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Can you write a formulated short story?

How do you write a formulated short story? Is it even ok to do that? Most "creative" writers would say no. But coming from an engineering background, where we're supposed to follow industry best practices, do whatever the lead says, and copy-paste code; I'd say, why not? Let's give it a try. Rather than reject the idea altogether, I'd prefer to know how to use formulas and structures now that I need them.

MICE quotient

Recently, I wanted to write a short story with a limited word budget set in a specific environment. I didn't know how many characters to consider, how many scenes to include, or, worst of all, how many plot points I needed to have a compelling story.

I remembered a lecture video I watched a while ago. It was a lecture on writing short stories by Mary Robinette Kowal. The lecturer taught the MICE quotient the writer, Orson Scott Card, introduced. MICE quotient is these different kinds of story threads:

  • Milieu : when the story is about a journey
  • Inquiry : when the story follows a character's question or idea
  • Character : when the story is concerned with the character arcs and relationships
  • Event : when the story is about external obstacles and conflicts

That makes sense, right? Did you remember some stories with some of these threads while reading each one?

The Short story formula

Now, we have reached the formula step. Can we roughly estimate how many characters, scenes, and themes or tropes (called MICE threads here) we can incorporate into our story per story length? The answer, according to Kowal, is yes. What a relief. I had some opener in mind, but I had no idea how to develop my 3000-word story.

Kowal introduces a formula and calls it a "diagnostic tool", "a rough predictor." Fair enough. Here comes the formula:

L=((C+S)750M)/1.5

Each character or scene has the potential to add about 500-1000 words to the story. Each MICE thread multiplies that number by half again as long (thus dividing by 1.5) because you have to keep it [the thread] alive every single time all the way through.

In my case, I knew that I was aiming for a length of 3000 words. I juggled these possibilities with the above formula:

  • 1 character, 2 scenes, 2 MICE threads (e.g., Character and Milieu)
  • 2 characters, 4 scenes, 1 MICE thread (e.g. Event)
  • 4 characters, 1 scene, 1 MICE thread (e.g. Milieu)

I wanted to practice dialogue writing for this story, so I eliminated the first option. I knew the second option was more practical, but I had an idea that required more characters. So, I was biased toward the third option.

Without the formula, I might have ended up with a 10000-word story for those four characters. The formula helped me, the inexperienced writer, to be realistic with my expectations. You can't handle 2+ characters with convoluted threads where the characters both question their team dynamics while trying to accomplish a mission in 3000 words.

Build up the story

Eventually, I settled on the four-character story. Then, another structured technique from the lecture helped me land with the metadata about my story. Kowal asked the students to write a story and start by answering these three questions:

  • Who?
  • Where?
  • Genre?

For me, the answer was four characters in a desert in a near-future sci-fi setting on a group mission for their organization. With these helpers, I continued to specify the details of my story with a more focused mind on what I was trying to achieve with it.

I highly recommend checking out the entire lecture. Kowal's lecture includes so many more insights on short story writing that are out of the scope of this post—ideas that I'll probably write about in future posts.