In the beginning of your story you have to grab your readers interest and sustain it till the end. Our hook is our character. Readers keep on reading to find out more about the character. To see what hell do in the story; how hell solve his problems. What his goals are and whether hell achieve them.

And because our character is the reason readers become hooked on our stories, establishing him at the beginning is a must in a short story. And it is essential to establish him at the start because we do not have the capacity in our limited word length to introduce him at our leisure.

The bond between readers and character has to be developed almost immediately.

You might have a few characters though. How do you decide who your main character will be? A main character is one that drives the story.

Think of it this way If we we are to take him away, there will be no story because its his story we are telling. The story will unfold by what is happening or what has happened to him.

When you establish who your main character will be, the next thing to do is to find which of your characters is in the best position to tell the story. Will your main character tell his story or will you give that role to another character?

This is what we call Viewpoint and what well see in more detail in proceeding chapters.

Your main character isnt necessarily the one who is telling the story; he might not even appear in our story physically but will be there through the thoughts of others. So the viewpoint character might be a secondary character.

Whoever is telling the story is the viewpoint character.

The viewpoint character gives the colouring of the story. Whatever this characters says, we will believe. It may or can not be true, according to the main character, but because he isnt there physically to voice his opinions, we will have to take the viewpoint characters word for it.

In a novel you might play around with viewpoint. You might have several viewpoint characters. In a short story it works best with one.

So your main character, whether hell be telling his own story or someone else will be doing it for him, has to be established at the beginning of your story.

Having said that, lets see the reasons why the main character can not be telling his own story...


Perhaps our main character is one that readers will not sympathize or empathize with.

Or the main character will not view highly with our readers

Or the viewpoint character knows all the facts and might tell the story better

Etc.