the child’s more expansive and imaginative outlook.

We have analysed this wonderful story here .

4. Virginia Woolf, ‘ A Haunted House ’.

In the pioneering short stories Woolf wrote in the period from around 1917 until 1921, she not only developed her own ‘modernist’ voice but also offered a commentary on other literary forms and styles.

This two-page story is a good example: we find a woman living in a house which is apparently haunted by a ghostly couple. The story that emerges is less frightening than it is touching, and as much romance as horror, as Woolf provides a modernist, stream-of-consciousness take on the conventional ghost story, all in a brief vignette of around 600 words.

We have analysed the story here .

5. Franz Kafka, ‘ Before the Law ’.

This is a very short story or parable by the German-language Bohemian (now Czech) author Franz Kafka (1883-1924). It was published in 1915 and later included in Kafka’s (posthumously published) novel The Trial , where its meaning is discussed by the protagonist Josef K. and a priest he meets in a cathedral. ‘Before the Law’ has inspired numerous critical interpretations and prompted many a debate, in its turn, about what it means.

A man approaches a doorkeeper and asks to be admitted to ‘the law’. The doorkeeper tells him he cannot grant him access, but that it may be possible to admit the man later. We won’t say what happens next, but the parable is typically Kafkaesque – in so far as anything else – in its comic absurdism and depiction of the futility of human endeavour. The story is often interpreted as a tale about religion.

We discuss the story in more depth in our summary and analysis of it.

6. Katherine Mansfield, ‘ Miss Brill ’.

‘Miss Brill’ is a short story by the New-Zealand-born modernist writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), published in the Athenaeum in 1920 and then included in Mansfield’s 1922 collection The Garden Party and Other Stories .

Every Sunday, a lady named Miss Brill goes to the local public gardens to hear the band play and to sit in the gardens and people-watch. On the particular Sunday that is the focus of the story, the unmarried Miss Brill comes to realise that she, and all of the other people gathered in the gardens, appear to be in a sort of play. But when she overhears a young couple making apparently disparaging remarks about her, she appears to undergo an epiphany …

We discuss the story in more detail in our analysis of it.

7. Ernest Hemingway, ‘ Cat in the Rain ’.

This short tale was published in Hemingway’s early 1925 collection In Our Time ; he wrote ‘Cat in the Rain’ for his wife Hadley while they were living in Paris. She wanted to get a cat, but he said they were too poor.

‘Cat in the Rain’ was supposedly inspired by a specific event in 1923 when, while staying at the home of Ezra Pound (a famous cat-lover) in Rapallo, Italy, Hadley befriended a stray kitten. We find a woman in a hotel seeking to rescue a cat she spots in the rain outside, but the story takes in deeper longings, too.

We have offered an analysis of this story in a separate post.

8. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘ The Lottery in Babylon ’.

The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is one of the great short-fiction writers of the twentieth century, and many of his classic tales stretch to just a few pages.

‘The Lottery in Babylon’, first published in 1941, is among his most ‘Kafkaesque’ tales. When he wrote the story, Borges was working a rather unfulfilling library job refilling the bookshelves, and ‘The Lottery in Babylon’ reflects the sense of futility in all human endeavour which Borges was feeling at this time. We are told of a lottery in the (fictional) land of Babylon, which becomes compulsory, and which delivers both rewards and punishments to its lucky (or unlucky) participants. Although Borges’ story is satirical and humorous, it also taps into the horrific realities of totalitarian regimes.

Find out more about this story by reading our analysis of it .

9. Lydia Davis, ‘ On the Train ’.

Very few stories in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis are longer than a few pages, and many are a single page, like prose haiku or short vignettes. Her stories are usually less about narrative and more about observation, seemingly insignificant details, and a refusal to sentimentalise. Indeed, her stories are almost clinical in their precision and emotional tautness.

We’ve opted for ‘On the Train’ as it’s one of the few Davis stories available online via the link above, but we could have chosen any number of short stories from the collected edition mentioned above. Highly recommended.

10. David Foster Wallace, ‘ A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life ’.

This is the shortest story on this list. Published on ‘page zero’ of Wallace’s 2000 collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men , it is another vignette, about how the way we behave is ultimately motivated by our longing to be liked by others.

The rise of social media has only brought home even more clearly what Wallace brilliantly and wittily reveals here: that much of our behaviour is purely performative, with the individual having lost any sense of authenticity or true identity.

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25 Best Short Stories of All Time

Alex Simmonds

How do you capture the human condition in a few pages? With difficulty. Which is why many writers argue that short stories are harder to write, and a much purer form of writing than novels.

The perfect short story might be comedic, fast-paced and exciting, descriptive, or poetic. But the one thing it must do? Get the reader hooked quickly .

Everything must be perfectly weighted and have a purpose.

What Is the Best Short Story Ever Written?

What are the best short story collections, what is a good example of a short story, what makes a perfect short story.

An impossible question to answer, but we can try to get close.

We’ve put together a list of 25 of the most iconic, most anthologised, best written, or most well-known short stories of all time.

To start us off, here are some authors that many consider to be the masters of the short story. We’ve highlighted some of their most popular works, but check out their full collections for classic examples of incredible short stories.

1. "The Dead" by James Joyce

The stories in Dubliners are depictions of life in Dublin around 1910. T. S. Eliot, amongst others, described The Dead as "one of the greatest short stories ever written."

Irish middle-class life jumps from the page, as Gabriel Conroy gives a speech at a family party and finds his principles and beliefs challenged.

There is a lyrical, melancholic tone as his thoughts move from awkward social encounters, to Irish nationalism, to the role of the dead in people’s lives. It offers a beautifully accessible route into the world of an often-inaccessible writer.

2. "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

Who knew that a story about a village lottery could cause so much anger and outrage?

Yet Jackson’s dark, modern gothic tale caused a flood of complaints to The New Yorker . People demanded to know where such a horrific lottery was taking place!

The Lottery , written in 1948, remains chilling to this day and perfectly captures the potential of human beings to both accept and participate in a shocking act of ritual violence in the name of faith and tradition.

3. "The Swimmer" by John Cheever

Cheever’s short stories veer from realism to satire to fantasy, often in the space of the same sentence.

Below the surface of the cocktail parties that greet new readers, are puzzling fables about radio transmissions of private conversations ( The Enormous Radio ) or brothers attacking one another unexpectedly ( Goodbye My Brother ).

The Swimmer is his best-known story and certainly the most anthologized.

A boozy jaunt through the pools and backyards of middle America, the story swings from social commentary about mid-century, middle American sensibilities in Shady Hill, to a surreal and melancholic dream fable of the passing of the seasons and a man losing everything he has in his life.

4. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

It is almost cast in stone that any list of great short story writers must mention Carver, Cheever, and O’Connor together, as the greats of American short story writing.

Known for her southern gothic stories, O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find is her most popular work.

It tells the tale of a southern family who gets stranded on a road trip and encounters a criminal gang. As usual with O’Connor, it is a humorous, but dark and vicious tale, confronting notions of good and evil.

5. "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter

Carter’s reworking of fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber challenged the way women were represented in classic tales of western culture.

Turning the tropes of fairy tales and gothic fiction on their head, Carter created heroic and sexually liberated female protagonists. In her most famous story, The Company of Wolves , Red Riding Hood becomes a confident and beloved heroine, who defeats the wolf by seducing and taming him.

6. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates’s impeccable short stories are known for their representation of violence and evil in American society.

"Where are you going, where have you been" is one of her finest. It is about a 15-year-old girl who meets a stranger, who is trying to coax her into coming with him.

Inspired by three real life murders in Arizona the story has been anthologised many times and is regularly featured on English literature courses around the world.

7. "Desiree’s Baby" by Kate Chopin

Causing widespread outrage on first publication, Kate Chopin set her 1893 story of race relations in Louisiana just before the Civil War.

It examines gender and discrimination through the story of Desiree, who is adopted by wealthy French Creoles and who later marries Armand.

When Desiree gives birth to a mixed-race baby, Armand forces her to leave. Chopin was fascinated with women’s identities in all her stories, and this was one of her finest.

8. "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway

Eternally imitated but never bettered, few writers have influenced as many as Ernest Hemingway.

Any number of his stories could have made this list – from the early noir of The Killers to the pathos of confronting death in The Snows of Kilimanjaro . However, if you had to pick one from the best Hemingway short stories, then it would surely be Hills Like White Elephants (1927).

A man and woman are waiting for the train whilst discussing an operation the man wants the woman to have.

The story’s genius lies in how the whole thing is about abortion, but it is never actually mentioned. A masterclass of simplicity, by the undisputed master of minimalism.

All of the stories below represent some of the best storytelling in the last century. You’ve probably heard the classing writing advice to read more than you write. With short stories, you get all the elements of brilliant story structure, description, character, and voice, but in bite-sized pieces.

Even if you don’t enjoy some of the titles on this list, you can still learn from the way they were written—often in one sitting!

9. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce

This frequently anthologized story is simple enough; a civilian who has carried out a mission for the confederacy is being hanged on a bridge in Alabama.

But it is the story’s portrayal of this "occurrence" as a part of war, its unreliable narrator, and its innovative use of the stretching of subjective time, that has seen the story influence generations of writers.

10. "The Monkey’s Paw" by W W Jacobs

Some stories are on this list because they are the best written short stories of all time.

Others, such as The Monkey’s Paw , are here because of their iconic place in our imaginative lives.

W W Jacobs took the ancient story of magic wishes and rewrote it as a supernatural short story, dealing with the notion of unintended consequences. The tale is as creepy today as it was in 1902 when it was first published.

11. "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry

You will not find a more compact tale about sacrifice and the Christmas spirit than The Gift of the Magi . It is for this reason that the story has been adapted countless times, including over 18 movie adaptations.

12. "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver

Most critics agree that alongside Chekhov , the grand master of the short story is Raymond Carver.

His stories exhibit a stripped back, minimalist examination of American working-class life. He reinvigorated the form in the 1980’s after it had gone out of fashion.

Two of his stories that are cited most often are, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral . Both have been heavily anthologized, but the latter is perhaps the more important and well known of the two.

The story is about a prejudiced man whose wife’s old blind friend comes to visit. Amidst Carver’s classic working-class landscape, Cathedral portrays a distrusting narrator having a moment of revelation and catharsis.

The final moments of the story, as the two men try to draw the Cathedral together, represent the high point of American short story telling.

13. "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

Can there be any more famous first line in the history of literature than this?

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.”

Kafka’s stories are pregnant with multiple meanings and devoid of answers.

In the Penal Colony is possibly his finest short story, but The Metamorphosis is his best known, and most anthologised.

Perhaps this is because of the story’s parallel meanings or perhaps it is simply because there is something intriguing about a man who wakes up having turned into an insect.

14. "Sonny’s Blues" by James Baldwin

Sonny’s Blues is a perfectly crafted short story about an algebra teacher in Harlem and his brother Sonny who is hooked on heroin.

Baldwin portrays the darkness looming over African Americans, and the narrator sees that drugs are for many, including his brother, a way of coping.

The darkness in their lives is contrasted with the "atmospheric lighting" of the jazz club and the "circle of light" the musicians play under. By far the best story ever written about jazz, the story follows a long tradition of proclaiming the artist as a prophet.

15. "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid

A stunning and inventive piece of writing that first appeared in The New Yorker , Girl is a single 650-word sentence of dialogue between a mother and daughter.

Most of the dialogue is the mother instructing the daughter about how she must become the perfect woman and fit into society in Antigua. She passes down the same patriarchal roles for women that she was taught as a child.

16. "A Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker

On one level, this is a story about dating and agonising over whether the phone is going to ring.

On another level, Parker explores the precarious place of women in society in 1928. Parker argues that women depend on men and God and act irrationally and insecurely when they should aim for self-reliance.

Short stories are, well, short. They require you to be exact with your language, specific with your details, and vivid with your imagery.

When writing a short story, you need to make sure that every sentence—every word, even—is working to draw your reader in. But what does that actually mean?

One place where writers lose specificity is in their verbs. Sometimes, we hide strong verbs behind combinations of weaker verbs and adverbs, like this:

• She’d made a decision. It was time to make a change.

Let’s run that through ProWritingAid.

• She’d decided. It was time to make a change.

Now the sentences sound more punchy and less repetitive, all with one simple change.

Try ProWritingAid today to learn more about creating specific, engaging sentences that will make your short story shine.

17. "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D H Lawrence

First published in 1926, The Rocking Horse Winner by Lawrence concerns a boy, Paul, who wishes to help his no-luck mum by proving he can be lucky.

He does this by riding his rocking horse into a frenzy, which allows him to predict real horses in races.

The family wins a great deal of money until things come to an abrupt and dark end. Most often viewed as a Freudian cautionary tale, it represents a high point in Lawrence’s short fiction.

18. "The Nose" by Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol was one of the most influential writers in Russian history, with Borges, Nabokov, Kafka, and Tolstoy all citing him as a major influence.

The Nose (1836) is his best and most famous work. Satirizing life in a totalitarian regime, The Nose tells the story of a Russian official whose nose wants to live independently from the rest of his face and body.

19. "The Distance of the Moon" by Italo Calvino

Calvino’s tale is the perfect example of magical realism, imagining a world where the moon was much closer to the Earth than it is today—when standing on the top of a ladder "you could just touch the moon if you held your arms up."

Underlying the more whimsical elements of is a sensual story of a man being in love with another man’s wife. The moon is the star of The Distance of the Moon , though, and as one Goodreads reviewer suggested, this story is "strange, but enjoyable."

20. "The Body" by Stephen King

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough room here to list the best sci-fi short stories or the best horror stories (or even the best Stephen King short stories) , but Stephen King does manage to sneak onto the list anyway.

Known for his horror fiction, King has also written some heart-breaking, lyrical short stories, and is an astonishingly talented short story writer.

Certainly, two of his stories deserve a place on any list of the greats.

The first is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (the source material for the most highly rated film of all time).

The second is The Body , a bittersweet, coming-of-age masterpiece, about four young friends looking for a dead body (made into another popular film, Stand By Me ).

21. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving

This entry has embedded itself deeply in popular culture.

Irving’s other famous story Rip Van Winkle could also be here, but it is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that makes the cut, simply because it features ghosts and a headless horseman, looking for his head!

22. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s story of losing one’s sanity and a beating heart under the floorboards is the one that most people remember.

The Tell-Tale Heart is technically accomplished, from the use of the unreliable narrator to the hallucinatory writing style as the narrator goes slowly mad. Frequently adapted and referenced in books, TV shows, and movies over the last century, no list of great short stories can ignore this American gothic classic.

23. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As relevant as ever, The Yellow Wallpaper is often cited as the first feminist story readers come across.

Concerning itself with women’s mental health, it follows the deterioration of a woman who is confined to her room by a controlling husband.

Staring at the wallpaper, it changes form: “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!”

24. "I Bought A Little City" by Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme is on this list because of his incredibly unique, postmodern voice and the dazzling experimentation that went into his short stories.

In I Bought a Little City (1974), a man buys a city and gradually becomes more and more despotic in his attempted stewardship of that city. In trying to better the city, he strips away its individuality and creates conflict.

25. "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov

Writers who are on the record as being heavily influenced by Chekhov include Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Flannery O’Connor.

John Cheever noted wryly that he was one of "8 or 10 American writers described as the American Chekhov."

Why is he rated so highly? Perhaps because he was the first writer to concentrate less on the development of the plot, and more on uncertainty, reticence and mood, via his highly complex characters.

Chekhov was the first writer to truly reflect the mundane ordinariness of life and the infinite strangeness of people.

The Lady with the Dog , a story of two people in unhappy marriages, ends up (as most of his stories do) with the characters in the same place as they started, but with more uncertainty about the world and less confidence in their own view of things.

Inspired to Write Your Own Short Story?

Don’t forget you can use ProWritingAid’s Writing Styles to help you set the right tone.

Have we missed any of your favorites off the list? Let us know in the comments.

Are you ready to write your novel? Download this free book now :

This guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world.

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Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Alex Simmonds is a freelance copywriter based in the UK and has been using words to help people sell things for over 20 years. He has an MA in English Lit and has been struggling to write a novel for most of the last decade. He can be found at alexsimmonds.co.uk.

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100 Must-Read Contemporary Short Story Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

This list of must-read contemporary short story collections is sponsored by Random House’s  Buzziest Short Story Collections of 2018

From New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld’s dazzling first collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It , to National Book Award winner Denis Johnson’s final collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden , there’s something for every book lover from Random House.

Carmen Maria Machado raves of Anjali Sachdeva’s exhilarating collection, All the Names They Used for God ; “completing one [story] is like having lived an entire life, and then being born, breathless, into another.”

All are available in Spring 2018 from Random House, wherever books are sold.

Of all of the 100 must-read lists I have done so far, this was probably the easiest, because there are so many amazing contemporary short story collections. Story collections are such a gift: a whole bunch of different stories in one convenient place! What fun! The following list is made up of the first 100 collections that popped into my head. I have read and loved each of them. (And I probably have enough titles to do a sequel—stay tuned!) And by “contemporary” I mean “published this century.” (Which still gave me eighteen amazing years to choose from!)

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary short story collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

The Thing Around Your Neck  by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck map, with Adichie’s signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them…Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.”

War by Candlelight: Stories  by Daniel Alarcón

“Something is happening. Wars, both national and internal, are being waged in jungles, across borders, in the streets of Lima, in the intimacy of New York apartments.  War by Candlelight  is an exquisite collection of stories that carry the reader from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people—a devastating portrait of a world in flux—and Daniel Alarcón is an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.”

The Water Museum: Stories  by Luis Alberto Urrea

“From one of America’s preeminent literary voices comes a new story collection that proves once again why the writing of Luis Alberto Urrea has been called ‘wickedly good’ ( Kansas City Star ), ‘cinematic and charged’ ( Cleveland Plain Dealer) ,   and ‘studded with delights’ ( Chicago Tribune) . Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning ‘Amapola’ and his now-classic ‘Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses,’ which had the honor of being chosen for NPR’s ‘Selected Shorts’ not once but twice.”

In the Country: Stories  by Mia Alvar

“In these nine globe-trotting tales, Mia Alvar gives voice to the women and men of the Philippines and its diaspora. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar’s stories explore the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined.  In the Country  speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home—and marks the arrival of a formidable new voice in literature.”

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky: Stories  by Lesley Nneka Arimah

“A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home…Evocative, playful, subversive, and incredibly human,  What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky  heralds the arrival of a prodigious talent with a remarkable career ahead of her.”

North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud

“Nathan Ballingrud’s Shirley Jackson Award–winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud’s intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.”

Young Skins: Stories  by Colin Barrett

“Enter the small, rural town of Glanbeigh, a place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger, a desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt, and booze-sodden boredom fills the corners of every pub and nightclub. Here, and in the towns beyond, the young live hard and wear the scars…In each story, a local voice delineates the grittiness of post boom Irish society. These are unforgettable characters rendered through silence, humor, and violence. Told in Barrett’s vibrant, distinctive prose,  Young Skins  is an accomplished and irreverent debut from a singular new voice in contemporary fiction.”

There Are Little Kingdoms: Stories  by Kevin Barry

“These stories, filled with a grand sense of life’s absurdity, form a remarkably sure-footed collection that reads like a modern-day  Dubliners . The winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a 2007 book of the year in  The Irish Times , the  Sunday Tribune , and  Metro ,  There Are Little Kingdoms  marks the stunning entrance of a writer who burst onto the literary scene fully formed.”

We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories  by Clare Beams

“The literary, historic, and fantastic collide in these wise and exquisitely unsettling stories. From bewildering assemblies in school auditoriums to the murky waters of a Depression-era health resort, Beams’s landscapes are tinged with otherworldliness, and her characters’ desires stretch the limits of reality…As they capture the strangeness of being human, the stories in  We Show What We Have Learned  reveal Clare Beams’s rare and capacious imagination—and yet they are grounded in emotional complexity, illuminating the ways we attempt to transform ourselves, our surroundings, and each other.”

Welcome Thieves: Stories  by Sean Beaudoin

“Black humor mixed with pathos is the hallmark of the twelve stories in this adult debut collection from a master writer of comic and inventive YA novels…Beaudoin’s stories are edgy and profane, bittersweet and angry, bemused and sardonic. Yet they’re always tinged with heart. Beaudoin’s novels have been praised for their playfulness and complexity, for the originality and beauty of their language.”

The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead: Stories  by Chanelle Benz

“The characters in  The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead , Benz’s wildly imaginative debut, are as varied as any in recent literature, but they share a thirst for adventure which sends them rushing full-tilt toward the moral crossroads, becoming victims and perpetrators along the way. Riveting, visceral, and heartbreaking, Benz’s stories of identity, abandonment, and fierce love come together in a daring, arresting vision.”

Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories  by Megan Mayhew Bergman

“Exploring the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world, Megan Mayhew Bergman’s powerful and heartwarming collection captures the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collides with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can’t be denied.”

A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories  by Lucia Berlin

“A Manual for Cleaning Women  compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they’d ever overlooked her in the first place.”

Things that Fall from the Sky  by Kevin Brockmeier

“Weaving together loss and anxiety with fantastic elements and literary sleight-of-hand, Kevin Brockmeier’s richly imagined  Things That Fall from the Sky  views the nagging realities of the world through a hopeful lens…Achingly beautiful and deceptively simple,  Things That Fall from the Sky  defies gravity as one of the most original story collections seen in recent years.”

Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories  by Bonnie Jo Campbell

“Named by the  Guardian  as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of  Mothers, Tell Your Daughters  must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter relationships can be lifelines, anchors, or they can sink a woman like a stone.”

Honeymoon and Other Stories  by Kevin Canty

“Honeymoon  is a book about love, about lovers and would-be lovers exploring unlikely alliances, all of them toeing a certain eventful edge, a decision between rational restraint and something altogether different…Revealing the hidden longings and quirky needs of both men and women with a tough sensitivity and deep, sometimes biting humor,  Honeymoon  presents a masterful writer purely at home in his form, yet continuing to push himself and his stories to their limits with enthusiasm and daring.”

The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington  by Leonora Carrington

“Surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was a master of the macabre, of gorgeous tableaus, biting satire, roguish comedy, and brilliant, effortless flights of the imagination. Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life.”

Among the Missing  by Dan Chaon

“In this haunting, bracing new collection, Dan Chaon shares stories of men, women, and children who live far outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, which path, or which accident brought them to this place. Chaon mines the psychological landscape of his characters to dazzling effect. Each story radiates with sharp humor, mystery, wonder, and startling compassion.  Among the Missing  lingers in the mind through its subtle grace and power of language.”

Stories of Your Life and Others  by Ted Chiang

“What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven’s other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang.”

The Ladies of Grace Adieu: and Other Stories  by Susanna Clarke

“Faerie is never as far away as you think. Sometimes you find you have crossed an invisible line and must cope, as best you can, with petulant princesses, vengeful owls, ladies who pass their time embroidering terrible fates or with endless paths in deep, dark woods and houses that never appear the same way twice. The heroines and heroes bedeviled by such problems in these fairy tales include a conceited Regency clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish doctor and Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as two characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell : Strange himself and the Raven King.”

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories by Kathleen Collins

“Now available in Ecco’s Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker—a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley—whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim. Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins’s stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues—race, gender, family, and sexuality—that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.”

Mary and O’Neil: A Novel in Stories  by Justin Cronin

“Justin Cronin’s poignant debut traces the lives of Mary Olson and O’Neil Burke, two vulnerable young teachers who rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope. From the formative experiences of their early adulthood to marriage, parenthood, and beyond, this novel in stories illuminates the moments of grace that enable Mary and O’Neil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of O’Neil’s parents, Mary’s long-ago decision to end a pregnancy, O’Neil’s sister’s battle with illness and a troubled marriage. Alive with magical nuance and unexpected encounters, Mary and O’Neil celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love.”

We’ve Already Gone This Far: Stories  by Patrick Dacey

“In this stunning debut, Patrick Dacey draws us into the secret lives of recognizable strangers. Here, in small-town Massachusetts, after more than a decade of boom and bust, everyone is struggling to find their own version of the American dream: a lonely woman attacks a memorial to a neighbor’s veteran son, a dissatisfied housewife goes overboard with cosmetic surgery on national television, a young father walks away from one of the few jobs left in town, a soldier writes home to a mother who is becoming increasingly unhinged.”

The Redemption of Galen Pike  by Carys Davies

“From remote Australian settlements to the snows of Siberia, from Colorado to Cumbria, restless teenagers, middle-aged civil servants, and Quaker spinsters traverse expanses of solitude to reveal the secrets of the human heart. Written with raw and rigorous prose, charged throughout by a prickly wit, the stories in  The Redemption of Galen Pike  remind us how little we know of the lives of others.”

The Shell Collector: Stories  by Anthony Doerr

“The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr’s debut collection take readers from the African Coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties—metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts—conjuring nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of the characters in these stories contend with hardships; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the ravishing universe outside themselves.”

Ghost Summer: Stories  by Tananarive Due

“Whether weaving family life and history into dark fiction or writing speculative Afrofuturism, American Book Award winner and Essence bestselling author Tananarive Due’s work is both riveting and enlightening. In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness.”

The Wilds by Julia Elliott

“In her genre-bending stories, Elliott blends Southern gothic strangeness with dystopian absurdities, sci-fi speculations with fairy-tale transformations. Teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, Elliott’s language-driven fiction uses outlandish tropes to capture poignant moments in her humble characters’ lives. Without abandoning the tenets of classic storytelling, Elliott revels in lush lyricism, dark humor, and experimental play.”

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories  by Nathan Englander

“These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction.”

A Collapse of Horses  by Brian Evenson

“A stuffed bear’s heart beats with the rhythm of a dead baby, Reno keeps receding to the east no matter how far you drive, and in a mine on another planet, the dust won’t stop seeping in. In these stories, Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary—the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know.”

Half an Inch of Water: Stories  by Percival Everett

“For the plainspoken men and women of these stories—fathers and daughters, sheriffs and veterinarians—small events trigger sudden shifts in which the ordinary becomes unfamiliar… Half an Inch of Water  tears through the fabric of the everyday to examine what lies beneath the surface of these lives. In the hands of master storyteller Everett, the act of questioning leads to vistas more strange and unsettling than could ever have been expected.”

A Natural History of Hell: Stories  by Jeffrey Ford

“Emily Dickinson takes a carriage ride with Death. A couple are invited over to a neighbor’s daughter’s exorcism. A country witch with a sea-captain’s head in a glass globe intercedes on behalf of abused and abandoned children. In July of 1915, in Hardin County, Ohio, a boy sees ghosts. Explore contemporary natural history in a baker’s dozen of exhilarating visions.”

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories  by Ben Fountain

“The well-meaning protagonists of  Brief Encounters with Che Guevara  are caught—to both disastrous and hilarious effect—in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. Ben Fountain’s prize-winning debut speaks to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.”

Ayiti by Roxane Gay*

“From  New York Times –bestselling powerhouse Roxane Gay,  Ayiti  is a powerful collection exploring the Haitian diaspora experience. Originally published by a small press, this Grove Press paperback will make Gay’s debut widely available for the first time, including several new stories.”

*Originally published in 2011, being reissued by Grove Press on June 12

Dead Girls and Other Stories  by Emily Geminder

“With lyric artistry and emotional force, Emily Geminder’s debut collection charts a vivid constellation of characters fleeing their own stories. A teenage runaway and her mute brother seek salvation in houses, buses, the backseats of cars. Preteen girls dial up the ghosts of fat girls. A crew of bomber pilots addresses the ash of villagers below. And from India to New York to Phnom Penh, dead girls both real and fantastic appear again and again: as obsession, as threat, as national myth and collective nightmare.”

Gutshot: Stories  by Amelia Gray

“A woman creeps through the ductwork of a quiet home. A medical procedure reveals an object of worship. A carnivorous reptile divides and cauterizes a town. Amelia Gray’s curio cabinet expands in  Gutshot , where isolation and coupling are pushed to their dark and outrageous edges. A master of the macabre, Gray’s work is not for the faint of heart or gut: lick at your own risk.”

Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories  by Lauren Groff

“Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif—sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles recur; they’re in every story—love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths, which are understood too late; some of the love is shallow, and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme—Groff’s women swim and baton twirl, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom.”

You Should Pity Us Instead  by Amy Gustine

“You Should Pity Us Instead  explores some of our toughest dilemmas: the cost of Middle East strife at its most intimate level, the likelihood of God considered in day-to-day terms, the moral stakes of family obligations, and the inescapable fact of mortality. Amy Gustine exhibits an extraordinary generosity toward her characters, instilling them with a thriving, vivid presence.”

Madame Zero: 9 Stories  by Sarah Hall

“From one of the most accomplished British writers working today, the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of  The Wolf Border , comes a unique and arresting collection of short fiction that is both disturbing and dazzling…In this collection of nine works of short fiction, she uses her piercing insight to plumb the depth of the female experience and the human soul.”

You Are Not a Stranger Here: Stories  by Adam Haslett

“In these unforgettable stories, the acclaimed author of  Imagine Me Gone  explores lives that appear shuttered by loss and discovers entire worlds hidden inside them. The impact is at once harrowing and thrilling…Told with Chekhovian restraint and compassion, and conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it,  You Are Not a Stranger Here  is a triumph of storytelling.”

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

“For the commitment-averse women in the eleven sublime stories of  Single, Carefree, Mellow,  falling in love is never easy and always inconvenient…The women grapple with love amidst everything from unwelcome houseguests to disastrous birthday parties as Katherine Heiny spins a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.”

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria  by Carlos Hernández

“Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken; this collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives…Poignant by way of funny, and philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez’s stories are prayers for self-sovereignty.”

20th Century Ghosts  by Joe Hill

“Imogene is young, beautiful…and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945…Francis was human once, but now he’s an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing…John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead…Nolan knows but can never tell what  really  happened in the summer of ’77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds… The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past…”

Barbara the Slut and Other People  by Lauren Holmes

“Fearless, candid, and incredibly funny, Lauren Holmes is a newcomer who writes like a master. She tackles eros and intimacy with a deceptively light touch, a keen awareness of how their nervous systems tangle and sometimes short-circuit, and a genius for revealing our most vulnerable, spirited selves.”

Falling in Love with Hominids  by Nalo Hopkinson

“In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling  The Tempest  as a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.”

Deceit and Other Possibilities  by Vanessa Hua

“In this powerful debut collection, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to none. These stories shine a light on immigrant families navigating a new America, straddling cultures and continents, veering between dream and disappointment.”

Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter

“Lindsay Hunter tells the stories no one else will in ways no one else can. In this down and dirty debut she draws vivid portraits of bad people in worse places…A rising star of the new fast fiction, Hunter bares all before you can blink in her bold, beautiful stories. In this collection of slim southern gothics, she offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read.”

Knockout: Stories  by John Jodzio

“The work of John Jodzio has already made waves across the literary community. Some readers noticed his nimble blending of humor with painful truths reminded them of George Saunders. His creativity and fresh voice reminded others of Wells Tower’s  Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned . But with his new collection, Jodzio creates a class of his own.”

Fortune Smiles: Stories  by Adam Johnson

“Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear.”

All Aunt Hagar’s ChildreN: stories  by Edward P. Jones

“Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book,  Lost in the City , Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city’s power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.  All Aunt Hagar’s Children  turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones’s masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them.”

After the People Lights Have Gone Off  by Stephen Graham Jones

“The fifteen stories in  After the People Lights Have Gone Off  by Stephen Graham Jones explore the horrors and fears of the supernatural and the everyday. Included are two original stories, several rarities and out of print narratives, as well as a few ‘best of the year’ inclusions.”

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

“These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. Rich with the signature gifts that have established Jhumpa Lahiri as one of our most essential writers,  Unaccustomed Earth  exquisitely renders the most intricate workings of the heart and mind.”

Virgin and Other Stories  by April Ayers Lawson

“Nodding to the Southern Gothic but channeling an energy all its own,  Virgin and Other Stories  is a mesmerizing debut from an uncannily gifted young writer. With self-assurance and sensuality, April Ayers Lawson unravels the intertwining imperatives of intimacy—sex and love, violation and trust, spirituality and desire—eyeing, unblinkingly, what happens when we succumb to temptation.”

Back Talk: Stories  by Danielle Lazarin

“Through stories that are at once empathetic and unexpected, these women and girls defiantly push the boundaries between selfishness and self-possession. With a fresh voice and bold honesty,  Back Talk  examines how narrowly our culture allows women to express their desires.”

The Birthday of the World: And Other Stories  by Ursula K. Le Guin

“The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, the renowned writer Ursula K. Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in  The Birthday of the World,  this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.”

Bobcat and Other Stories  by Rebecca Lee

“Rebecca Lee, one of our most gifted and original short story writers, guides readers into a range of landscapes, both foreign and domestic, crafting stories as rich as novels…Showing people at their most vulnerable, Lee creates characters so wonderfully flawed, so driven by their desire, so compelled to make sense of their human condition, that it’s impossible not to feel for them when their fragile belief in romantic love, domestic bliss, or academic seclusion fails to provide them with the sort of force field they’d expected.”

We Come to Our Senses: Stories  by Odie Lindsey

“For readers of  Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk  and  Redeployment , a searing debut exploring the lives of veterans returning to their homes in the South. Lacerating and lyrical,  We Come to Our Senses  centers on men and women affected by combat directly and tangentially, and the peculiar legacies of war.”

Get in Trouble: Stories  by Kelly Link

“Hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas,  The Wizard of Oz,  superheroes, the Pyramids…These are just some of the talismans of an imagination as capacious and as full of wonder as that of any writer today. But as fantastical as these stories can be, they are always grounded by sly humor and an innate generosity of feeling for the frailty—and the hidden strengths—of human beings. In  Get in Trouble,  this one-of-a-kind talent expands the boundaries of what short fiction can do.”

The Complete Stories  by Clarice Lispector,‎ Benjamin Moser (Editor),‎ Katrina Dodson (Translator)

“Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don’t know what to do with themselves. Clarice’s stories take us through their lives—and ours. From one of the greatest modern writers, these stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow an unbroken time line of success as a writer, from her adolescence to her death bed.”

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

“With his debut novel,  The Grace of Kings , taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in  The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories …Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.”

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail  by Kelly Luce

“Set in Japan, Luce’s playful, tender stories—reminiscent of Haruki Murakami and Aimee Bender—tip into the fantastical, plumb the power of memory, and measure the human capacity to love. The award-winning narratives in this mesmerizing debut trace the lives of ex-pats, artists, and outsiders as they seek to find their place in the world.”

Half Wild: Stories  by Robin MacArthur

“Spanning nearly forty years, the stories in Robin MacArthur’s formidable debut give voice to the dreams, hungers, and fears of a diverse cast of Vermonters—adolescent girls, aging hippies, hardscrabble farmers, disconnected women, and solitary men. Straddling the border between civilization and the wild, they all struggle to make sense of their loneliness and longings in the stark and often isolating enclaves they call home—golden fields and white-veiled woods, dilapidated farmhouses and makeshift trailers, icy rivers and still lakes rouse the imagination, tether the heart, and inhabit the soul.”

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories  by Carmen Maria Machado

“In  Her Body and Other Parties , Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.”

Music for Wartime: Stories  by Rebecca Makkai

“Rebecca Makkai’s first two novels,  The Borrower  and  The Hundred-Year House , have established her as one of the freshest and most imaginative voices in fiction. Now, the award-winning writer, whose stories have appeared in four consecutive editions of  The Best American Short Stories,  returns with a highly anticipated collection bearing her signature mix of intelligence, wit, and heart.”

Thunderstruck & Other Stories  by Elizabeth McCracken

“In Elizabeth McCracken’s universe, heartache is always interwoven with strange, charmed moments of joy—an unexpected conversation with small children, the gift of a parrot with a bad French accent—that remind us of the wonder and mystery of being alive.  Thunderstruck & Other Stories  shows this inimitable writer working at the full height of her powers.”

Heartbreaker: Stories  by Maryse Meijer

“In her debut story collection  Heartbreaker , Maryse Meijer peels back the crust of normalcy and convention, unmasking the fury and violence we are willing to inflict in the name of love and loneliness. Her characters are a strange ensemble—a feral child, a girl raised from the dead, a possible pedophile—who share in vulnerability and heartache, but maintain an unremitting will to survive. Meijer deals in desire and sex, femininity and masculinity, family and girlhood, crafting a landscape of appetites threatening to self-destruct. In beautifully restrained and exacting prose, she sets the marginalized free to roam her pages and burn our assumptions to the ground.”

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It  by Maile Meloy

“Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields—and fields of victory—that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship.”

Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories  by China Miéville

“The fiction of multiple award–winning author China Miéville is powered by intelligence and imagination. Like George Saunders, Karen Russell, and David Mitchell, he pulls from a variety of genres with equal facility, employing the fantastic not to escape from reality but instead to interrogate it in provocative, unexpected ways.”

I Was a Revolutionary: Stories  by Andrew Malan Milward

“Grounded in place, spanning the Civil War to the present day, the stories in  I Was a Revolutionary  capture the roil of history through the eyes of an unforgettable cast of characters: the visionaries and dreamers, radical farmers and socialist journalists, quack doctors and protestors who haunt the past and present landscape of the state of Kansas.”

Runaway by Alice Munro

“In Munro’s hands, the people she writes about—women of all ages and circumstances, and their friends, lovers, parents, and children—become as vivid as our own neighbors. It is her miraculous gift to make these stories as real and unforgettable as our own.”

After the Quake: Stories  by Haruki Murakami,‎ Jay Rubin  (Translator)

“The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.”

You Are My Heart and Other Stories  by Jay Neugeboren

“From the secluded villages in the south of France, to the cattle crawl in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in South Africa, to the hard-knock adolescent streets of Brooklyn, Neugeboren examines the great mysteries and complexities that unsettle and comprise human relationships. In works that are as memorable, engrossing, and exciting as they are gorgeously crafted, Neugeboren delivers on his reputation as one of our pre-eminent American writers.”

The Refugees  by Viet Thanh Nguyen

“With the same incisiveness as in  The Sympathizer , in  The Refugees  Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to the hopes and expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, and the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, and family that accompany relocation. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of migration.”

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls: Stories by Alissa Nutting*

“Throughout these breathtakingly creative seventeen stories spread across time, space, and differing planes of reality, we encounter a host of women and girls in a wide range of unusual jobs…Wickedly funny yet ringing with deep truths about gender, authority and the ways we inhabit and restrict the female body,  Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls  is a brilliant commentary on the kaleidoscope of human behavior and a remarkably nuanced satire for our times.”

*Originally published in 2011, being reissued by Ecco on July 3

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales  by Yoko Ogawa,‎ Stephen Snyder (Translator)

“Sinister forces collide—and unite a host of desperate characters—in this eerie cycle of interwoven tales from Yoko Ogawa, the critically acclaimed author of  The Housekeeper and the Professor …Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge is a master class in the macabre that will haunt you to the last page.”

Salsa Nocturna  by Daniel José Older

“A 300 year-old story collector enlists the help of the computer hacker next door to save her dying sister. A half-resurrected cleanup man for Death’s sprawling bureaucracy faces a phantom pachyderm, doll-collecting sorceresses and his own ghoulish bosses. Gordo, the old Cubano that watches over the graveyards and sleeping children of Brooklyn, stirs and lights another Malaguena. Down the midnight streets of New York, a whole invisible universe churns to life in Daniel Jose Older’s debut collection of ghost noir.”

The Bigness of the World: Stories  by Lori Ostlund

“In Lori Ostlund’s award-winning debut collection, people seeking escape from situations at home venture out into a world that they find is just as complicated and troubled as the one they left behind. In prose highlighted by both satire and poignant observation,  The Bigness of the World  contains characters that represent a different sort of everyman—men and women who poke fun at ideological rigidity while holding fast to good grammar and manners, people seeking connections in a world that seems increasingly foreign.”

When the Emperor Was Divine  by Julie Otsuka

“Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination ‘both physical and emotional’ of a generation of Japanese Americans…Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated,  When the Emperor Was Divine  is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times.”

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere  by ZZ Packer

“With penetrating insight that belies her youth—she was only nineteen years old when  Seventeen  magazine printed her first published story—ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision.  Drinking Coffee Elsewhere  is a striking performance—fresh, versatile, and captivating. It introduces us to an arresting and unforgettable new voice.”

Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories  by Edith Pearlman

“In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these twenty-one vintage selected stories and thirteen scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.”

I Want to Show You More  by Jamie Quatro

“Sharp-edged and fearless, mixing white-hot yearning with daring humor, Quatro’s stories upend and shake out our views on infidelity, faith, and family. Set around Lookout Mountain on the border of Georgia and Tennessee, Quatro’s hypnotically revealing stories range from the traditional to the fabulist as they expose lives torn between spirituality and sexuality in the New American South. These fifteen linked tales confront readers with fractured marriages, mercurial temptations, and dark theological complexities, and establish a sultry and enticingly cool new voice in American fiction.”

You Have Never Been Here: New and Selected Stories  by Mary Rickert

“Open this book to any page and find yourself enspelled by these lush, alchemical stories. Faced with the uncanny and the impossible, Rickert’s protagonists are as painfully, shockingly, complexly human as the readers who will encounter them. Mothers, daughters, witches, artists, strangers, winged babies, and others grapple with deception, loss, and moments of extraordinary joy.”

The Republic of East LA: Stories  by Luis J. Rodriguez

“From the award-winning author of  Always Running  comes a brilliant collection of short stories about life in East Los Angeles. In these stories, Luis J. Rodriguez gives eloquent voice to the neighborhood where he spent many years as a resident, a father, an organizer, and, finally, a writer: a neighborhood that offers more to the world than its appearance allows.”

The Girl of the Lake: Stories  by Bill Roorbach

“These moving and funny stories are as rich in scope, emotional, and memorable as Bill Roorbach’s novels. He has been called “a kinder, gentler John Irving…a humane and entertaining storyteller with a smooth, graceful style” (the  Washington Post ), and his work has been described as “hilarious and heartbreaking, wild and wise” ( Parade  magazine), all of which is evident in spades (and also hearts, clubs, and diamonds) in every story in this arresting new collection.”

Telling the Map: Stories  by Christopher Rowe

“There are ten stories here including one readers have waited ten long years for: in new novella  The Border State  Rowe revisits the world of his much-lauded story  The Voluntary State . Competitive cyclists twins Michael and Maggie have trained all their lives to race internationally. One thing holds them back: their mother who years before crossed the border…into Tennessee.”

All the Names They Used for God: Stories  by Anjali Sachdeva

“Like many of us, the characters in this collection are in pursuit of the sublime, and find themselves looking not just to divinity but to science, nature, psychology, and industry, forgetting that their new, logical deities are no more trustworthy than the tempestuous gods of the past. Along the way, they walk the knife-edge between wonder and terror, salvation and destruction.  All the Names They Used for God  is an entrancing work of speculative fiction that heralds Anjali Sachdeva as an invigorating, incomparable new voice.”

Tenth of December: Stories  by George Saunders

“Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human. Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in  Tenth of December —through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should ‘prepare us for tenderness.'”

Blueprints for Building Better Girls  by Elissa Schappell

“Its interconnected stories explore the commonly shared but rarely spoken of experiences that build girls into women and women into wives and mothers. In revealing all their vulnerabilities and twisting our preconceived notions of who they are, Elissa Schappell alters how we think about the nature of female identity and how it evolves.”

Ambiguity Machines: and Other Stories  by Vandana Singh

“Singh’s stories have been performed on BBC radio, been finalists for the British SF Association award, selected for the Tiptree award honor list, and oft reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. Her dives deep into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within and with her unblinking clear vision she explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.”

The Virginity of Famous Men: Stories  by Christine Sneed

“Long intrigued by love and loneliness, Sneed leads readers through emotional landscapes both familiar and uncharted. These probing stories are explorations of the compassionate and passionate impulses that are inherent in—and often the source of—both abiding joy and serious distress in every human life.”

The Unfinished World: And Other Stories  by Amber Sparks

“Sparks’s stories—populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors—form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving,  The Unfinished World and Other Stories  heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary.”

Monstress: Stories  by Lysley Tenorio

“A luminous collection of heartbreaking, vivid, startling, and gloriously unique stories set amongst the Filipino-American communities of California and the Philippines,  Monstress  heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new talent on the literary scene: Lysley Tenorio. Already the worthy recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, Tenorio brilliantly explores the need to find connections, the melancholy of isolation, and the sometimes suffocating ties of family in tales that range from a California army base to a steamy moviehouse in Manilla, to the dangerous false glitter of Hollywood.”

Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories  by Kanishk Tharoor

“With exuberant originality and startling vision, Tharoor cuts against the grain of literary convention, drawing equally from ancient history and current events. His world-spanning stories speak to contemporary challenges of environmental collapse and cultural appropriation, but also to the workings of legend and their timeless human truths. Whether refashioning the romances of Alexander the Great or confronting the plight of today’s refugees, Tharoor writes with distinctive insight and remarkable assurance.  Swimmer Among the Stars  announces the arrival of a vital, enchanting talent.”

Night at the Fiestas: Stories  by Kirstin Valdez Quade

“With intensity and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade’s unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters defined by the desire to escape the past or else to plumb its depths…Always hopeful, these stories chart the passions and obligations of family life, exploring themes of race, class, and coming-of-age, as Quade’s characters protect, betray, wound, undermine, bolster, define, and, ultimately, save each other.”

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us: Stories  by Laura van den Berg

“Containing work reprinted in Best Non-Required Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prizes 2010, the stories in Laura van den Berg’s rich and inventive debut illuminate the intersection of the mythic and the mundane…Rendered with precision and longing, the women who narrate these starkly beautiful stories are consumed with searching—for absolution, for solace, for the flash of extraordinary in the ordinary that will forever alter their lives.”

Battleborn: Stories  by Claire Vaye Watkins

“In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Her characters orbit around the region’s vast spaces, winning redemption despite—and often because of—the hardship and violence they endure.”

Children of the New World: Stories  by Alexander Weinstein

“ Children of the New World  grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.”

Honored Guest: Stories  by Joy Williams

“With her singular brand of gorgeous dark humor, Joy Williams explores the various ways—comic, tragic, and unnerving—we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss. A masseuse breaks her rich client’s wrist bone, a friend visits at the hospital long after she is welcome, and a woman surrenders her husband to a creepily adoring student. From one of our most acclaimed writers,  Honored Guest  is a rich examination of our capacity for transformation and salvation.”

Diving Belles: And Other Stories  by Lucy Wood

“In these stories, the line between the real and the imagined is blurred as Lucy Wood takes us to Cornwall’s ancient coast, building on its rich storytelling history and recasting its myths in thoroughly contemporary ways. Calling forth the fantastic and fantastical, she mines these legends for that bit of magic remaining in all our lives—if only we can let ourselves see it.”

The Mountain: Stories  by Paul Yoon

“Hailed by  New York  magazine as a ‘quotidian-surreal craft-master’ and a ‘radiant star in the current literary firmament’ by  The Dallas Morning News , Yoon realizes his worlds with quiet, insightful, and gorgeous prose. Though each story is distinct from the others, his restrained voice and perceptive observations about violence—to the body, the landscape, and ultimately, the human soul—weaves throughout this collection as a whole, making  The Mountain  a beautiful, memorable read.”

Sour Heart: Stories  by Jenny Zhang

“Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat—dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck—these seven stories showcase Zhang’s compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of  Portnoy’s Complaint . A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood,  Sour Heart  examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again.”

What are your favorite contemporary short story collections? 

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34 English Short Stories with Big Ideas for Thoughtful English Learners

What if you could understand big ideas in English with just a little bit of text?

You don’t need to read an entire English book to learn. A good English short story is often enough!

Stories are all about going beyond reality, and these classics will not only improve your English reading but also open your mind to different worlds.

1. “The Tortoise and the Hare” by Aesop

2. “the ant and the grasshopper” by aesop, 3. “white wing: the tale of the doves and the hunter”, 4. “royal servant”, 5. “emily’s secret”, 6. “the bogey beast” by flora annie steel, 7. “love is in the air”, 8. “the tale of johnny town-mouse” by beatrix potter, 9. “paul bunyan” adapted by george grow, 10. “cinderella” by charles perrault, 11. “little red riding hood” adapted by the british council, 12. “the lottery” by shirley jackson, 13. “the happy prince” by oscar wilde.

• 14. “The Night Train at Deoli” by Ruskin Bond

15. “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury

• 16. “Orientation” by Daniel Orozco

17. “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu

18. “the missing mail” by r.k. narayan, 19. “harrison bergeron” by kurt vonnegut.

• 20. “The School” by Donald Barthelme

21. “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

22. “rikki-tikki-tavi” by rudyard kipling, 23. excerpt from “little dorrit” by charles dickens, 24. “to build a fire” by jack london, 25. “miracles” by lucy corin.

• 26. “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal

27. “The Boarded Window” by Ambrose Bierce 

28. “the monkey’s paw” by w.w. jacobs, 29. “a tiny feast” by chris adrian, 30. “the story of an hour” by kate chopin, 31. “the zero meter diving team” by jim shepherd, 32. “the velveteen rabbit” by margery williams, 33. “the friday everything changed” by anne hart, 34. “hills like white elephants” by ernest hemingway, how to use short stories to improve your english, and one more thing....

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

This classic fable (story) is about a very slow tortoise (turtle) and a speedy hare (rabbit). The tortoise challenges the hare to a race. The hare laughs at the idea that a tortoise could run faster than him, but the race ends with a surprising result.

Have you ever heard the English expression, “Slow and steady wins the race”? This story is the basis for that common phrase . You can read it for free , along with a number of other stories in this list!

This is another great story that teaches a lesson that’s written for kids but adults can enjoy, too . The story tells of a grasshopper who lounges around all summer while his friend the ant prepares for the winter. When winter comes, the two friends end up in very different situations!

The moral is that those who save up during the good times will get to enjoy the benefits when times are bad.

This very short story from India was originally written in Sanskrit (an ancient language). When a group of doves is caught in a hunter’s net, they must work together as a team to escape from the hunter’s clutches.

You can listen to a reading of the story as you read along on this website.

In this story, an old man sets out to ask an African king to dig some wells in his village when their water runs dry. But first, he teaches the king a lesson in humility by showing him how all people help each other. Read the story to see how the clever old man gets the king to do as he asks!

This is a modern-day story about a little girl with a big secret she can’t tell anyone about. When her teacher finds out her secret, they work together to fix the issue.

This story is a good choice for absolute beginners, because it uses only the present tense. It’s also written in very basic English with simple vocabulary and short sentences.

The woman in this story finds a pot of treasure on her walk home. As she carries it home, the treasure keeps changing, becoming things of lesser value.

However, the woman’s enthusiasm makes her see only the positive after each change, which would have upset anyone else. Her positive personality tries to make every negative situation seem like a gift!

This story shows how important it is to look at things from a positive point of view. Instead of being disappointed in what we don’t have, this story reminds us to view what we do have as blessings.

This modern story is about a young woman named Penny who is anxious about going to her family’s annual reunion barbecue. But despite screaming children and arguing cousins, Penny ends up happy that she came to the reunion when she starts a conversation with a handsome man.

The story is written in simple English, using only the present tense, so it’s perfect for beginners.

This classic children’s story is about two mice, one from the country and one from the city. Both mice think that the other mouse is so lucky to live in what they think is a wonderful place!

The two mice decide to visit each other in their homes. It turns out that the country mouse has a difficult time in the city, and the city mouse struggles in the country.

In the end, they realize that they believed the old English saying: “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” In other words, each mouse thought the other had a better life, only to discover that they actually preferred their own life!

The story of Paul Bunyan has been around in the United States for many years. He’s the symbol of American frontier life, showing the ideal strength, work ethic and good morality that Americans work hard to imitate.

Paul Bunyan is considered a legend, so stories about him are full of unusual details, such as eating 50 eggs in one day and being so big that he caused an earthquake. It can be a pretty funny read, with characters such as a blue ox and a reversible dog.

This version of the story is also meant to be read out loud, so it’s fast-paced and entertaining. This website has an audio recording with the story, which you can play at slower or faster speeds.

You may already know the story of Cinderella, whether you saw the Disney movie or read a children’s book of it.

However, there are actually many different versions of “Cinderella.” This one by Charles Perrault is the most well-known and is often the version told to children.

“Cinderella” is a beloved story because it describes how a kind and hard-working person was able to get a happy ending. Even though Cinderella’s stepsisters treated her awfully, Cinderella herself remained gentle and humble. It goes to show that even though you may experience hardships, it’s important to stay kind, forgiving and mindful.

This is a story that every English-speaking child knows. It’s about a little girl who meets a wolf in the forest while going to see her sick grandmother. The wolf pretends to be her grandmother in order to trick the little girl.

This story is presented by the British Council as a video with the text clearly spoken. You can then play a game to rearrange the sentences below the video into the correct order, read the text of the story in a PDF file and answer some activity questions (then check your answers with the provided answer sheet.

This website has many other stories you can read and listen to, like “Circus Story” by Sue Clarke, which is an excellent option for learning animal vocabulary, and even adaptations of Shakespeare plays for younger readers.

Every year, the small town in this story holds an event known as “The Lottery.” During this event, someone from the community is randomly chosen.

What are they chosen for? You’ll have to read the story to find out.

You may have heard of the term “mob mentality” and how it can allow for some pretty surprising (and terrible) things to happen. This classic story looks at society, and how much evil people are willing to overlook to keep their society stable.

This is considered to be one of the most famous short stories in American literature. It’s a great example of what is known as a dystopian society, where people live in a frightening way. To learn more, check out this TED-Ed video that tells you how to recognize a dystopia.

Since the story is old, much of the English is outdated (not used in modern English). Still, if you have a good grasp of the English language, you can use this story to give yourself a great reading challenge.

14. “The Night Train at Deoli”  by Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond used to spend summers at his grandmother’s house in Dehradun, India. While taking the train, he always had to pass through a small station called Deoli. No one used to get down at the station and nothing happened there.

Until one day, when he sees a girl selling fruit and is unable to forget her.

Ruskin Bond is a writer who can communicate deep feelings in a simple way. This story is about our attachment to strangers and why we cherish (value or appreciate deeply) them even though we might never meet them again.

The title is taken from a poem that describes how nature will continue its work long after humanity is gone. But in this story, we see that nature plays a supporting role and the machines are the ones who have taken its place.

They continue their work without any human or natural assistance. This shows how technology has replaced nature in our lives and how it can both destroy us and carry on without humanity itself.

16. “Orientation”  by Daniel Orozco

This is a humorous story in which the speaker explains the office policies to a new employee while gossiping about the staff. It’s extremely easy to read, as the sentences are short and the vocabulary is simple.

Many working English learners will relate to this story, as it explains the silly, nonsensical moments of modern office life. Modern workplaces often feel like theaters where we pretend to work rather than get actual work done. The speaker exposes this reality that few would ever admit to.

He over-explains everything from the view out the office window to the intimate details of everyone’s life—from the overweight loner to the secret serial killer. It talks about the things that go unsaid; how people at the office know about the deep secrets of our home life, but don’t discuss them.

Jack’s mother can make paper animals come to life. In the beginning, Jack loves them and spends hours with his mom. But once he grows up, his mother’s inability to speak English keeps Jack from talking to her.

When his mother tries to talk to him through her creations, he kills them and collects them in a box. After a tragic loss, he finally gets to know her story through a hidden message that he should have read a long time ago.

The story is a simple narration that touches on complex issues, like leaving your home country and the conflicts that can occur within families when different cultures and languages collide.

Thanappa is the village mailman, who is good friends with Ramanujam and his family. He learns about a failed marriage and helps Ramanujam’s daughter get engaged to a suitable match.

Just before the wedding, Thanappa receives a tragic letter about Ramanujam’s brother. To spare them heartache, he decides not to deliver the letter.

The story explores the idea that despite the best of intentions, our actions can cause more harm to our loved ones than we ever intended. If you like this and want to read more by R.K. Narayan, check out the other stories in the author’s “ Malgudi Days” short story collection.

The year is 2081, and everyone has been made equal by force. Every person who is superior in any way has been handicapped (something that prevents a person’s full use of their abilities) by the government. Intelligent people are distracted by disturbing noises. Good dancers have to wear weights so that they don’t dance too well. Attractive people wear ugly masks so they don’t look better than anyone else.

However, one day there is a rebellion, and everything changes for a brief instant.

Technology is always supposed to make us better. But in this case, we see that it can be used to disable our talents. Moreover, the writer shows us how the mindless use of a single value like equality can create more suffering for everyone.

20. “The School”  by Donald Barthelme

And that’s just the beginning of the series of unfortunate events at the school in this short story, narrated by a teacher. The story is absurd (ridiculous to the point of being silly), even though the topic is serious. By the end, the kids start asking difficult questions about death that the adults don’t quite know how to answer.

This story leaves a lot of things unsaid, which means you’ll need to “read between the lines,” or look closer at the text to understand what’s really happening.

In “Girl,” a mother tells her daughter how to live her life properly. The mother instructs the girl to do all the household chores, in very specific ways, making it seem like that’s her only duty in life.

Sometimes the mother tells the girl how to attract attention, not to talk to boys and to always keep away from men. Other times, the mother hints that the girl will need to be attractive to men to live a good life.

This story doesn’t feel like a story. There’s no plot, and nothing really happens. But read closely, and you’ll see an important message about how girls are taught to live restricted lives since childhood.

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” is a classic tale about a Mongoose who regularly visits a family in India. The family feeds him and lets him explore their house, but they worry that he might bite their son, Teddy.

One day, when a snake is about to attack Teddy, the Mongoose kills it. This event helps the family accept the mongoose into their family.

This is a simple story about humans and animals living together as friends. It’s old, but the language is fairly easy to understand. It reminds us that animals can also experience feelings of love and, like humans, they will also protect the ones they love.

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” is part of Kipling’s short story collection “The Jungle Book,” which was famously made into a movie by Disney.

Dorrit is a child whose father has been in prison ever since she could remember. Unable to pay their debts, the whole family is forced to spend their days in a cell. Dorrit dreams of seeing the world outside their little cell.

This excerpt (short part of a larger work) introduces you to the family and their life in prison. The novel is about how they manage to get out and how Dorrit never forgets the kindness of the people who helped her.

Injustice in law is often reserved for the poor. “Little Dorrit” shows the government jailing people for not being able to return their loans, a historical practice the writer hated since his own father was punished in a similar way.

A man travels to a freezing, isolated place called Yukon with only his dog for company. Throughout his journey, he ignores the advice other people have given him and takes his life for granted.

Finally, he realizes the real power of nature and how fragile (easily broken) human life actually is.

Nature is often seen as a powerful force that should be feared and respected. The animal in this story is the one who’s cautious and sensible in this dangerous situation. By the end, readers wonder who is really intelligent—the man who could not deal with nature, or the dog who could survive?

This is a modern-day story that describes a group of children gathering around their father to watch little spiders hatch out of their eggs. But the story gets a different meaning as it nears the end. What do you think happened?

26. “Evil Robot Monkey ” by Mary Robinette Kowal

Sly is a character who doesn’t fit into society. He’s too smart for the other chimps, but humans don’t accept him. He is punished for acting out his natural emotions.

But the way he handles his rage, in the end, makes him look more mature than most human beings. Nominated for the  Hugo award , many readers have connected with Sly since they can see similarities in their own lives.

“The Boarded Window” is a horror story about a man who has to deal with his wife’s death. The setting is a remote cabin in the wilderness in Cincinnati, and he feels helpless as she gets sick.

There’s an interesting twist to this story, and the ending will get you thinking (and maybe feeling a bit disturbed!).

If you enjoy older stories with a little suspense, this will be a good challenge for you. It talks about the event that made a hermit decide to live alone for decades, with a mysterious window boarded up in his cabin. It also uses a lot of psychology and symbolism, so you may want to read the story more than once to understand everything it has to say.

Be careful what you wish for! One man finds this out the hard way when he brings a magical monkey’s paw home from India. This paw is supposed to grant three wishes to three people. People start to wish on it, only to realize that our wishes can have severe consequences.

The characters in this story immediately regret when their wishes come true. Even though they get what they wanted, it comes at a large cost!

This short story is from the early 1900s and uses some outdated English, but it’s still easy to follow. It reminds us that there are no shortcuts in life, and to be wary if something seems too good to be true.

This story centers around Titania and Oberon, two fairy characters from Shakespeare’s famous play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The two fairies are having a rough time in their marriage when they find a human child. They decide to adopt him, hoping that he’ll help them save their relationship. However, the child develops a deadly, modern disease and the fairies have no idea what to do since they have never known illness or death.

This is a tragic tale about how they try to understand something they’ve never seen before and their deep love for a stranger who is so unlike them. The story explores the grief of parenthood and the uncertainty of knowing whether your child will ever even know you.

This story, written by a woman, is a sad look inside an unhappy marriage. Mrs. Mallard is a woman with heart troubles. When her husband dies, the people who come to give her this news tell it to her gently, so she doesn’t have a shock.

Mrs. Mallard busts into tears and locks herself in her room. At first, she’s upset by the news. But the more she considers it, the more excited she becomes about the idea of the freedom that would come from her husband’s death.

What happens, then, when her husband comes home after an hour, alive and well?

The story explores the conflicting range of the human emotions of grief and hope in a short span, and the impact it can have on a person’s mind and body.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was one of the deadliest accidents of the twentieth century. This is a story about that event seen through the eyes of a father and his sons, who were all unfortunate enough to be close to the disaster area.

The story exposes the whole system of corruption that led to a massive explosion taking innocent lives and poisoning multiple generations. The technical vocabulary and foreign words make this text a little more difficult. However, its plot is relatively easy to follow.

The story is divided into small parts that make it both easy and exciting to read. Its various events show what it was like to live in the former Soviet Union . And just like any other good story, it’s also about human relationships and how they change due to historic events.

A simple, stuffed rabbit toy is given to a young boy as a Christmas present. At first, the rabbit isn’t noticed, as the boy is distracted by much fancier gifts. While being ignored, the rabbit begins to wonder what it means to be “real.”

One day, a certain event brings the rabbit into contact with the boy, and changes the toy’s life forever.

Have you ever loved a toy or doll so much, that you treated it as if it were alive? This story shows the power of love from a very unexpected viewpoint: that of a fluffy stuffed rabbit. It also highlights the importance of self-value, being true to yourself and finding strength in those who love you.

Tradition is important in this school, where the boys always go to fetch water for the class. The girls are teased for being “weaker,” and are last to get other privileges, like having the first choice of magazines. One day, a girl asks the teacher why girls aren’t allowed to get the water, as well. This one question causes a big reaction and leads to a huge change.

The girl’s courage surprises everyone, but it also inspires other girls to stand up for themselves. One act from one brave person can lead to change and inspire others. The story reflects on gender equality and how important it is to fight for fairness. Just because something is accepted as “normal,” doesn’t mean it is right!

At a Spanish train station, an American man and a young woman wait for a train that would take them to the city of Madrid. The woman sees some faraway hills and compares them to “white elephants.” This starts a conversation between the two of them, but what they discuss seems to have a deeper meaning.

This is another very well-known story that asks you to “read between the lines” to find the hidden meaning behind the text. Much of the story is a back-and-forth dialogue between two people, but you can tell a lot about them just from what they say to each other.

There’s a lot of symbolism that you can analyze in this story, along with context clues. Once you realize what the real topic of the characters’ conversation is, you can figure out the quiet, sadder meaning behind it.

Short stories are effective in helping English learners to practice all four aspects of language learning: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Here’s how you can make the most out of short stories as an English learner:

• Use illustrations to enhance your experience: Some short stories come with illustrations that you can use to guess what the story is about. You can even write your own caption or description of the picture. When you finish the story, go back to your image description. How did you do?
• Explore stories related to a theme: Do you like ghost stories? Science fiction? Romance? If you’re learning about food or cooking, find a short story with a lot of food vocabulary .
• Choose the right reading level: Make sure that you always challenge yourself! One easy way to tell if a story is just right for you is to use the “five-finger test.” Hold up your fist as you read a paragraph, and put up one finger for each word you don’t know. If you have all five fingers up before the end of the paragraph, try to find an easier text.
• Practice “active reading”: Your reading will only help you learn if you read actively . You’re reading actively when you’re paying very close attention to the story, its words and its meanings. Writing with a notebook nearby and in a place with no distractions can help you focus on active reading.
• Choose only a few words to look up: You may be tempted to stop at every unknown word, but it’s actually better to try to figure out its meaning from context clues. This means looking at everything else in the sentence or paragraph to try and guess the meaning of the word. Only look up words that you can’t figure out even with context clues.
• Summarize the story: When you’ve finished reading the story, retell it in your own words or write a summary of it. This will help you to practice any new words you learned, and make sure that you understood the story well. If you’re struggling, read the story again and take notes as you read.
• Take breaks: Just because these stories are short, doesn’t mean you need to read them in one sitting! If you find it hard to focus or you’re struggling to understand the story, take a break. It’s okay to read it one paragraph at a time.

I hope you have fun with these English short stories while improving your English language skills.

Happy reading!

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If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.

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Bite-sized: 50 great short stories, chosen by Hilary Mantel, George Saunders and more

Quick and easily shared, is the short story the form for our times? Leading authors pick their favourites

“The Tribute” by Jane Gardam (1980)

John McGahern and Annie Proulx are among my favourite authors, but to dispel gloom I choose this story from Jane Gardam’s 1980 collection The Sidmouth Letters . Reading this gleeful story in my expatriate days, I recognised the cast of “diplomatic wives”, trailing inebriate husbands through the ruins of empire. Mostly dialogue, it is a deft, witty tale in which a small kindness – though not by a diplomatic wife – pays off 40 years later. I must have read it a dozen times, to see how its note is sustained and the surprise is sprung; every time it makes me smile with delight. Hilary Mantel

“The Stone Boy” by Gina Berriault (1957)

This great and underrated masterpiece is a meditation on good and evil and especially about the way that people’s expectations and assumptions about us may wear us down and eventually force us into compliance with their view. But it is a much deeper and more biblical story than that and, like any great work of art, resists reduction. Berriault, who died in 1999, is known as a San Francisco writer. A wonderful sampling of her stories is available in Women in Their Beds: New & Selected Stories . George Saunders

“The Love of a Good Woman” by Alice Munro (1998)

Among the handful of short stories closest to my heart, I’ve chosen “The Love of a Good Woman” by Canadian writer Munro, from her 1998 collection of that name. It’s about a murder – probably it’s a murder, because nothing is certain – and a love match that depends on keeping that murder secret. Like so many of Munro’s stories, this one has the scope of a novel yet never feels hurried or crowded. The sociology of a small town in rural Ontario is caught on the wing in the loose weave of her narration; the story takes in whole lifetimes, and yet its pace is also exquisitely slow, carrying us deep inside particular moments. A woman moves among the willows beside a river at night, making up her mind. Tessa Hadley

“The Siren” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1961)

Born in Palermo in 1896, Lampedusa was a learned prince who died before his work was published. In addition to his celebrated novel The Leopard , he left behind some short stories, including “The Siren”, a mysterious masterpiece that jolts and haunts me every time I read it. It contains two narrative planes, two central protagonists, two settings, two tonal registers and two points of view. There are even two titles; though published as “La Sirena”, it was originally called “Lighea”, the name of the siren, portrayed as a 16-year-old girl. Lampedusa’s description renders this fatefully seductive creature specific, vulnerable and real. Jhumpa Lahiri The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, edited by Jhumpa Lahiri, will be published on 7 March.

“A Simple Heart” by Gustave Flaubert (1877)

Flaubert wrote this story for his old friend and “fellow troubadour” George Sand. It’s the story of Félicité, an old servant-woman, and the diminishing loves in her life, the final one being a (live – at first) parrot. It has a sombre novelistic density, and is touching and tender, comic and grotesque. Control of tone is central to its effect. It also exemplifies the Flaubertian principle that irony and sympathy are not incompatible. Sand died before she was able to read it. “So it is with all our dreams,” noted Flaubert. Julian Barnes

“Friends” by Grace Paley (1985)

This story tracks three friends as they visit a fourth who is dying. The women then go home on the train. It ends with a brief conversation between the narrator, Faith, and her 18-year-old son. The piece has warm intimacy as well as cold spaces within it. It captures the all-encompassing intrusion of the world and its conditioning of our day-to-day emotions, our children’s colonisation of our hearts and our powerlessness ultimately to protect them. Its understated tone is perfectly pitched: the narrative moves gently, then soars, into either sadness, or joyful contentment – again and again. I am in this story, and so is the world. Ahdaf Soueif

“My Life” by Anton Chekhov (1896)

This is Chekhov’s longest short story and one of the very few he wrote in the first-person singular. It’s the autobiography of a young man in provincial Russia struggling to live up to his lofty ideals and being brought down by life’s random contingencies. I actually adapted “My Life” for a play and know it intimately. If you could only read a single Chekhov story then this is the one: all his gifts and genius – the wry, dark comedy of his voice, his unique angle on the human condition, his refusal to judge – are contained in it. William Boyd

“In the Night” by Jamaica Kincaid (1978)

Part poetic incantation, part eccentric kaleidoscopic vision, this is a story which contorts each time you read it. Born in Antigua, Kincaid invents aesthetics which are wholly unique, transfiguring human form and surroundings, in particular, the Caribbean landscapes. Here, she conveys the multiple textures of smaller islands, creating a literary geography which remains experimental, new and indefinable. Irenosen Okojie

“Music at Annahullion” by Eugene McCabe (2004)

McCabe’s story is set on the border between Monaghan and Fermanagh sometime in the 1950s or 60s. Two brothers and a sister are uneasily sharing a smallholding. The landscape itself and the states of sour feeling are described with sharpness and precision. When the sister announces that she would like a piano that is advertised for sale locally, one of the brothers buys it for her. But it won’t fit into the house and is left to rot outside. The failure to get the piano into the house has an extraordinary power and pathos. Its purchase has stood for all hope, and now there is no hope. The hard-won sense of despair and darkness in the final pages of this small masterpiece is memorable and chilling. Colm Tóibín

“Werner” by Jo Ann Beard (2007)

Only afterwards did I discover that this was in fact a piece of densely textured reportage, but it taught me so much about how to write a short story that I will always see it as one. A young man, Werner Hoeflich, trapped by a fire, escapes by leaping from the window of his New York apartment, across the intervening gap and in through the window of the adjacent building. It has the richness of a novel, the raw and dirty grip of life and was, for me, a revelation. Fine language and a deftly conjured mood are all well and good, but fiction – of whatever length – should thrill. Mark Haddon

“The Window Theatre” by Ilse Aichinger (1953)

Miscommunication, antic disposition, voyeurism, glee – this translation of one of Aichinger’s most famous stories provides windows upon windows upon windows. Simply expressed and made to linger long in the mind, it was my first experience of the prizewinning Austrian writer and her dark, precise prose styling, and the start of an ongoing pursuit on my part to read more of her work. Eley Williams

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

Poe’s obsessive theme was the terror of losing sanity – never more dramatically evoked than in this masterpiece. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, one of Poe’s shortest “tales of the grotesque and arabesque”, and the one that seems most contemporary in the hallucinatory intensity of its narration, an unnamed individual commits a brutal, seemingly unprovoked murder of an old man with whom he lives, disposes of the body by dismembering and burying it beneath the floorboards of the residence they share, and succumbs to madness and self-destruction in the aftermath of guilt. Throughout, the narrator insists on his sanity: “True – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them.” That the murder is entirely irrational is acknowledged by the murderer: “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it.”

Poe is a master of the “unreliable narrator” – a voice that speaks with devastating spontaneity and is utterly convincing – that has come to be a staple of much suspense and horror fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries. Unhampered by the literary pretensions of certain of Poe’s other, longer stories, totally committed to its unrepentant pathology, and its visceral celebration of this pathology, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is the very essence of Poe, as Poe is himself the very essence of the American gothic tradition. Joyce Carol Oates

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (1890)

Many readers might come to this from the short film, made rather confusingly in French. But it’s a tale set during the American civil war. Peyton Farquhar is being hanged by Union soldiers on a small bridge in Alabama. To say more might ruin the experience of reading it. When I happened on the story a few years ago, I thought I might be one of only a few intrepid readers. Of course, it is considered to be one of the best stories in American literature. Sebastian Barry

“After Rain” by William Trevor (1996)

William Trevor has influenced me more than any other writer, and it’s impossible for me to name one story by him that is an absolute favourite. I can, however, name 20 to 30 stories that I return to often. One of these is “After Rain”. A woman travels alone to recover from a love that has ended too abruptly, but the wish that solitude could exorcise loneliness is as faulty as the wish that love could exorcise disappointment brought by love. The story to me is like an eye drop for the mind. It doesn’t offer a resolution to life’s muddiness, but it offers a moment of clarity. Yiyun Li

“In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” by William H Gass (1968)

The thing that is most striking about this story, aside from its restrained, grave beauty, is that it should manage to be so moving. On one level it is a dryly detailed and topographically exact portrait of a small town in the American midwest, but on another it is a devastating threnody for lost love. Gass was one of the great prose stylists, and the writing here is typically smooth and pellucid, conjuring its effects by stealth and unflagging control. Simply, and by simple means, a masterpiece. John Banville

“American Express” by James Salter (1988)

The temporal shifts in James Salter’s short fiction are its distinguishing glory. Decades unfold inside the beat of a sentence; a single moment might linger unspoken for many pages. Time seems to concertina, expanding and contracting to open out pockets of aromatic description. In “American Express”, a pair of venal New York lawyers make a shabby killing and embark with their riches on a playboy jaunt through Italy, where one of them takes up with a schoolgirl. The story deals in oxymorons – bitter desire, weak power – and jolts to a conclusion that is harsh, cool, indelible. Kevin Barry

“Paradise” by Edna O’Brien (2014)

Key to a great short story is the tension and torsion created within each sentence. “Paradise” combines remarkable disquiet, poetry and narrative drive. O’Brien is a phenomenal architect of landscape, both physical and human, imbuing her setting with exact detail, lush discomfort, intrigue and counterintuitive fate. The main character, a nurse, has been taken to the overseas villa of her rich lover. Not only must she learn to swim and entertain his companions, she’s interviewing – without any real prospect – for the position of wife. The story is lit with sexual chemistry, but travels a horribly misaligned path. Its true test lies in finding an exit from the female dream. Sarah Hall

“Hands” by Sherwood Anderson (1916)

This is a strange, dark little story. Its charm comes from the eccentricities of its subject, former schoolteacher Wing Biddlebaum, since “the story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands”. Anderson evokes the Ohio town of Winesburg by focusing on the hands of its inhabitants. Wing’s hands are “slender, and forever trying to conceal themselves” and he notices how the hands of those around him are “quieter, inexpressive”. And it’s the wandering hands of Wing Biddlebaum, who has changed his name from Adolph Myers, that leads to the story’s disturbing conclusion. Guy Gunaratne

“Let It Snow” by David Sedaris (2003)

Sedaris is in the fifth grade when heavy snow closes the schools. After a few days, his mother breaks down: “Get the hell out of my house,” she says, “and stay out!”. The little Sedarises go off sledding and return to find the door locked against them. They peer through the window to see their mother watching TV and glugging wine. ‘Open the door,’ they yell, ‘it’s us!’. She closes the drapes on them. “That bitch!” shouts a Sedaris sister. Fun turns to fear, mild sibling savagery follows and then, suddenly, it’s OK again.

A story – more memoir than fiction – that starts with the recognition that the very sight of you drives your mother to drink is attractive to me. But when it ends with that mother wading barelegged through five inches of snow to reach you, it’s everything a story should be. It’s The Sound of Music / Lord of the Flies / Owl Babies in a few short pages. He is a genius. Nina Stibbe . Reasons to Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe will be published by Viking on 28 March .

“The Distance of the Moon” by Italo Calvino (1963)

This is a gloriously sensual story, narrated by a man who wants another’s wife – but the true star of the show is the moon. Calvino imagines it so close it risks dipping its scales in the sea. Fishermen gather lunar milk as the protagonist writhes in unrequited love. It is a great example of magic realism – full of texture and motion and mischief and longing. Leone Ross Come Let Us Sing Anyway , by Leone Ross, is published by Peepal Tree.

Contemporary and classic tales picked by Chris Power

“civil peace” by chinua achebe (1971).

Achebe didn’t write many short stories (in the preface to his 1972 collection, Girls at War , he notes that “a dozen pieces in twenty years must be accounted a pretty lean harvest by any reckoning”), but his best are deeply memorable. “Civil Peace” takes place in the immediate aftermath of the Biafran war, and gives vivid life to the luck and misfortune experienced by Jonathan Iwegbu – an incorrigible optimist in a devastated society – and the surviving members of his family.

“In a Bamboo Grove” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1921)

Akutagawa’s ingenious riddle of a story takes the form of seven testimonies given to a magistrate in the course of a murder investigation. A samurai has been found dead in a bamboo grove, but the narrative doesn’t end with the confession of the notorious bandit Tajōmaru. Instead, two subsequent testimonies, that of the samurai’s wife and of the samurai himself, via a spirit medium, contradict each other and the bandit’s story, and ask the reader to turn investigator and puzzle out the truth.

“Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood (1983)

Alice Munro once said: “I want the story to exist somewhere so that in a way it’s still happening … I don’t want it to be shut up in the book and put away – oh well, that’s what happened.” Atwood articulates the same position in this fun, thought-provoking story that begins with a man meeting a woman, then offers variants of what happens next. Any ending that isn’t death, she concludes, is false, and the interesting part of stories isn’t what happens, but how and why.

“Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin (1965)

A southern white deputy sheriff tries and fails to have sex with his wife. As she goes to sleep he talks about the vicious beating he gave a black protestor earlier that day, and returns to a deeper and even darker memory from his childhood: the ritual killing of a black man. After the killing, there was a picnic. Baldwin doesn’t deny his character humanity, but as the story’s shocking climax shows, neither does he forgive him.

“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges (1941)

When described in summary, there is a danger of reducing Borges to a collection of tropes: labyrinths, mirrors, invented books (he avoided “the madness of composing vast books” by pretending they exist and writing commentaries on them). But with these elements he explored some of the most thrilling ideas in fiction. Labyrinths and strange books are both present here, as is a theory of existence that anticipates the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Extraordinarily, all these elements are enfolded within an account of a wartime espionage mission.

“This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” by Tadeusz Borowski (1946)

From spring 1943 to summer 1944 the young Polish poet Borowski was a political prisoner in Auschwitz. His stories are some of the darkest documents in world literature. This one describes the narrator’s first shift as a kapo unloading trains packed with Jewish men, women and children. Borowski’s prose alternates between a blunt numbness and image making of extraordinary power.

“The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter (1979)

In The Bloody Chamber Angela Carter rewrote some of the best known fairytales – “Beauty and the Beast”, “Snow White”, “Bluebeard” – challenging their assumptions about gender, sexual cruelty and morality. In “The Company of Wolves” Red Riding Hood is no longer the meek victim of the wolf, but a woman of agency and courage who uses her sexuality to tame him.

“Why Don’t You Dance?” by Raymond Carver (1981)

The best Carver stories don’t require the conventional techniques of exposition or backstory but create an extraordinary immediacy. Here we witness a man who has taken his furnishings and arranged them on his lawn: bed, couch, desk, turntable, lamp. It’s all for sale, and as the man gets drunk with a young couple looking to furnish their apartment, we can guess how he has got here. But a hangnail of the unknowable remains, and stays long in the memory.

“The Country Husband” by John Cheever (1954)

Cheever is known as a chronicler of the suburbs, but in this story the leafy neighbourhood of Shady Hill, a recurring location in his fiction, blends the domestic with something much stranger, almost magical. The story is comic (its title mirrors William Wycherley’s 1675 comedy of manners The Country-Wife ), but darker currents work beneath its surface and it builds to a stunning finale that is one of the most rapturous passages Cheever ever wrote.

“An Outpost of Progress” by Joseph Conrad (1897)

Kayerts and Carlier, agents for the Great Trading Company, are “two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals” left in charge of a remote trading station. Conrad mines a deep vein of irony as he describes their work “serving the cause of progress”. As the story unfolds, and the men are shown to be idiotic cogs in the engine of colonialism, Conrad exposes the gap between the high-flown language of such projects (“progress”, “civilisation”, “virtue”) and their brutal reality.

“Twilight of the Superheroes” by Deborah Eisenberg (2006)

Eisenberg’s story is high on the list of great literature about 9/11. Since the 1990s she has examined the effects of American power on the world and asked the question one of her characters asks here: “How far away does something have to be before you have the right to not really know about it?” The attack on New York, that “terrible day”, although it seemed to come from nowhere, “had been prepared for a long, long time, though it had been prepared behind a curtain”.

“In the Tunnel” by Mavis Gallant (1971)

Sarah’s father sends her from Canada to Grenoble as a way of ending her relationship with a married professor, but she ends up on the French Riviera. There she meets Roy, an ex-prison inspector, and rashly moves in with him. The story’s charge arises from a combination of wit, the awfulness of the relationship’s collapse, and Gallant’s profound grasp of the psychology of love affairs. She talks about her characters in a way that makes you feel your own perceptiveness is being worked like a muscle.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

During her lifetime Gilman was best known for her nonfiction, and she was forgotten after her suicide. Her fiction, in particular “The Yellow Wallpaper”, was rediscovered in the 1970s by feminist academics. This chilling story takes the “madwoman” figure of gothic fiction, memorably used by Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre , and describes her experience from the inside looking out. Having been told to avoid mental stimulation by her doctor following an episode of depression, Gilman wrote the story to “convince him of the error of his ways”.

“The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol (1842)

It is uncertain whether it was Turgenev or Dostoevsky who said, “We all came out from under Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’”, but his influence on those writers – as well as on Tolstoy, Kafka, Nabokov, Borges and many more – is profound. The main character of this bleakly hilarious story, the downtrodden government clerk Akaky Akakievich, is arguably the first antihero in modern literature, and his doomed pursuit of a new overcoat one of the most memorably absurd quests in fiction.

“Six Feet of the Country” by Nadine Gordimer (1953)

The reality of apartheid, and later the effects of its aftermath, dominates Gordimer’s fiction. Here her narrator, who has escaped the tension of Johannesburg to play at farming in a rural suburb, becomes enraged when, following the death and autopsy of one of his workers’ brothers, the authorities return the wrong body for burial. Despite his efforts to achieve justice, the story’s final, bitterly ironic lines reveal that he is blind to his own racism.

“Big Two-Hearted River” by Ernest Hemingway (1925)

Hemingway’s distinctive style – which John Updike described as “gleaming economy and aggressive minimalism” – is stunningly showcased here. Nick Adams’s journey into the Michigan backwoods is also a journey into his own war-damaged psyche, and his unwillingness to fish the deep water of the swamp a resonant evocation of trauma.

“A Village After Dark” by Kazuo Ishiguro (2001)

The tension in this uncanny piece is stoked by Ishiguro’s refusal to provide more than tantalising fragments of backstory. At nightfall an old man, Fletcher, arrives at a village where he once held great influence, but is now resented (“I was mistaken about a lot of things,” he admits). This might be an alternative Britain, or a future one. The dilapidated buildings and Fletcher’s tramp-like appearance give the story a Beckettian feel, while its allegorical quality carries over to Ishiguro’s novel The Buried Giant .

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948)

Asked to describe her writing, Jackson once noted its fascination with “the uncontrolled, unobserved wickedness of human behaviour”. “The Lottery”, in which a crowd gathers for a ceremony in the main square of a New England village on a sunny June morning, ends with one of the nastiest surprises in fiction. When the New Yorker printed the story it became the “ Cat Person ” of its era as letters flooded in expressing admiration, disgust, and – unbelievably – concern that the gruesome story was true.

“Emergency” by Denis Johnson (1991)

Johnson’s story begins in a hospital emergency room. It’s the night shift, and Fuckhead (his nickname is the only name for him we get) and Georgie are taking care of hospital business while swallowing every pharmaceutical they can get their hands on. When their shift finishes, they drive into the countryside and reality unravels completely. Johnson rides a line between the sacred and the profane, between hilarity and sadness., and writes prose that will take your breath away

“Araby” by James Joyce (1914)

The stories in Dubliners divide into the four stages of life, and “Araby” encapsulates the turbulence and humiliation of adolescence in a boy’s lonely night-time journey across Dublin to buy a gift for the girl he loves.

“A Bright Green Field” by Anna Kavan (1958)

If you love JG Ballard, you should read Anna Kavan. Few novelists, Ballard said, “could match the intensity of her vision”, and that same intensity fuels her stories. The narrator of “A Bright Green Field” claims to encounter the same, unnaturally vivid field of grass wherever she goes. It’s an unlikely candidate for a bete noire, but Kavan’s descriptions of a mountain town in the gathering gloom, loomed over by “the sheer emerald wall that was the meadow”, create an atmosphere of powerful unease.

“Extra” by Yiyun Li (2003)

Granny Lin is 51, and doesn’t know when everyone started calling her granny. Working as a maid at a boarding school in the Beijing suburbs she develops feelings for six-year-old Kang, a rich man’s illegitimate son, an unwanted “extra” who “has to be got rid of”. Granny Lin’s love is complicated; is it maternal, or is it perhaps the great romance she missed out on in her youth? Li has a Chekhovian ability to disappear from the text, allowing a remarkable intensity to develop between reader and story.

“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado (2014)

Machado takes a grisly campfire tale (“The Green Ribbon”), combines it with the purported medical practice of suturing a woman’s perineum with an extra stitch or two after childbirth to increase her husband’s pleasure, and creates a powerful modern fable about misogyny and motherhood. Before her wedding day, as Machado expertly builds the atmosphere of foreboding, the narrator notes that, “Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle”.

“Madame Tellier’s House” by Guy de Maupassant (1881)

Maupassant, probably the only short-story writer as influential as Chekhov, wrote in two modes: short, impressively constructed but one-dimensional stories with trick endings (“The Necklace” is the most famous of these), and longer, more interesting work. He wrote “Madame Tellier’s House” after a friend reported passing a brothel in Rouen with a sign on its door saying, “Closed because of First Communion”. His expansion on this irresistible detail resulted in one of his greatest stories.

“A Horse and Two Goats” by RK Narayan (1970)

Narayan, who wrote more than 200 short stories, called them “concentrated miniatures of human experience in all its opulence”. The opulence of the clay horse at the centre of this story has faded beneath the Indian sun, but the conversation it triggers between an American tourist who speaks no Tamil and Muni, a poor peasant who speaks no English, is not only very funny, but also telling about the degree to which misunderstanding is an unavoidable part of human interaction.

“Minutes of Glory” by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1976)

This story by Kenya’s most prominent writer follows the struggles of barmaid Beatrice as she works in a succession of increasingly seedy establishments. Men prey on her, buying her body as if it were “a bag of potatoes or a sack of cabbages”, and her hopes of living the high life in Nairobi become more unlikely by the day. “She fought life with dreams,” Ngũgĩ writes, and through a reckless action Beatrice’s fantasies briefly become reality before the story reaches its sorrowful conclusion.

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor (1953)

This story is a vicious and darkly funny account of a family’s encounter with a criminal gang led by the psychotic Misfit. Its closing lines, and the apparent act of grace they describe, are as memorable as they are ambiguous.

“We Didn’t Like Him” by Akhil Sharma (2013)

Two boys grow up together on a lane in Delhi. One, the narrator, becomes a lawyer. The other, Manshu, becomes pandit of the local temple. The narrator’s burgeoning dislike for Manshu, the way the events of life bring them back into contact with one another, the Hindu burial process and the mechanics of “putting someone in the Ganges”: these elements are so absorbingly animated that the story’s emotional impact, when it arrives, feels like an ambush.

“Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, and No Apology” by Nafissa Thompson-Spires (2015)

Police shoot two black men outside a comic-book convention in LA, while halfway across the country an artist buys his daughter a cupcake at a vegan bakery. Thompson-Spires’s self-reflexive story is “angry, like a big black fist”, but it’s also breathtaking in the way it loops back and forth in time and constantly second-guesses the reader’s assumptions.

“Smote (or When I Find I Cannot Kiss You in Front of a Print by Bridget Riley)” by Eley Williams (2015)

“To kiss you,” this story begins, “should not involve such fear of precision.” Williams’s story is less a stream of consciousness than a barrelling wave, as a woman debates whether or not to kiss her girlfriend in an art gallery, and all the doubt, thrill, uncertainty, hilarity and panic of love is compressed into a few seconds of indecision.

• Short stories
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10 Short Stories with Great Dialogue That Aren’t “Hills Like White Elephants”

Do you believe in life after hemingway.

Before you get excited: I have no problem with “Hills Like White Elephants.” In this classic story, Ernest Hemingway demonstrates a masterful, subtle use of dialogue—so much so that it has become, if not a totally clichéd, then at least a ubiquitous text in creative writing classrooms. I myself encountered it at least four times by the time I got to grad school—where I proceeded to teach it to my own Introduction to Creative Writing class. It’s the circle of life. This is only to say that I’m not immune—but I also know there are plenty of other stories with strong dialogue out there, and as another school year (such as it is, in 2021) gets going, they’re probably worth a look too. Just for fun, you know?

So I asked the Literary Hub staff to suggest some of their other favorite short stories that do cool things with dialogue, and I’ve collected a few of them here. Obviously this list is not exhaustive—among other things, we also shied away from some other tried-and-true dialogue-heavy classics, like “The Dead” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” and “Steady Hands at Seattle General”—and of course these stories are mostly not doing the same thing as “Hills Like White Elephants,” but they’re all doing something interesting. Just in case you want to mix it up a little this year.

Sam Lipsyte, “ The Dungeon Master ,” from The Fun Parts

Sample Dialogue:

The Dungeon Master has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master’s little brother Marco puts out corn chips and orange soda.

Marco is a paladin. He fights for the glory of Christ. Marco has been many paladins since winter break. They are all named Valentine, and the Dungeon Master makes certain they die with the least possible amount of dignity.

It’s painful enough when he rolls the dice, announces that a drunken orc has unspooled some Valentine’s guts for sport. Worse are the silly accidents. One Valentine tripped on a floor plank and cracked his head on a mead bucket. He died of trauma in the stable.

“Take it!” the Dungeon Master said that time. Spit sprayed over the top of his laminated screen. “Eat your fate,” he said. “Your thread just got the snippo!”

The Dungeon Master has a secret language that we don’t quite understand. They say he’s been treated for it.

Whenever the Dungeon Master kills another Valentine, Marco runs off and cries to their father. Dr. Varelli nudges his son back into the study, sticks his bushy head in the door, says, “Play nice, my beautiful puppies.”

“Father,” the Dungeon Master will say, “stay the fuck out of my mind realm.”

“I honor your wish, my beauty.”

Dr. Varelli says things like that. It’s not a secret language, just an embarrassing one. Maybe that’s why his wife left him, left Marco and the Dungeon Master, too. It’s not a decent reason to leave, but as the Dungeon Master hopes to teach us, the world is not a decent place to live.

Danielle Evans, “ Virgins ,” from  Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

“Look what Eddie gave me,” said Cindy, all friendly. She pulled a pink teddy bear out of her purse and squeezed its belly. It sang “You Are My Sunshine” in a vibrating robot voice.

“That’s nice,” said Jasmine, her voice so high that she sounded almost like the teddy bear. Cindy smiled and walked off with Eddie, swinging her hips back and forth.

“I don’t have a teddy bear neither,” said Eddie’s friend Tre, putting an arm around Jasmine. She pushed him off. Tre was the kind of boy my mother would have said to stay away from, but she said to stay away from all men.

“C’mon, Jasmine,” Tre said. “I lost my teddy bear, can I sleep with you tonight?”

Jasmine looked at Tre like he was stupid. Michael put an arm around each of our shoulders and kissed us both on the cheek, me first, then Jasmine.

“You know these are my girls,” he said to Tre. “Leave ’em alone.”

His friends mostly left me alone anyway, because they knew I wasn’t good for anything but a little kissing. But I was glad he’d included me. Michael nodded good-bye as he and his friends walked toward their movie. Eddie and Cindy stayed there, kissing, like that’s what they had paid admission for. I grabbed Jasmine’s hand and pulled her toward the ticket counter.

“That’s nasty,” I said. “She looks nasty all up on him in public like that.”

“No one ever bought me a singing teddy bear,” said Jasmine. “Probably no one ever will buy me a singing teddy bear.”

“I’ll buy you a singing teddy bear, stupid,” I said.

“Shut up,” she said. She’d been sucking on her bottom lip so hard she’d sucked the lipstick off it, and her lips were two different colors. “Don’t you ever want to matter to somebody?”

“I matter to you. And Michael.”

Jasmine clicked her tongue. “Say Michael had to shoot either you or that Italian chick who’s letting him hit it right now. Who do you think he would save?”

“Why does he have to shoot somebody?” I said.

“He just does.”

“Well, he’d save me then. She’s just a girl who’s fucking him.”

“And you’re just a girl who isn’t,” Jasmine said. “That’s your problem, Erica. You don’t understand adult relationships.”

“Where are there adults?” I asked, turning in circles with my hand to my forehead like a sea captain looking for land.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m tired of these little boys. Next weekend we’re going to the city. We’re gonna find some real niggas who know how to treat us.”

That was not the idea I meant for Jasmine to have.

Ottessa Moshfegh, “ The Beach Boy ,” from Homesick for Another World

The friends wanted to know what the prostitutes had looked like, how they’d dressed, what they’d said. They wanted details.

“They looked like normal people,” Marcia said, shrugging. “You know, just young, poor people, locals. But they were very complimentary. They kept saying, ‘Hello, nice people. Massage? Nice massage for nice people?’ ”

“Little did they know!” John joked, furrowing his eyebrows like a maniac. The friends laughed.

“We’d read about it in the guidebook,” Marcia said. “You’re not supposed to acknowledge them at all. You don’t even look them in the eye. If you do, they’ll never leave you alone. The beach boys. The male prostitutes, I mean. It’s sad,” she added. “Tragic. And, really, one wonders how anybody can starve in a place like that. There was food everywhere. Fruit on every tree. I just don’t understand it. And the city was rife with garbage. Rife! ” she proclaimed. She put down her fork. “Wouldn’t you say, hon?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘rife,’ ” John answered, wiping the corners of his mouth with his cloth napkin. “Fragrant, more like.”

The waiter collected the unfinished plates of pasta, then returned and took their orders of cheesecake and pie and decaffeinated coffee. John was quiet. He scrolled through photos on his cell phone, looking for a picture he’d taken of a monkey seated on the head of a Virgin Mary statue. The statue was painted in bright colors, and its nose was chipped, showing the white, chalky plaster under the paint. The monkey was black and skinny, with wide-spaced, neurotic eyes. Its tail curled under Mary’s chin. John turned the screen of his phone toward the table.

“This little guy,” he said.

“Aw!” the friends cried. They wanted to know, “Were the monkeys feral? Were they smelly? Are the people Catholic? Are they all very religious there?”

“Catholic,” Marcia said, nodding. “And the monkeys were everywhere. Cute but very sneaky. One of them stole John’s pen right out of his pocket.” She rattled off whatever facts she could remember from the nature tour they’d taken. “I think there are laws about eating the monkeys. I’m not so sure. They all spoke English,” she repeated, “but sometimes it was hard to understand them. The guides, I mean, not the monkeys.” She chuckled.

“The monkeys spoke Russian, naturally,” John said, and put away his phone.

Sarah Gerard, “ The Killer ,” from  Guernica

They paid the bill and left, gathering on the sidewalk.

Nathan said to them, “We live down the beach. Come over.”

Amy tried to decline. Benjamin held her by the elbow. She allowed him to lead her, and by the time they reached the sand behind the Pelican, she’d managed to free herself, and catch up with Carol.

They walked the waterline.

“There is another option if you don’t want to kill them yourself,” Carol told her. Then, turning to Nathan: “We can put them in touch with Chance.”

Nathan fell into step with them. He draped an arm around his wife’s waist.

“Is Chance an exterminator?” said Amy.

“I hesitate to tell you more about our relationship,” Nathan joked. “I don’t talk God or politics in mixed company.”

“I’m a registered Democrat,” said Benjamin.

“He comes out and shoots the iguanas, then disposes of the carcasses,” said Carol. “He charges a reasonable fee.”

Nathan smiled.

“He actually became somewhat notorious when he posted some pictures of one of his hunts on Facebook recently,” Carol continued. “He can guarantee up to one hundred iguanas in a single hunt. He had them all laid out in rows with their legs bound, and huge plastic bins of dead lizards, rooms and hallways full of them. Then these happy white men in t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, posing.”

“You can imagine,” said Nathan.

“Thousands of shares. People calling him a murderer.”

“He’s doing our community a service, really.”

They climbed a narrow path worn into the sea grass. It led to the screened-in pool of a stone lanai furnished in rattan. Nathan went behind the bar with his phone to his ear. He fixed their drinks out of earshot. Carol invited them to sit on a loveseat. She offered them each a cigarette. They declined.

“I suppose you know too much about the consequences of smoking.” She lit the cigarette and drew out the motion of removing it from her mouth. A slip of smoke hovered between her lips. “My father was a pack-a-day smoker until he died at ninety-two. I figure I’m immune.”

“I’m not sure that would stand up to peer review,” said Benjamin.

“You’re right. Too emotional.”

Kevin Barry, “ Fjord of Killary ,” from Dark Lies the Island

So I bought an old hotel on the fjord of Killary. It was set hard by the harbor wall, with Mweelrea Mountain across the water, and disgracefully gray skies above. It rained two hundred and eighty-seven days of the year, and the locals were given to magnificent mood swings. On the night in question, the rain was particularly violent—it came down like handfuls of nails flung hard and fast by a seriously riled sky god. I was at this point eight months in the place and about convinced that it would be the death of me.

“It’s end-of-the-fucking-world stuff out there,” I said.

The chorus of locals in the hotel’s lounge bar, as always, ignored me. I was a fretful blow-in, by their mark, and simply not cut out for tough, gnarly, West of Ireland living. They were listening, instead, to John Murphy, our alcoholic funeral director.

“I’ll bury anythin’ that fuckin’ moves,” he said.

“Bastards, suicides, tinkers,” he said.

“I couldn’t give a fuckin’ monkey’s,” he said.

Behind the bar: the Guinness tap, the Smithwicks tap, the lager taps, the line of optics, the neatly stacked rows of glasses, and a high stool that sat by a wee slit of window that had a view across the water toward Mweelrea. The iodine tang of kelp hung in the air always, and put me in mind of embalming fluid. Bill Knott looked vaguely from his Bushmills toward the water.

“Highish, all right,” he said. “But now what’d we be talkin’ about for Belmullet, would you say? Off a slow road?”

The primary interest of these people’s lives, it often seemed, was how far one place was from another, and how long it might take to complete the journey, given the state of the roads. Bill had been in haulage as a young man and considered himself expert.

“I don’t know, Bill,” I said.

“Would we say an hour twenty if you weren’t tailbacked out of Newport?”

“I said I really don’t fucking well know, Bill.”

“There are those’ll say you’d do it in an hour.” He sipped, delicately. “But you’d want to be grease fuckin’ lightnin’ coming up from Westport direction, wouldn’t you?”

“We could be swimming it yet, Bill.”

Toni Cade Bambara, “ The Lesson ,” from  Gorilla, My Love

“Will you look at this sailboat, please,” say Flyboy, cuttin her off and pointin to the thing like it was his. So once again we tumble all over each other to gaze at this magnificent thing in the toy store which is just big enough to maybe sail two kittens across the pond if you strap them to the posts tight. We all start reciting the price tag like we in assembly. “Hand-crafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars.”

“Unbelievable,” I hear myself say and am really stunned. I read it again for myself just in case the group recitation put me in a trance. Same thing. For some reason this pisses me off. We look at Miss Moore and she lookin at us, waiting for I dunno what.

“Who’d pay all that when you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube of glue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents? It must have a motor and a whole lot else besides,” I say. “My sailboat cost me about fifty cents.”

“But will it take water?” say Mercedes with her smart ass.

“Took mine to Alley Pond Park once,” say Flyboy. “String broke. Lost it. Pity.”

“Sailed mine in Central Park and it keeled over and sank. Had to ask my father for another dollar.”

“And you got the strap,” laugh Big Butt. “The jerk didn’t even have a string on it. My old man wailed on his behind.”

Little Q.T. was staring hard at the sailboat and you could see he wanted it bad. But he too little and somebody’d just take it from him. So what the hell.

“This boat for kids, Miss Moore?”

“Parents silly to buy something like that just to get all broke up,” say Rosie Giraffe.

“That much money it should last forever,” I figure.

“My father’d buy it for me if I wanted it.”

“Your father, my ass,” say Rosie Giraffe getting a chance to finally push Mercedes.

“Must be rich people shop here,” say Q.T.

“You are a very bright boy,” say Flyboy. “What was your first clue?” And he rap him on the head with the back of his knuckles, since Q.T. the only one he could get away with. Though Q.T. liable to come up behind you years later and get his licks in when you half expect it.

Ali Smith, “ The Child ,” from The First Person and Other Stories

You’re a really rubbish driver, a voice said from the back of the car. I could do better than that, and I can’t even drive. Are you for instance representative of all women drivers, or is it just you among all women who’s so rubbish at driving?

It was the child speaking. But it spoke with so surprisingly charming a little voice that it made me want to laugh, a voice as young and clear as a series of ringing bells arranged into a pretty melody. It said the complicated words, representative and for instance, with an innocence that sounded ancient, centuries old, and at the same time as if it had only just discovered their meaning and was trying out their usage and I was privileged to be present when it did.

I slewed the car over to the side of the motorway, switched the engine off and leaned over the front seat into the back. The child still lay there helpless, rolled up in the tartan blanket, held in place by it inside the seatbelt. It didn’t look old enough to be able to speak. It looked barely a year old.

It’s terrible. Asylum seekers come here and take all our jobs and all our benefits, it said preternaturally, sweetly. They should all be sent back to where they come from.

There was a slight endearing lisp on the “s” sounds in the words asylum and seekers and jobs and benefits and sent.

What? I said.

Can’t you hear? Cloth in your ears? it said. The real terrorists are people who aren’t properly English. They will sneak into football stadiums and blow up innocent Christian people supporting innocent English teams.

The words slipped out of its ruby-red mouth. I could just see the glint of its little coming-through teeth.

It said: The pound is our rightful heritage. We deserve our heritage. Women shouldn’t work if they’re going to have babies. Women shouldn’t work at all. It’s not the natural order of things. And as for gay weddings. Don’t make me laugh.

Then it laughed, blondly, beautifully, as if only for me. Its big blue eyes were open and looking straight up at me as if I were the most delightful thing it had ever seen.

I was enchanted. I laughed back.

ZZ Packer, “The Ant of the Self,” from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

My father just got a DUI—again—though that didn’t stop him from asking for the keys. When I didn’t give them up, he sighed and shook his head as though I withheld keys from him daily. “C’mon, Spurge,” he’d said. “The pigs aren’t even looking.”

He’s the only person I know who still calls cops “pigs,” a holdover from what he refers to as his Black Panther days, when “the brothers” raked their globes of hair with black-fisted Afro picks, then left them stuck there like javelins. When, as he tells it, he and Huey P. Newton would meet in basements and wear leather jackets and stick it to whitey. Having given me investment advice, he now watches the world outside the Honda a little too jubilantly. I take the curve around the city, past the backsides of chain restaurants and malls, office parks and the shitty Louisville zoo.

“That’s your future,” he says winding down from his rant. “Sound investments.”

“Maybe you should ask the pigs for your bail money back,” I say. “We could invest that.”

“You keep getting money from debate, we could invest.”

When most people talk about investing, they mean stocks or bonds or mutual funds. What my father means is his friend Splo’s cockfighting arena, or some dude who goes door to door selling exercise equipment that does all the exercise for you. He’d invested in a woman who tried selling African cichlids to pet shops, but all she’d done was dye ordinary goldfish so they looked tropical. “Didn’t you just win some cash?” he asks. “From debate?”

“Bail,” I say. “I used it to pay your bail.”

He’s quiet for a while. I wait for him to stumble out a thanks. I wait for him to promise to pay me back with money he knows he’ll never have. Finally he sighs and says, “Most investors buy low and sell high. Know why they do that?” With my father there are not only trick questions, but trick answers. Before I can respond, I hear his voice, loud and naked. “I axed you, ‘Do you know why they do that?'” He’s shaking my arm as if trying to wake me. “You answer me when I ask you something.”

I twist my arm from his grasp to show I’m not afraid. We swerve out of our lane. Cars behind us swerve as well, then zoom around us and pull ahead as if we are a rock in a stream.

“Do you know who this is ?” he says. “Do you know who you’re talking to ?”

I haven’t been talking to anyone, but I keep this to myself.

Jhumpa Lahiri, “ A Temporary Matter ,” from Interpreter of Maladies

The microwave had just beeped when the lights went out, and the music disappeared.

“Perfect timing,” Shoba said.

“All I could find were birthday candles.” He lit up the ivy, keeping the rest of the candles and a book of matches by his plate.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, running a finger along the stem of her wineglass. “It looks lovely.”

In the dimness, he knew how she sat, a bit forward in her chair, ankles crossed against the lowest rung, left elbow on the table. During his search for the candles, Shukumar had found a bottle of wine in a crate he had thought was empty. He clamped the bottle between his knees while he turned in the corkscrew. He worried about spilling, and so he picked up the glasses and held them close to his lap while he filled them. They served themselves, stirring the rice with their forks, squinting as they extracted bay leaves and cloves from the stew.

Every few minutes Shukumar lit a few more birthday candles and drove them into the soil of the pot.

“It’s like India,” Shoba said, watching him tend his makeshift candelabra. “Sometimes the current disappears for hours at a stretch. I once had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark. The baby just cried and cried. It must have been so hot.”

Their baby had never cried, Shukumar considered. Their baby would never have a rice ceremony, even though Shoba had already made the guest list, and decided on which of her three brothers she was going to ask to feed the child its first taste of solid food, at six months if it was a boy, seven if it was a girl.

“Are you hot?” he asked her. He pushed the blazing ivy pot to the other end of the table, closer to the piles of books and mail, making it even more difficult for them to see each other. He was suddenly irritated that he couldn’t go upstairs and sit in front of the computer.

“No. It’s delicious,” she said, tapping her plate with her fork. “It really is.”

He refilled the wine in her glass. She thanked him.

They weren’t like this before. Now he had to struggle to say something that interested her, something that made her look up from her plate, or from her proofreading files. Eventually he gave up trying to amuse her. He learned not to mind the silences.

“I remember during power failures at my grandmother’s house, we all had to say something,” Shoba continued. He could barely see her face, but from her tone he knew her eyes were narrowed, as if trying to focus on a distant object. It was a habit of hers.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A little poem. A joke. A fact about the world. For some reason my relatives always wanted me to tell them the names of my friends in America. I don’t know why the information was so interesting to them. The last time I saw my aunt she asked after four girls I went to elementary school with in Tucson. I barely remember them now.”

Shukumar hadn’t spent as much time in India as Shoba had. His parents, who settled in New Hampshire, used to go back without him. The first time he’d gone as an infant he’d nearly died of amoebic dysentery. His father, a nervous type, was afraid to take him again, in case something were to happen, and left him with his aunt and uncle in Concord. As a teenager he preferred sailing camp or scooping ice cream during the summers to going to Calcutta. It wasn’t until after his father died, in his last year of college, that the country began to interest him, and he studied its history from course books as if it were any other subject. He wished now that he had his own childhood story of India.

“Let’s do that,” she said suddenly.

“Say something to each other in the dark.”

“Like what? I don’t know any jokes.”

“No, no jokes.” She thought for a minute. “How about telling each other something we’ve never told before.”

Grace Paley, “ My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age ,” from  Here and Somewhere Else

My father had decided to teach me how to grow old. I said O.K. My children didn’t think it was such a great idea. If I knew how, they thought, I might do so too easily. No, no, I said, it’s for later, years from now. And, besides, if I get it right it might be helpful to you kids in time to come.

They said, Really?

My father wanted to begin as soon as possible. For God’s sake, he said, you can talk to the kids later. Now, listen to me, send them out to play. You are so distractable.

We should probably begin at the beginning, he said. Change. First there is change, which nobody likes—even men. You’d be surprised. You can do little things—putting cream on the corners of your mouth, also the heels of your feet. But here is the main thing. Oh, I wish your mother was alive—not that she had time—

But Pa, I said, Mama never knew anything about cream. I did not say she was famous for not taking care.

Forget it, he said sadly. But I must mention squinting. don’t squint. Wear your glasses. Look at your aunt, so beautiful once. I know someone has said men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, but that’s an idea for a foolish person. There are many handsome women who are not exactly twenty-twenty.

Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this—when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.

That’s a metaphor, right?

Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.

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Short Story Examples and Samples

Writing a short story is like an encapsulated novel focused on one main character. It is an artform on its own, and one needs to practice writing many of them to get a handle on the form. Reading our samples of short stories will also help you a great deal.

How to Write A Short Story: The Complete Guide

Writing a short story involves a balance of crafting an engaging narrative while also keeping it concise. It’s a specific genre of fiction writing that can be immensely satisfying and challenging to undertake. A successful short story captivates its readers, offering them a complete narrative experience within a relatively small word count.

Creating a short story requires mastering specific storytelling techniques. The author must establish a setting, introduce engaging characters, create conflict, and bring the narrative to a satisfying climax and outcome. Short stories are an excellent platform for authors to explore various styles and types of narratives, enabling them to showcase their creativity and storytelling abilities within a condensed format.

One of the exciting aspects of fiction writing is the range of genres available. The genre you choose for your short story can significantly shape its structure and content, from horror and fantasy to romance and mystery. It’s essential to understand the conventions of your chosen genre to effectively satisfy your readers’ expectations.

The Core Elements Of A Short Story

The power of a short story lies in its core elements: the protagonist, conflict, character development, plot, climax, and outcome. Each element contributes to the richness of the narrative, making it compelling and memorable.

The protagonist, or the main character, is the central figure of your story. The character’s desires and struggles drive the plot forward, drawing the reader into their world. A well-developed protagonist is crucial for creating an engaging story.

Conflict is the engine of the plot. It creates tension and challenge for the protagonist, giving them something to struggle against and overcome. The conflict can be external, such as a physical enemy or natural disaster, or internal, such as a personal fear or dilemma.

Character development refers to the evolution of your protagonist throughout the story. Through their struggle with the conflict, the protagonist should undergo some level of growth or change, providing depth to their character and making them more relatable to the reader.

The plot is the sequence of events that make up your story, guided by the protagonist’s actions and the conflict they face. It starts with an introduction, rises to a climax, and concludes with a resolution, creating a satisfying narrative arc.

The climax is the turning point of your story, the peak of the protagonist’s struggle and the highest point of tension. It’s usually followed by the resolution, where the outcome of the conflict is revealed, leading to the end of the story.

How To Write An Outline For A Short Story

An outline provides a roadmap for your short story, organizing your ideas and ensuring a balanced structure. A well-crafted outline helps guide your writing, ensuring that you cover all necessary elements of your story without losing focus.

Begin by sketching out your main character, their motivations, and the conflict they’ll face. This will give you a good sense of your story’s direction. Next, outline the sequence of events or plotline leading to the climax, then detail the resolution and outcome.

Don’t forget to note how your protagonist will evolve throughout the story – this character growth is a crucial part of compelling storytelling. Once you have these core elements, you can flesh out additional details, such as setting, supporting characters, and subplots.

Remember, an outline is a guide, not a rulebook. Feel free to deviate and explore new ideas as they come up during the writing process.

How To Write A Short Story: A Step-By-Step Approach

• Choose Your Genre : Your choice of genre will set the tone and style for your story. Understand the genre’s conventions and expectations, and use them as a guiding framework for your storytelling.
• Develop Your Protagonist : Craft a protagonist with desires, fears, and complexities. Remember, character development is key to drawing in your readers.
• Establish the Conflict : Define the struggle that will propel your plot and challenge your protagonist.
• Outline the Plot : Sketch out the sequence of events in your story, from the introduction of the conflict, through to the climax and resolution.
• Write the First Draft : Start writing, using your outline as a guide. Don’t worry about getting everything perfect – focus on getting your ideas down.
• Revision : Once you’ve finished the first draft, review and revise your work. Look for inconsistencies, check the flow of your narrative, and ensure your language and storytelling techniques are effectively engaging your readers.
• Get Feedback : Share your story with others and listen to their feedback. Different perspectives can help highlight areas for improvement you might have overlooked.
• Final Draft : Incorporate the feedback and make final adjustments. Once you’re satisfied with your story, give it a final proofread, then sit back and enjoy the accomplishment of crafting a complete short story!

Remember, writing is a process that requires patience and practice. Don’t be disheartened if your first few attempts don’t meet your expectations. Do some research to find useful tips that may help you get better. You can organize them in a reference list to help you navigate through them more easily (use tools like ASA citation machine to make this step quickr). The main point is – keep writing, keep experimenting, and keep learning, and you’ll find your voice as a short story author.

Language Use in Short Story Writing

In the domain of short story writing, language use holds critical importance. It is the tool through which authors convey their storyline, character growth, and the tension and resolution inherent in their plot. Crafted effectively, the language will serve as a vehicle that transports readers into the narrative world, enabling them to share the protagonist’s experiences, challenges, and outcomes.

The language used in short story writing should be concise yet descriptive, with every word chosen for its impact and relevance. The choice of words, sentence structure, and tone should complement the genre, whether that be the ominous undertones of a horror story or the passionate expressions of a romance. Authors must strike a balance between being vividly descriptive to paint a clear picture and being succinct to maintain the pace of the story.

Figurative language, including metaphors and similes, can add depth and creativity to your storytelling techniques, enriching your narrative art. Dialogue, too, plays a vital role in revealing character traits, conveying emotion, and driving the plot forward. However, brevity is key in short story writing, so ensure dialogue serves a purpose and avoids unnecessary verbosity.

The language should also reflect and enhance character development. As the central figure progresses through the narrative, their dialogue and internal thoughts should mirror their evolution, giving the reader insight into their persona building and role progression.

Unleashing Your Short Story Writing Potential

Crafting a short story is an exciting journey, a chance for you to shape a compact universe, orchestrating a fascinating dance between the protagonist and their conflict. The art of writing a short story requires careful arrangement of its core components— a relatable main character, an engaging conflict, structured character development, a compelling plot, and a satisfying climax and outcome.

To write a short story, you need to master the art of storytelling, involving a delicate blend of narrative techniques, character evolution, and tension-building. Your chosen genre also plays a crucial role in your storycraft, lending its unique structure to your narrative framework.

Don’t forget that revision is an integral part of the writing process. Reviewing, reworking, and reevaluating your story will help refine your narrative, enhancing its flow and coherence. Receiving feedback from others can offer valuable insights into your story’s strengths and areas for improvement, facilitating your growth as an author.

Writing a short story, like any creative endeavor, requires patience, practice, and an unyielding spirit of exploration. Don’t be discouraged if your initial efforts aren’t perfect. Continue crafting, composing, experimenting, and learning, and over time, your hard work will come to fruition, producing a narrative gem that shines with your unique storytelling flair.

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50 Irresistible Short Stories for Kids (Read Them All for Free!)

Quick reads with lasting impact.

Looking for some free tales to use for close reading or classroom read-alouds? This roundup of short stories for kids has plenty of options. From quick fables with morals to old-fashioned fairy tales and folktales from around the world, this diverse collection offers something for any child. We’ve also included ways to use these short stories with kids, in the classroom or at home.

Note: Always be sure to read a selection through before sharing it with children. Some of these short stories for kids, especially ones written a long time ago, may not be appropriate for every audience.

Classic Fairy Tale Short Stories for Kids

“ cinderella ” by charles perrault, “‘do not cry, cinderella,’ she said; ‘you also shall go to the ball, because you are a kind, good girl.'”.

Why I love it: This is one of those short stories for kids that everyone probably already knows. This older version is a little different than the Disney movie, so ask kids if they can identify the changes. They can also have fun imagining what other items could be transformed to help Cinderella get to the ball!

“ The Emperor’s New Clothes ” by Hans Christian Andersen

“‘But the Emperor has nothing at all on!’ said a little child.”

Why I love it: This is a wonderful story for talking about peer pressure and being brave enough to stand up for what you believe in. Kids will also enjoy drawing the imaginary suit of clothes that the king thought he saw.

“ The Frog Prince ” by the Brothers Grimm

“and the princess, though very unwilling, took him up in her hand, and put him upon the pillow of her own bed, where he slept all night long. as soon as it was light, he jumped up, hopped downstairs, and went out of the house. ‘now, then,’ thought the princess, ‘at last he is gone, and i shall be troubled with him no more.'”.

Why I love it: Kids love this familiar story about a prince in disguise and a young girl who keeps her word even though she doesn’t want to. In this version, the girl doesn’t need to kiss the frog, but she’s rewarded anyway.

“ The Gingerbread Man ” by Anonymous

“run, run as fast as you can you can’t catch me, i’m the gingerbread man”.

Why I love it: In the original tale, the Gingerbread Man is eventually caught and eaten. This retelling gives him a happy ending instead. For a fun activity, let kids decorate and eat their own gingerbread people.

“ Jack and the Beanstalk ” by Anonymous

“why, the beans his mother had thrown out of the window into the garden had sprung up into a giant beanstalk which went up and up and up until it reached the sky. so the man spoke truth after all”.

Why I love it: This story is a fun read, but use it to get your students thinking critically. Was it really OK for Jack to steal from the giant? Ask them to write an essay sharing their thoughts on the subject, or use it for a fun classroom debate.

“ Little Red Riding Hood ” by the Brothers Grimm

“‘but grandmother what big eyes you have,’ said little red riding hood. ‘the better to see you with, my dear,’ replied the wolf.”.

Why I love it: This retelling of the well-known tale is a little less gruesome, since the hunter merely frightens the wolf into spitting out poor granny (instead of slicing open his belly). Talk with kids about ways they can keep themselves safe when they’re out in the world.

“ The Pied Piper of Hamelin ” by the Brothers Grimm

“he sounded his fife in the streets, but this time it wasn’t rats and mice that came to him, but rather children: a great number of boys and girls from their fourth year on. among them was the mayor’s grown daughter. the swarm followed him, and he led them into a mountain, where he disappeared with them.”.

Why I love it: Some say this is a true story, and whether or not that’s true, it definitely has a moral—when people make a bargain, they should stick to their agreement. Ask kids to think about what kind of music the Pied Piper might have played, and why both children and rats couldn’t resist it.

“ The Princess and the Pea ” by Hans Christian Andersen

“i cannot think what could have been in the bed. i lay upon something so hard that i am quite black and blue all over.”.

Why I love it: This has long been one of the most beloved short stories for kids, and it’s ideal when you need a quick read. Then, grab some dried peas and see how thick a covering needs to be before students can no longer feel them.

“ Puss in Boots ” by Charles Perrault

“puss became a great lord, and never ran after mice anymore, except for pleasure.”.

Why I love it: All cat lovers know these animals can be pretty smart when they want to be. This one helps his poor master become a prince in a castle, all through his own clever tricks. Encourage students to come up with more creative ways Puss in Boots could help his master.

“ Rumpelstiltskin ” by the Brothers Grimm

“‘I will give you three days,’ said he, ‘if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child.'”

Why I love it: Pretty much everyone in this story behaves badly in one way or another. Use it to learn more about characters and their motivation.

“ Sleeping Beauty ” by the Brothers Grimm

“a great many changes take place in a hundred years.”.

Why I love it: After students read this well-known story, ask them to think about what it would be like to go to sleep today and wake up in a hundred years. What might the world be like? Or what would it be like for someone who fell asleep a hundred years ago to wake up today? How many things have changed since then?

“ Snow White ” by the Brothers Grimm

“mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all”.

Why I love it: This fairy tale has all the classic elements—beautiful heroine, wicked stepmother, handsome prince—plus a handful of helpful dwarves. It’s the perfect way to start a conversation about the dangers of envy and jealousy.

“ The Three Little Pigs ” by Anonymous

“not by the hairs on our chinny chin chin”.

Why I love it: Fairy tales don’t get much more classic than this. Follow it up with a reading of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Sciesczka to hear the story from the wolf’s perspective, and have a conversation about point of view.

“ The Ugly Duckling ” by Hans Christian Andersen

“but what did he see there, mirrored in the clear stream he beheld his own image, and it was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, gray bird, ugly and offensive. he himself was a swan being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.”.

Why I love it: Whether you read the original text or a shorter adaptation, this story is one every kid should know. It will teach them that everyone should be proud of who they are, even if they don’t look or feel like everyone else.

Aesop’s Fables as Short Stories for Kids

“ the boy who cried wolf ” by aesop, “so now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, ‘wolf wolf'”.

Why I love it: This might be the most famous short story we use to teach kids about how important it is to tell the truth. Ask students if they’ve ever pulled a prank that went wrong, and what they learned from it.

“ The Crow and the Pitcher ” by Aesop

“But the pitcher was high and had a narrow neck, and no matter how he tried, the Crow could not reach the water.”

Why I love it: Aesop’s fable reads more like a STEM challenge—how can you reach the water at the bottom of the pitcher when your neck isn’t long enough? Try the same experiment with your students, using a narrow-necked bottle. Can they come up with any other solutions?

“ The Fox and the Grapes ” by Aesop

“the grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the fox’s mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.”.

Why I love it: If kids have ever wondered where the phrase “sour grapes” comes from, this tale will answer that question. Talk about other idiomatic phrases, and do some research to find their origins.

“ The Lion and the Mouse ” by Aesop

“‘you laughed when i said i would repay you,’ said the mouse. ‘now you see that even a mouse can help a lion.'”.

Why I love it: This fable reminds kids that they’re never too small to make a difference in someone’s life. Ask kids to share their own stories of times they helped someone.

“ The Tortoise and the Hare ” by Aesop

“the hare was soon far out of sight, and to make the tortoise feel very deeply how ridiculous it was for him to try a race with a hare, he lay down beside the course to take a nap until the tortoise should catch up.”.

Why I love it: When kids need a reminder that they should always keep trying, turn to this famous story. Use it to teach growth mindset too.

“ Two Travelers and a Bear ” by Aesop

“Two men were traveling in company through a forest, when, all at once, a huge bear crashed out of the brush near them.”

Why I love it: When danger strikes, do you worry about yourself first or try to help everyone to safety? There are arguments to be made on both sides, so this one makes for an interesting debate or persuasive essay.

More Short Stories for Kids

“ anansi and the pot of wisdom ” by anonymous, “every time anansi looked in the clay pot, he learned something new.”.

Why I love it: Kids may know about Anansi from the popular book Anansi the Spider , but there are lots of tales about him in West African folklore. In this one, Anansi thinks he knows everything, but a child has something new to teach him. Explore more Anansi tales here.

“ The Apple Dumpling ” by Anonymous

“A bag of feathers for a basket of plums. A bunch of flowers for a bag of feathers. A golden chain for a bunch of flowers. And a dog for a golden chain. All the world is give and take, and who knows if I may have my apple dumpling yet.”

Why I love it: When an old woman sets out to trade her basket of plums for some apples, her quest takes a few twists and turns along the way. In the end, though, she manages to make many people happy, not just herself. Practice sequencing by having kids try to remember all the trades the woman makes, and the order she makes them in.

“ The Blind Men and the Elephant ” by Anonymous

“sixth blind man (feeling the tail): this elephant is not like a wall, or a spear, or a snake, or a tree, or a fan. he is exactly like a rope.”.

Why I love it: Six blind men each feel a different part of an elephant, and each comes to his own very different conclusions. Written as a very short play, this classic tale opens up all sorts of discussion opportunities about seeing the bigger picture.

“ Bruce and the Spider ” by James Baldwin

“but the spider did not lose hope with the sixth failure. with still more care, she made ready to try for the seventh time. bruce almost forgot his own troubles as he watched her swing herself out upon the slender line. would she fail again no the thread was carried safely to the beam, and fastened there.”.

Why I love it: This famous little tale is almost certainly a myth, but it’s one of the most well-known stories about King Robert the Bruce. The lesson about not giving up fits perfectly when you’re talking about growth mindset.

“ The Elephant’s Child ” by Rudyard Kipling

“but there was one elephant—a new elephant—an elephant’s child—who was full of ’satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions.”.

Why I love it: Many kids will recognize themselves in the Elephant’s Child and his (in)satiable curiosity. After you read this one, have students come up with stories for the way other animals got their unique features. How did the giraffe get its long neck? How did the turtle get its shell? So many possibilities!

“ Paul Bunyan ” by William B. Laughead

“when paul was a boy, he was fast as lightning. he could blow out a candle at night and hop into bed before it was dark.”.

Why I love it: Paul Bunyan is an American folk hero, larger than life (literally!). This roundup of the legends surrounding him has many of the most famous tales. Encourage kids to think about what they’d do if they were as big, strong, and fast as Paul.

“ The Empty Pot ” by Anonymous

“in six months, the boy who grew the best plant would be the one to win the contest. he would be the next to sit on the throne.”.

Why I love it: This story can teach kids a lesson about honesty, but it’s also got a STEM project built right in. The emperor’s royal seeds wouldn’t grow because they’d been cooked first. Have kids try their own experiment to see if they can get peas that have been cooked to sprout!

“ The Little Engine That Could ” by Watty Piper

“I think I can. I think I can.”

Why I love it: When little ones learn early on to believe in themselves, they’ll be willing to try their best at anything. Have kids tell their own stories of times they did something that seemed impossible at first when they kept on trying.

“ Fifty-Cent Piece ” by S.E. Schlosser

“as he caught her, the husband looked into the ruin and saw a burnt table with a shiny fifty-cent piece lying in the center.”.

Why I love it: A spooky story that isn’t too gory, this one’s a perfect read in the season leading up to Halloween. Challenge kids to write their own ghost stories next.

“ The Four Dragons ” by Anonymous

“the four dragons flew back and forth, making the sky dark all around. before long the sea water became rain pouring down from the sky.”.

Why I love it: The four dragons in this Chinese tale want to help save the people from drought. When the Jade Emperor won’t help, they take matters into their own hands. Ultimately, they become the four major rivers of China. This is a great opportunity to get out the globe or pull up Google Earth and learn more about China’s geography.

“ Goldilocks and the FOUR Bears ” by Andrea Kaczmarek

“nobody ever talks about me. i don’t know why, because i am the most important bear in the story. i am grandma growl, but everybody calls me granny g, and i am the best porridge maker in the world.”.

Why I love it: Hear the classic tale from a new perspective, told by a character you never even knew existed! Use this as inspiration to have kids add a character to their own favorite tales, and tell the story from their point of view.

“ Haunted ” by Harris Tobias

“‘just because a house is haunted,’ he said, ‘doesn’t mean you can’t live there. the trick is making friends with the ghosts, learning to get along with them.'”.

Why I love it: Need a not-so-spooky story for Halloween? This tale of ghosts who love to bake fits the bill. Kids can write their own stories of making friends with ghosts instead of being scared of them.

“ Henny Penny ” by Anonymous

“so henny-penny, cocky-locky, ducky-daddles, goosey-poosey and turkey-lurkey all went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.”.

Why I love it: In an age when people are quick to spread rumors as fact, this old European folktale is more meaningful than ever. See if kids can think of times when they heard a crazy rumor that they believed at first, even though it turned out to be completely false.

“ How Gimme the Ax Found Out About the Zigzag Railroad ” by Carl Sandburg

“Then the zizzies came. The zizzy is a bug. He runs zigzag on zigzag legs, eats zigzag with zigzag teeth, and spits zigzag with a zigzag tongue.”

Why I love it: Kids will get a kick out of all the Z sounds in this silly little story about why some local railroad tracks run in zigzags. Use it to teach about alliteration and consonance, and ask kids to draw their own pictures of the zizzies.

“ King Midas and the Golden Touch ” by Anonymous

“suddenly, he started to sense fear. tears filled his eyes and that moment, his beloved daughter entered the room. when midas hugged her, she turned into a golden statue”.

Why I love it: Teach kids to be careful what they wish for. Ask them to make a list of wishes, then talk about ways each of them could ultimately go wrong. Have them write their own version of this short story.

“ The Kite That Went to the Moon ” by Evelyn Sharp

“‘i have everything in the world in my bag,’ replied the little old man, ‘for everything is there that everybody wants. i have laughter and tears and happiness and sadness; i can give you riches or poverty, sense or nonsense; here is a way to discover the things that you don’t know, and a way to forget the things that you do know.'”.

Why I love this: This whimsical tale takes two small children on a voyage to the moon and back, as they follow an enchanted kite. Pair it with a crafting session where kids make their own kites to fly.

“ The Monkey and the Turtle ” by José Rizal

“a monkey and a turtle found a banana tree on a river. they fished it out and because each wanted the tree for himself, they cut it in half.”.

Why I love it: A monkey and a turtle each plant half a banana tree, but only the turtle’s grows. The monkey offers to harvest the fruit but keeps it all for himself. But the turtle has plans of his own! This folktale from the Philippines is actually an allegory about the Spanish colonizers’ treatment of the Filipino people.

“ Mouse! ” by Michał Przywara

“‘what’ i wonder. ‘how dare you what insolence is this’ such a cheeky little mouse defying me in my own house, i simply cannot stomach this at all.”.

Why I love it: This clever little story is told using a triangular number sequence that dictates the number of words per line. Challenge students to write their own tales using a pattern or sequence of some kind.

“ The Proud Rose ” by Anonymous

“once upon a time, there lived a proud rose that was incredibly proud of her beautiful looks. the only disappointment it had was that it grew beside an ugly cactus.”.

Why I love it: It’s hard to imagine a flower being a bully, but that’s exactly what happens in this story. Fortunately, the cactus doesn’t let the rose stop it from being kind.

“ The Sword in the Stone ” by T.H. White

“whoever pulls out this sword from this stone is the true king of england”.

Why I love it: This quick retelling of the familiar tale covers all the high points. Follow it with more of the Arthurian legends or a viewing of the classic Disney film.

“ The Tale of Peter Rabbit ” by Beatrix Potter

“‘now, my dears,’ said old mrs. rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into mr. mcgregor’s garden: your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by mrs. mcgregor.'”.

Why I love it: Beatrix Potter’s sweet tales are beloved, but this is the one that has really endured. Pair it with one of these terrific Peter Rabbit activities.

“ The Pumpkin in the Jar ” by Anonymous

“the soldier’s orders were to tell the maiden that the jar was from the king, and that she was to put an entire pumpkin inside the jar. the soldier was also to tell the maiden that she should not break the jar under any circumstance. both the jar with the small opening at the top and the pumpkin must remain whole.”.

Why I love it: Before you read the end of the story, stop and ask kids if they can figure out how the maiden managed to get a pumpkin into a jar without breaking it. See how fast they can come up with the right answer!

“ Rainbow Bird ” by Eric Maddern

“Bird flew around each tree putting fire into tree’s core. This way a tree could be used as wood to create fire.”

Why I love it: Learn the Australian Aboriginal legend about a greedy crocodile who wouldn’t share his fire, and the Rainbow Bird who outsmarted him. Look up the Aboriginal Dreamtime and learn more about their art and culture.

“ Rikki-Tikki-Tavi ” by Rudyard Kipling

“rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could manage two snakes at once. so he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. it was a serious matter for him.”.

Why I love it: Reading this story is like watching a nature documentary unfold on the page. Have kids do some research on the mongoose and its relationship with cobras in real life.

“ Stone Soup ” by Anonymous

“he pulled a big black cooking pot from his wagon. he filled it with water and built a fire under it. then, he reached slowly into his knapsack and, while several villagers watched, he pulled a plain gray stone from a cloth bag and dropped it into the water.”.

Why I love it: Want to teach kids to work together and share? This is the short story you need. Ask kids what they’d bring to put in the pot of soup themselves.

“ The Story of the Chinese Zodiac ” by Anonymous

“he reached out his paws and pushed his friend the cat into the river. the cat was swept away by the whirling waters. that is why there is no cat in the chinese calendar.”.

Why I love it: This short little tale manages to answer two questions—why there’s no Year of the Cat and why cats and rats can’t be friends. After reading it, try to imagine how the other animals in the calendar managed to win their spots.

“ The Velveteen Rabbit ” by Margery Williams

“‘real isn’t how you are made,’ said the skin horse. ‘it’s a thing that happens to you. when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.'”.

Why I love it: This is one of the most classic short stories for kids of all time! Let kids bring their own favorite toys to share with the class, and have them write or tell stories about what would happen if they became “real.”

“ Weighing the Elephant ” by Anonymous

“‘very well,’ said the emperor with a smile. ‘tell me how to weigh the elephant.'”.

Why I love it: Read this traditional Chinese tale right up to the point where the young boy reveals his idea for weighing an elephant without a giant scale. Ask kids if they can come up with the solution before continuing to the end of the story. You can even try out the correct method as a STEM challenge.

“ Why the Koala Has a Stumpy Tail ” by Mitch Weiss

“Just then, Tree Kangaroo had a plan. He remembered back to the last dry season when his mother excavated a hole in a dry stream bed.”

Why I love it: Look up pictures of the tree kangaroo and koala, then read this Aboriginal legend explaining why the koala’s tail is so much shorter. What other unique Australian animals can kids learn about and share with the class?

“ Winnie-the-Pooh Goes Visiting ” by A.A. Milne

“pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when rabbit said, ‘honey or condensed milk with your bread’ he was so excited that he said, ‘both,’ and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, ‘but don’t bother about the bread, please.'”.

Why I love it: This silly old bear has been delighting children for decades, and there are dozens of short stories for kids about him and his friends. This one has a little built-in moral about greed. You can also ask kids to brainstorm their own ways to get Pooh free from Rabbit’s front door.

Looking for more short stories for kids? Check out this roundup geared toward the middle school crowd.

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Nathaniel Tower

Juggling writing and life

Proper Short Story Format with Free Short Story Template

Last Updated on June 14, 2023 by Nathaniel Tower

Knowing how to format your short story is the first step to getting published. No matter how great your story is, it doesn’t stand a chance if you don’t format it in a way that’s easy to read and clearly tells a publisher you know what you’re doing. 

Download your free short story template

Want to skip this article and just download your template so you can start writing your next short story? Go right ahead! You can download your free short story template right here .

For anyone who wants to read about why you should use proper short story format, continue below.

Always use professional short story format

The quickest way to get your short story rejected is by ignoring submission guidelines . If you don’t follow a publication’s formatting requirements, they aren’t going to publish your story because they’re never even going to read it. If you want to be published, you have to play the game according to their rules. The big problem though is that most literary magazines don’t clearly outline all the rules. When they don’t, that’s when you need to use a professional short story manuscript format.

Whether you’re submitting to World’s Worst Stories or to Only the Best Authors Get Published in Our Pretentious Zine , you need to present your story in a format that’s easy to read and shows you’re a serious author. The standard short story format accomplishes both of these things. When the slush editor opens your file, they’ll immediately want to read your story because it’s so inviting. If you send something that’s not properly formatted, they’ll likely let out a long sigh and throw it into the rejection pile without reading your outstanding first sentence.

At my own literary magazine, Bartleby Snopes , we automatically rejected anything that wasn’t double spaced. That was our only formatting request. Even though we clearly laid this out, at least 10% of submissions were sent single spaced. While we didn’t require a standard manuscript format, stories that were professionally formatted were much more likely to be published. Why? First of all, they made a good impression. Second, good writers are more likely to use the proper format. It may not seem like a big deal, but it is a differentiator when you’re up against thousands of other submissions.

The key elements of short story manuscript format

The great thing about a proper short story manuscript is how easy it is. Here are the general rules (see below for a free template you can download and use over and over again for your own stories and submissions):

• 1-inch margins all around (.5-inch for page headers)
• 12-point font
• Courier, Times New Roman, Arial, or something similar and easy to read (don’t get creative with your font choice)
• Indent paragraphs using a standard tab
• Double space the entire story
• Don’t add an extra space after paragraphs
• Use only one space after periods and other end punctuation marks
• Include your complete contact information single-spaced in the top left corner of the first page (name, address, phone number, and email address)
• Center the title and your byline approximately halfway down the first page
• On the first page, include an approximate word count in the top right corner
• On all subsequent pages, include the title, your last name, and the page number in the top right corner as a page header
• Use italics for things that should be italicized (old-school formatting tells you to underline things that should be italicized, but this is an archaic practice because we use computers now, not typewriters)
• Use quotation marks for dialogue and start a new paragraph when a new person is talking ( how to write better dialogue )
• There’s no need to put “The End” at the end of your story but it’s unlikely you’ll get rejected just because you do

That’s pretty much all there is to it. If it sounds too complicated, then I’ve created a handy short story manuscript format template you can download and use for free. Download it in whatever file format you need (.docx, .rtf, .odt, etc.) by going to File > Download as. Distribute however you’d like. No strings attached.

Use a short story template every time you write a story

Every time you write a story, you should use your proper manuscript format. While it might be tempting to open up a Word doc and just start typing away, you’ll save a lot of time in the long run if you use proper formatting upfront. It’s super easy to do. Just create a template and use it every time you start writing a new story. 

Never submit a short story that isn’t properly formatted

Any decent literary magazine gets hundreds or thousands more submissions than they can publish in a given month. The easiest way for them to save time and narrow the candidate pool is by rejecting anything that doesn’t follow the submission guidelines. Don’t be the writer who gets rejected immediately because you were too lazy to format your story correctly.

Short story template Word

It doesn’t matter what tool you use to create your short story. Most writers seem to prefer Google Docs or Microsoft Word, but there are many other programs you can use. If you want a short story template in Word or another compatible program, then you can get one free using the download link below.

Download your free short story manuscript template here and never be rejected again*

*This is not an actual guarantee that you won’t be rejected. You will still be rejected. It’s just a bold call to action to make you go ahead and download the template because I care about your success.

Always follow their formatting rules first

As we’ve established above, you should always use a professional short story format when you submit your work. However, it’s also important to respect an individual publication’s formatting requirements. Reading the guidelines thoroughly before you submit is always a requirement. While most publications aren’t particular about formatting, some have very specific requests. I’ve seen things like 10.5-pt font, single space with an extra space between paragraphs, 1.5 spacing, no indents, 5-space indents, etc. If any of these requirements are laid out, you’ll need to abandon your proper short story manuscript format and go with what they want. For everyone else–including the publications that say they don’t care about formatting–make sure you use the standard format outlined in this post.

Do you have any tips for short story formatting? Share your suggestions in the comments. 

Short Story Format FAQs

How should you format a short story.

If you are planning to submit your short story for publication, you should use the commonly accepted standard manuscript format. This format is very easy to follow, especially if you start from a template.

What is short story manuscript format?

Short story manuscript format is a widely accepted format that you should almost always use when submitting your short stories. The format is easy to follow and makes your story look professional. Key components include double spacing, 12-point font, indenting your paragraphs, 1-inch margins, page numbers and headers, and placing your contact information at the top.

Can I download a short story template?

Using a template to format your short story is a great idea. You can download a free short story template on the Nathaniel Tower Juggling Writer website.

Should you always use standard manuscript format for my short stories?

Generally speaking, you should use standard manuscript format if you want to get your short story published. The only exceptions to this rule would be if the publication requires a different format or if your story is an experimental piece that requires a different format in order to be read correctly. In the latter case, you can use most of the principles of standard manuscript format.

Are short stories double spaced?

Yes, you should almost always double space your short story if you plan to submit it for publication. This is part of standard manuscript format. In some rare cases, a publication may request for your story to be single spaced. Make sure you follow their guidelines if you plan to submit.

Do you indent a story?

Every new paragraph in your story should be indented. Use a standard tab rather than hard spacing to indent your paragraphs.

What font should you use for a short story?

Use a 12-point font that’s easy to read, such as Courier, Times New Roman, or Arial. You may be tempted to use a unique font to stand out, but this will make you look unprofessional.

What is a story format?

A story format could refer to the physical formatting you use to create your manuscript, or it could refer to the type of story you are writing (short story, novella, novel, etc.).

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9 thoughts on “ Proper Short Story Format with Free Short Story Template ”

I have been told that courier is no longer the proper font for short story submissions. Any comment on this?

Kate, thank you for reading and commenting. Courier is still acceptable but not the preferred font by any means. It can feel a bit archaic since it’s traditionally a typewriter font. I recommend Arial or Times New Roman.

Thanks for the information.

• Pingback: 🖋 Writing Links Round Up 6/22 – B. Shaun Smith

Great information, thank you. I agree about proper formatting. In busy publications, submissions are not even read if not properly formatted. Thomas Falater, New Bruinswick, Maine

Thank you for clearly laying out the short story formatting, Nathaniel. As a new writer I searched online for some time to find what was expected when the submission guidelines I had weren’t specific. What I found was a whole lot of conflicting information. I’ll be saving this for future reference.

I imagine the short story formatting should also be used when submitting essays, is that correct?

Thanks Nathaniel!

Hi Jules! I’m glad you found this helpful. I don’t have much experience submitting essays, but I would imagine this format would work quite well. Good luck with your submissions!

How many spaces between the title and start of text?

I recommend using four spaces (or two double spaces) between the title and the start of text.

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Eid-Ul-Fitr 2024: 30 Best SMS, Eid WhatsApp messages, quotes, wishes, Facebook status to wish Eid Mubarak to loved ones

Eid-ul-fitr 2024: check out this list of best sms, eid whatsapp messages, quotes, wishes and facebook status to wish your family and friends ‘eid mubarak’.

Fasting is Ramadan is not just abstaining from food but also, on a deeper notion, is a feast of self-discipline, a banquet of spiritual renewal and a banquet of divine connection for Muslims and as we gear up to sight the crescent moon smiling upon us, chand raat and Eid-ul-Fitr 2024 are just around the corner, arriving like a symphony of joy, uniting hearts in gratitude and souls in celebration. Eid-ul-Fitr, also known as the "Festival of Breaking the Fast," marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and is a time of celebration and gratitude for the successful completion of the month-long fasts that find its origins in the early years of Islam when the Prophet Muhammad, who received the revelations of the Quran, taught his followers about the importance of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan hence, fasting from dawn to sunset during Ramadan is considered one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

The month of Ramadan holds immense significance for Muslims as it is believed that during this month, the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of several years and at the end of Ramadan, the joyous celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr takes place, marking the successful completion of the month-long fast. Eid-ul-Fitr is celebrated immediately after the end of Ramadan, on the first day of the 10th Islamic month i.e. Shawwal and it begins with the sighting of the new moon, signifying the start of a new lunar month.

Eid-Ul-Fitr 2024 Best SMS, Messages, Quotes and Wishes

As you get ready to spot the Shawwal crescent tonight, check out this list of best SMS, Eid WhatsApp messages, quotes, wishes and Facebook status to wish your family and friends ‘Eid Mubarak’ -

• 🌙 Wishing you and your family a joyful Eid-ul-Fitr filled with love, laughter, and blessings. Eid Mubarak! 🎉🕌
• Ramadan is the gentle rain that nourishes the soul, while Eid is the rainbow that colours our world with hope, love and blessings. Hope you have the best of both. Eid Mubarak!
• May the magic of this Eid bring happiness, peace, and prosperity to your life. Eid Mubarak to you and your loved ones! ✨🌟
• 🌸 Eid is a time to celebrate, cherish memories, and strengthen bonds. Wishing you a wonderful Eid-ul-Fitr with your family and friends. Eid Mubarak! 🌸
• 🕋 May Allah's blessings shine upon you and your family on this auspicious occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr. Eid Mubarak! 🕋
• In the stillness of Ramadan, we find the strength to conquer our inner battles, and in the celebration of Eid, we rejoice in victory and unity. Ramadan teaches us the beauty of patience, the power of prayer and the grace of gratitude, while Eid crowns our journey with the jewels of joy and blessings. Alvida Ramadan and Eid Mubarak from us to you!
• 🌟 As the crescent moon shines above, I wish you an Eid filled with love, joy, and togetherness. Eid Mubarak! 🌙🎊
• 🌺 On this blessed day of Eid-ul-Fitr, may Allah bless you with health, happiness, and success. Eid Mubarak! 🌺
• 🌈 Sending you warm wishes on Eid-ul-Fitr, may this day bring peace and prosperity to your life. Eid Mubarak! 🌈
• 🌼 May the divine blessings of Allah fill your life with peace, happiness, and success. Eid Mubarak to you and your family! 🌼
• 🌺 Eid-ul-Fitr is a time for gratitude, reflection, and celebration. Wishing you a blessed and joyful Eid with your loved ones. Eid Mubarak! 🌟
• 🕌 May the spirit of Eid bring unity, compassion, and love to our hearts and homes. Eid Mubarak to all! 🌙🎉
• 🌷 On this special day, may Allah shower his blessings upon you and fulfill all your wishes. Eid Mubarak! 🌷
• 💖 As we celebrate Eid, let's remember the importance of kindness, generosity, and forgiveness. Eid Mubarak to you and your family! 💖
• 🎉 May the beauty of Eid fill your heart with joy, and may Allah grant all your prayers and wishes. Eid Mubarak! 🌙🎊
• 🌸 Eid-ul-Fitr is a time to appreciate the blessings in our lives and spread happiness to others. Wishing you a joyful Eid with your loved ones. Eid Mubarak! 🌸
• 🌼 May Allah's blessings be with you today, tomorrow, and always. Eid Mubarak to you and your family! 🌟🕌
• Eid is the canvas upon which we paint our gratitude, the tapestry woven with threads of love, kindness and cherished memories. Wishing you a nostalgic and memorable Eid Mubarak!
• 🌟 As we gather to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr, let's pray for peace, harmony, and prosperity for everyone around the world. Eid Mubarak! 🌙🎉
• 🌷 Eid is a day to rejoice, reflect, and renew our faith. Wishing you a blessed Eid-ul-Fitr with your family and friends. Eid Mubarak! 🌷
• 🌺 May this Eid bring countless blessings, happiness, and success to your life. Eid Mubarak to you and your loved ones! 🌸
• 💖 On this special occasion, I pray that Allah's blessings light up your path and lead you to success and happiness. Eid Mubarak! 💖
• 🌼 Eid-ul-Fitr is a time of gratitude and joy, may Allah's blessings fill your life with love, peace, and prosperity. Eid Mubarak! 🌟
• 🎊 May the spirit of Eid bring us closer to our loved ones and strengthen the bonds of friendship and brotherhood. Eid Mubarak! 🌙
• As the sun sets on Ramadan, the moon of Eid rises, illuminating the path of unity, compassion and renewed faith. Eid Mubarak! May our hearts open wide to receive the blessings of the divine.
• 🌟 Wishing you a Eid filled with laughter, good food, and cherished moments with your family and friends. Eid Mubarak! 🕌
• 🌸 As the month of Ramadan comes to an end, may Allah accept our prayers and grant us forgiveness. Eid Mubarak! 🌙
• 💖 On this joyous occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr, may Allah bless you with happiness, health, and success. Eid Mubarak! 🌷
• 🎉 Eid-ul-Fitr is a time to celebrate blessings, spread love, and create beautiful memories. Wishing you a joyful Eid with your dear ones. Eid Mubarak! 🌟
• May the end of the holy month of Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr this year, fill your life with peace, joy and blessings and may your prayers and fasts be accepted by the Most Merciful. Aameen! Eid Mubarak!
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The online eclipse experience: People on X get creative, political and possibly blind

The 2024 total eclipse is caused by a rare alignment in celestial spheres that will send millions of people in the path of totality outside to peer at the sky.

People have booked their Airbnbs years in advance , eclipse glasses are selling out and forecasters have been warning of cloudy skies for weeks.

Regardless of how otherworldly this event is and how much planning people have dedicated to experiencing it in person, the internet is being the internet and providing an eclipse experience of its own.

GIFs, quips and skits are flooding social media platforms like X on Monday.

Here are some of the best social media reactions to the eclipse:

Solar eclipse 2024 live updates: See latest weather forecast, what time it hits your area

Forgot your eclipse glasses? So did the internet

Proper eye safety is recommended for looking at the sun during an eclipse, and several places like Warby Parker and public libraries have been giving them away for free.

But some poor souls didn't secure their pair in advance, and the internet knows it:

"I don’t have eclipse glasses and I don’t trust myself not to look at the sun," one user posted on X.

"During the eclipse, it’s important not to stare at the Sun directly, as it will take this as a provocation. Look away to the sides to indicate clearly that you are not a threat to the Sun. Do NOT run away; this will activate the Sun’s predation instinct, and then God help us all," another posted .

Viral moment: Looking back (but not directly at) Donald Trump's 2017 solar eclipse moment

Some people are making their own eclipses

*flips ipad around*, of course, it's getting political.

Several supporters of former President Donald Trump have also made their own footage showing Trump eclipsing President Joe Biden , indicating their hope for the 2024 presidential election.

"Biggest Event of 2024," wrote one user , with a picture of Trump "eclipsing" Biden attached.

But many people are reminiscing about the 2017 eclipse, when Trump seemingly looked up at the sky without glasses .

Biden joined in poking fun at him in a post saying, "don't be silly, folks – play it safe and wear protective eyewear," a presumed nod to Trump's viral moment.

Contributing: Eric Lagatta, Natalie Alund

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Last updated on Oct 29, 2023

How to Write a Short Story in 9 Simple Steps

This post is written by UK writer Robert Grossmith. His short stories have been widely anthologized, including in The Time Out Book of London Short Stories , The Best of Best Short Stories , and The Penguin Book of First World War Stories . You  can collaborate with him on your own short stories here on Reedsy .  

The joy of writing short stories is, in many ways, tied to its limitations.  Developing characters, conflict, and a premise within a few pages is a thrilling challenge that many writers relish — even after they've "graduated" to long-form fiction.

In this article, I’ll take you through the process of writing a short story, from idea conception to the final draft.

How to write a short story:

1. Know what a short story is versus a novel

2. pick a simple, central premise, 3. build a small but distinct cast of characters, 4. begin writing close to the end, 5. shut out your internal editor, 6. finish the first draft, 7. edit the short story, 8. share the story with beta readers, 9. submit the short story to publications.

But first, let’s talk about what makes a short story different from a novel. 

The simple answer to this question, of course, is that the short story is shorter than the novel, usually coming in at between, say, 1,000-15,000 words. Any shorter and you’re into flash fiction territory. Any longer and you’re approaching novella length . 

As far as other features are concerned, it’s easier to define the short story by what it lacks compared to the novel . For example, the short story usually has:

• fewer characters than a novel
• a single point of view, either first person or third person
• a single storyline without subplots
• less in the way of back story or exposition than a novel

If backstory is needed at all, it should come late in the story and be kept to a minimum.

It’s worth remembering too that some of the best short stories consist of a single dramatic episode in the form of a vignette or epiphany.

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A short story can begin life in all sorts of ways.

It may be suggested by a simple but powerful image that imprints itself on the mind. It may derive from the contemplation of a particular character type — someone you know perhaps — that you’re keen to understand and explore. It may arise out of a memorable incident in your own life.

For example:

• Kafka began “The Metamorphosis” with the intuition that a premise in which the protagonist wakes one morning to find he’s been transformed into a giant insect would allow him to explore questions about human relationships and the human condition.
• Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” takes the basic idea of a lowly clerk who decides he will no longer do anything he doesn’t personally wish to do, and turns it into a multi-layered tale capable of a variety of interpretations.

When I look back on some of my own short stories, I find a similar dynamic at work: a simple originating idea slowly expands to become something more nuanced and less formulaic. 

So how do you find this “first heartbeat” of your own short story? Here are several ways to do so. 

Experiment with writing prompts

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the story premises mentioned above actually have a great deal in common with writing prompts like the ones put forward each week in Reedsy’s short story competition . Try it out! These prompts are often themed in a way that’s designed to narrow the focus for the writer so that one isn’t confronted with a completely blank canvas.

Turn to the originals

Take a story or novel you admire and think about how you might rework it, changing a key element. (“Pride and Prejudice and Vampires” is perhaps an extreme product of this exercise.) It doesn’t matter that your proposed reworking will probably never amount to more than a skimpy mental reimagining — it may well throw up collateral narrative possibilities along the way.

Keep a notebook

Finally, keep a notebook in which to jot down stray observations and story ideas whenever they occur to you. Again, most of what you write will be stuff you never return to, and it may even fail to make sense when you reread it. But lurking among the dross may be that one rough diamond that makes all the rest worthwhile. 

Like I mentioned earlier, short stories usually contain far fewer characters than novels. Readers also need to know far less about the characters in a short story than we do in a novel (sometimes it’s the lack of information about a particular character in a story that adds to the mystery surrounding them, making them more compelling).

Yet it remains the case that creating memorable characters should be one of your principal goals. Think of your own family, friends and colleagues. Do you ever get them confused with one another? Probably not. 

Your dramatis personae should be just as easily distinguishable from one another, either through their appearance, behavior, speech patterns, or some other unique trait. If you find yourself struggling, a character profile template like the one you can download for free below is particularly helpful in this stage of writing.   

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Reedsy’s Character Profile Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman features a cast of two: the narrator and her husband. How does Gilman give her narrator uniquely identifying features?
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe features a cast of three: the narrator, the old man, and the police. How does Poe use speech patterns in dialogue and within the text itself to convey important information about the narrator?
• “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is perhaps an exception: its cast of characters amounts to a whopping (for a short story) nine. How does she introduce each character? In what way does she make each character, in particular The Misfit, distinct?

He’s right: avoid the preliminary exposition or extended scene-setting. Begin your story by plunging straight into the heart of the action. What most readers want from a story is drama and conflict, and this is often best achieved by beginning in media res . You have no time to waste in a short story. The first sentence of your story is crucial, and needs to grab the reader’s attention to make them want to read on. 

One way to do this is to write an opening sentence that makes the reader ask questions. For example, Kingsley Amis once said, tongue-in-cheek, that in the future he would only read novels that began with the words: “A shot rang out.”

This simple sentence is actually quite telling. It introduces the stakes: there’s an immediate element of physical danger, and therefore jeopardy for someone. But it also raises questions that the reader will want answered. Who fired the shot? Who or what were they aiming at, and why? Where is this happening?

We read fiction for the most part to get answers to questions. For example, if you begin your story with a character who behaves in an unexpected way, the reader will want to know why he or she is behaving like this. What motivates their unusual behavior? Do they know that what they’re doing or saying is odd? Do they perhaps have something to hide? Can we trust this character? 

As the author, you can answer these questions later (that is, answer them dramatically rather than through exposition). But since we’re speaking of the beginning of a story, at the moment it’s enough simply to deliver an opening sentence that piques the reader’s curiosity, raises questions, and keeps them reading.

“Anything goes” should be your maxim when embarking on your first draft. 

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How to Craft a Killer Short Story

From pacing to character development, master the elements of short fiction.

By that, I mean: kill the editor in your head and give your imagination free rein. Remember, you’re beginning with a blank page. Anything you put down will be an improvement on what’s currently there, which is nothing. And there’s a prescription for any obstacle you might encounter at this stage of writing. 

• Worried that you’re overwriting? Don’t worry. It’s easier to cut material in later drafts once you’ve sketched out the whole story. 
• Got stuck, but know what happens later? Leave a gap. There’s no necessity to write the story sequentially. You can always come back and fill in the gap once the rest of the story is complete. 
• Have a half-developed scene that’s hard for you to get onto the page? Write it in note form for the time being. You might find that it relieves the pressure of having to write in complete sentences from the get-go.

Most of my stories were begun with no idea of their eventual destination, but merely an approximate direction of travel. To put it another way, I’m a ‘pantser’ (flying by the seat of my pants, making it up as I go along) rather than a planner. There is, of course, no right way to write your first draft. What matters is that you have a first draft on your hands at the end of the day. 

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the ending of a short story : it can rescue an inferior story or ruin an otherwise superior one. 

If you’re a planner, you will already know the broad outlines of the ending. If you’re a pantser like me, you won’t — though you’ll hope that a number of possible endings will have occurred to you in the course of writing and rewriting the story! 

In both cases, keep in mind that what you’re after is an ending that’s true to the internal logic of the story without being obvious or predictable. What you want to avoid is an ending that evokes one of two reactions:

• “Is that it?” aka “The author has failed to resolve the questions raised by the story.”
• “WTF!” aka “This ending is simply confusing.”

Like Truman Capote said, “Good writing is rewriting.”

Once you have a first draft, the real work begins. This is when you move things around, tightening the nuts and bolts of the piece to make sure it holds together and resembles the shape it took in your mind when you first conceived it. 

In most cases, this means reading through your first draft again (and again). In this stage of editing , think to yourself:

• Which narrative threads are already in place?
• Which may need to be added or developed further?
• Which need to perhaps be eliminated altogether?

All that’s left afterward is the final polish . Here’s where you interrogate every word, every sentence, to make sure it’s earned its place in the story:

• Is that really what I mean?
• Could I have said that better?
• Have I used that word correctly?
• Is that sentence too long?
• Have I removed any clichés? 

Trust me: this can be the most satisfying part of the writing process. The heavy lifting is done, the walls have been painted, the furniture is in place. All you have to do now is hang a few pictures, plump the cushions and put some flowers in a vase.

Eventually, you may reach a point where you’ve reread and rewritten your story so many times that you simply can’t bear to look at it again. If this happens, put the story aside and try to forget about it.

When you do finally return to it, weeks or even months later, you’ll probably be surprised at how the intervening period has allowed you to see the story with a fresh pair of eyes. And whereas it might have felt like removing one of your own internal organs to cut such a sentence or paragraph before, now it feels like a liberation. 

The story, you can see, is better as a result. It was only your bloated appendix you removed, not a vital organ.

It’s at this point that you should call on the services of beta readers if you have them. This can be a daunting prospect: what if the response is less enthusiastic than you’re hoping for? But think about it this way: if you’re expecting complete strangers to read and enjoy your story, then you shouldn’t be afraid of trying it out first on a more sympathetic audience. 

This is also why I’d suggest delaying this stage of the writing process until you feel sure your story is complete. It’s one thing to ask a friend to read and comment on your new story. It’s quite another thing to return to them sometime later with, “I’ve made some changes to the story — would you mind reading it again?”

So how do you know your story’s really finished? This is a question that people have put to me. My reply tends to be: I know the story’s finished when I can’t see how to make it any better.

This is when you can finally put down your pencil (or keyboard), rest content with your work for a few days, then submit it so that people can read your work. And you can start with this directory of literary magazines once you're at this step. 

The truth is, in my experience, there’s actually no such thing as a final draft. Even after you’ve submitted your story somewhere — and even if you’re lucky enough to have it accepted — there will probably be the odd word here or there that you’d like to change. 

Don’t worry about this. Large-scale changes are probably out of the question at this stage, but a sympathetic editor should be willing to implement any small changes right up to the time of publication. 

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