Structure Exercise - you're gonna love this "recipe"
from Gotham Writer's Workshop

Please number your answers to the following questions.
Your answer to question #1 should be your answer #1 and so on.
You should not read ahead. Don't read all the questions then start.
Read #1 and answer it. Then #2, and so on, answering as you go.

1) Write a full name of a character and his/her age.

2) Write a full name of another character and his/her age.

3) What is their relationship (siblings, co-workers, teacher-student, etc. Do not make them enemies.)

4) What does #1 need/want from #2 that #2 won't give? It can be an object or an emotional need or whatever you can think of, but #1 must want it badly and #2 must be absolutely unwilling to give it up.

5) List three ways #1 will try to get what he/she wants. List them as 5a, 5b, 5c.

6) List how #2 will block each of the three tries. 6a in response to 5a, 6b in response to 5b, 6c in response to 5c.

7) What is #1's last try? May or may not be successful.

8) What is #2's last block?

9) Does #1 get what he/she wants? Yes or no.

10) What does #1 discover about him/herself as a result of all this?

11) How is #1 changed forever?

End of exercise.

Do not read the following until you have completed the exercise...

Ideally, your answers to these questions have formed an outline for a perfectly structured story which you can now write, if you choose to. #1 is the protagonist. #2 is the antagonist. #5 and #6 list the progressive complications. #7, #8, and #9 are the climax. #10 and #11 are the resolution.

12 Tips for Successful Short Stories

"A short story is like a genie in a bottle. Once the cork is pulled, out gushes a force that may grant you wishes or hound you with malicious intent." -- Shelley Lowenkopf

1. Always adhere to the limitations inherent in the format. Generally there will be a limited time frame and cast of characters. Dialogue is heightened and crisp. Setting is required for texture, but needn’t be explained in great detail. Avoid subplots.

2. The opening page should not be static description and routine observations unless you use these descriptions to show how things are at the moment of interruption, before the actions heats up, but not too far before.

3. Remember the advise to Western writers to "shoot the sheriff on the first page." Start the short story with an inciting incident that propels the story forward with intensity. This explosive incident often involves a threatening change in the protagonist’s status quo.

4. Strive for a single, powerful effect on the reader.

5. The short story needs to have a payoff that is staged in front of the reader. Although the payoff does not have to be as dramatic as a novel’s climax, it nevertheless must deliver. Remember that only if the reader shares the same experiences with the character, blow by blow, will he be able to empathize with the character.

6. Short stories are best told from a single point of view unless you have extensive experience with the genre.

7. Avoid excess, every detail should have relevance to the plot.

8. As in longer fiction, make your characters struggle to keep afloat amidst terrible troubles or dilemmas.

9. Make your characters flawed, vulnerable and heading towards some unthinkable conclusion.

10. Shape your ideas around a series of scenes where the characters are acting and talking and the events seem to unfold in front of the reader in real time.

11. Don’t prolong the ending.

12. Generally short stories are about conflict, a decision, or a discovery. There must be something important at stake for your main character. The conflict plot should be staged so that the other person is the obstacle and the climax is a confrontation. If the short story climax has the protagonist making a decision, this decision should have far-reaching consequences. If the story ends with the character making a discovery through some kind of realization, this realization should have potential to be life changing.

From Jessica Page Morrell's book~ Writing Out the Storm

Writing out the Storm

Writing about People

All writing is about people and their reactions to each other, problems in their lives, or how they see their environment.
We read fiction and memoirs because we desire intimacy, read nonfiction to understand how other people think and see the world.

With this in mind, let's begin by describing a person in your journal today. You can imagine her or him in a fictional or real setting. People are judged and perceived known by how they look, how they dress, wear their hair, where they live and work, how they decorate their home and office and how they make a living.

Carefully describe one of these characters/persons so that your create an accurate and lingering first impression:
A failed actor
A person with a significant handicap
An unusually attractive man or woman sitting at the end of the bar
A gambler down on his luck
An unsuccessful politician
An immigrant from Bosnia
A retired truck driver
A middle age man or woman trying too hard to look younger
A 12 year old living in a boarding school
A former child star
A plumber
A stock broker
A professional thief or con man
A waitress who has just won big in Vegas or Reno
A person everyone at the office despises
(note: if you are already working on a specific profile or character in your writing feel free to use them)
Describe the setting.
Our possessions and surroundings make powerful statements about our tastes, class, financial circumstances, lifestyle and habits. What does his or her office or cubicle look like? Or describe a bedroom, car, backyard, favorite room in the house, or institutional setting.