A Story of an Hour

Beginning, middle, end with no room to waste a sentence.

Objective:

Your goal is to write a complete short story between 500 and 1,000 words (no more than two pages). In that tight space, you need a character with a clear conflict and motivation, and an ending that actually resolves something.

This is a technical exercise, not a wild one. The challenge isn't coming up with something eccentric — it's discovering how much work a sentence has to do when you don't have room for a wasted one. Every line should be pulling weight: establishing character, moving the conflict, or building toward the resolution.

Step 1: Find Your Conflict

Before you write a single sentence, know what your character wants and what's standing in their way. Ask yourself:

• What does my character want in this hour, this scene, this moment?

• What is preventing them from getting it — another person, a fact, themselves?

• What will change by the story's final line?

You don't need a plot with twists. You need a character who wants something and a reason it's hard to get.

Step 2: Choose Your Narrator

Decide who is telling this story, and how close they stand to the character.

First person is recommended if you're newer to short fiction or want a more direct, confident voice to write in. It also naturally invites indirect characterization; we learn who the narrator is by what they notice, what they leave out, and how they justify themselves.

Third person is recommended if you want to challenge yourself. It requires more control, since you have to reveal character through action, dialogue, and detail without ever stepping inside their head to explain it.

Either way, resist the urge to tell us who your character is. Show us through what they do, say, and notice.

Step 3: Build the Structure

Your story needs a real beginning, middle, and end — not just a scene that starts and stops.

• Beginning – Establish the character and the conflict as quickly as possible. You don't have room for a slow warm-up.

• Middle – Let the conflict develop or intensify. Something should shift, even subtly, in how the character understands their situation.

• End – Resolve it. This doesn't mean "happy ending" — it means the reader should feel the story has arrived somewhere, not just stopped.

Look at how Chopin does this in The Story of an Hour: an entire emotional arc; grief, secret relief, collapse — inside about 1,000 words. Every sentence is doing double duty.

Recommended Reading

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin — the model for this assignment. Notice how much emotional ground it covers in almost no space, and how the final line recontextualizes everything before it.

"Araby" by James Joyce (from Dubliners) — a masterclass in narrative voice and how a first-person narrator can reveal more about himself than he realizes.

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel García Márquez — for students who want to see how much strangeness a short story can hold while still following a clean structure.

"Sonny's Blues" opening pages by James Baldwin — for students who want to study how much character and history can be compressed into an economical first page.

What to Include in Your Submission:

• Your Name

• Your Story (500–1,000 words)

• Point of View Used (first or third person)

• One or two sentences identifying: your character's conflict, and where your story's ending resolves it

Final Notes:

Great stories are not necessarily about intense things. Bank robberies, death, blood, violence, volcanoes exploding... none of those will make your story good. Rather, consider something simple and every-day.

Watch your word count. Running long is a sign you're explaining instead of showing.

If you find yourself stating your character's emotions outright ("she was sad"), look for a detail or action that could show it instead.

Direct Characterization (Avoid)

Kevin was desperate for recognition. He was proud, a little insecure, and convinced that his talents went unnoticed by everyone in the office. More than anything, he wanted people to acknowledge that his chili (the one he brought to every potluck) was the best thing on the table. He felt overlooked, and it bothered him more than he let on.

Indirect Characterization (Prioritize)

Sample 1: Emphasis on Physical Features

Kevin arrived eleven minutes early to set the crockpot down, then spent those eleven minutes repositioning it closer to the plates, then back again, like it might look too eager parked next to the forks. He stood with his arms crossed near the coffee machine, chin tilted toward the breakroom door every time it opened, then dropping fast when it wasn't for him. When Denise finally lifted the lid and leaned in to smell it, Kevin's whole body went still, shoulders squared, eyes fixed on her face like a man watching the sky for rain. She said, "smells good," and moved on to the cornbread. Kevin's shoulders came down an inch. He straightened the ladle that didn't need straightening and checked the door again.

Sample 2: Emphasis on Reaction to Characters and Expectation

Kevin set the crockpot beside the cornbread and told himself, as he always did, that this year would be different. This year the lid would come off and the room would simply know. He busied himself with napkins he didn't need to refold, watching the breakroom door the way a man watches a door he has decided, against all evidence, might still hold something for him. Surely someone would ask this time who'd made it. Surely someone would remember the trophy he mentioned once, off-hand, the way you mention something you have rehearsed mentioning off-hand. Denise came first, then Marcus, then the new girl from accounting whose name he still hadn't learned and wouldn't, not today, not when there was a bowl in her hand and a decision being made behind her eyes. She took one bite. She reached for the cornbread. And Kevin, gazing at the exchange as if from some great distance, understood all at once how small a thing a crockpot was, and how much smaller a man could be for standing beside one, waiting.