The structure of your story needs to be planned. How do you want it to begin and end? Where do you want the action to occur?

The beginning is usually the place where you set your scene and introduce the main character/s. It’s a good idea to keep this fairly short and to-the-point. The middle is where the majority of the action occurs, and the end should always have the best and most important bit!

There are all kinds of narrative structures. For example, there’s the linear narrative, where the story moves forward and follows one direction; there’s the cyclical narrative, where the story starts and ends in a similar place, going in a full circle; and there’s the retrospective narrative, which means it looks back into the past, and it could even start at the end! You can also have a mixture of narrative styles, but it’s best to keep the structure as simple as possible when writing short stories.