Short Story Template Imagery, Action,

Dialogue

Activity your character is engaged in when story opens:

Suddenly, there’s a problem (inciting incident):

Never fear. The protagonist decides to . . .

But this doesn’t work because . . .

So instead, the protagonist . . .

But not only does this not work, it makes things worse for the protagonist by . . .

Now the protagonist is desperate enough to . . .

But this is hard because . . .

Climax: either the protagonist succeeds or fails.

If the character succeeds, what does the character do to succeed?

If the character fails, what did the character overlook that led to failure?

What happens in the end? What image or idea should close the story?