How to make a short story short?

[SapphireSeaBird]

Fully aware that the thread title sounds ridiculous xD

But y'see, I have a big issue with length of short stories. For school, we have to write a short story as part of our coursework, and mine ended up being over 5000 words long - my teacher only accepted it 'cause she liked it, but if it gets chosen by the examiners to be looked at I'll probably have to rewrite it and shorten it.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I can't keep a story short. It just seems like I can never get the story told in so few words, but at the same time, if I try to write something long, I tend to run out of steam before it gets long enough to be called a novel, if that makes sense.

So how can I cut down my writing to make short stories easier? What can I leave out that won't detract from the plot?

[Xuxu]

I think s short story it's only a story that is not so long like a novel, in my opinion, it has to have at least sevent little. In a web site I found that a tale has between 2000 and 30 000 words acording to writers but I have not idea which is the normative hehe

[Mercy]

Try cutting unnecessary description, scenes and words. Even if you love a phrase to death, it might not be necessary. Save it on another document and only save the information in your story that's a must have.

It also helps to have a simple plot - it is very difficult to try complicate the plot and make it function in a short story - after all, you don't have as much room to write as you do when you write a novel. I'm not saying short stories have to be easy, point A to point B kind of things. Personally, I feel it's better to have quick plots with multiple layers of meaning. But I have problems with achieving that, too.

[Kalculator]

Well, I found this picture book that helped.
It was about a boy who hate books.

First you know that he likes to eat books.

Then it went
He ate word,
Then a sentence
A whole page,
And a chapter.

You only need this much information.

When he gets smarter at school, the author doesn't add everything, just that he got smarter and won competitions.

There are lots of other ways as well, but, picture books and short stories are the hardest.

[Write]

I have problems with keeping short storie short to. I find that the easiest way is to make iy a small cake with many layers. If that makes sense.

[MiaJuliana]

Well, I had the same problem with my writing class this year. In fact, every story I turned in was longer than said by the teacher. But, like yours, she liked it and didn't care. I belkieve that you shouldn't have to sacrifice the story for some guidelines.

But if you are submitting it somewhere, like you made it sound, then yes, you need to shorten it.
My advice: Re-read it and take out parts. Take out anything that isn't vital to your character's development or vital to the storyline. Keep the original, too, just in case. Then read over it and make sure that it still makes sense. Nothing's missing that's important. Also, next time, just try to make your plot less complicated. That will definately shorten it. Maybe have less problems for your MC to overcome or solve, and make the climax happen sooner.
But before you do that, be absolutely sure that you have to. You don't want to go back and delete things and then find out that you didn't even have to. Good luck!