How to write a short story

The basics of how to write a short story are very different from those describing how to write such as a novel. The simple length of the story will eliminate a lot of the procedures which would be applied to novel writing and the process should therefore not only be quicker but easier.
Think of a short story as a hybrid of a novel and an article and proceed in this fashion. In common with a novel, a short story is fictional but in common with an article, a short story will be required to be only of a certain length.

The first step to writing a short story is to develop our idea as to the basics of the plot. This is very similar to the novel writing process in that we are looking at a beginning, a middle and an end. It will simply mean that the journey upon which we are taking our subsequent readers will be shorter than in a novel. We have to bear this carefully in mind as we develop the plot for our short story therefore and try to stay relevant to the point, just as we would when writing an article. It is frequently the case with short stories that there is a very definite plot "twist" towards the end but this is not absolutely essential and will of course largely depend upon the nature of the story.
The next step is to define the characters which we are to include in our short story.(Remember there's a MINIMUM of 2 characters) This is where the process veers drastically away from the process we would employ at the same stage of planning a novel. A short story does not allow us great scope for character development so whereas, were we writing a novel, we would and should spend some time on this process, it is not necessary with a short story. We are likely to have to name our characters of course and develop any traits which are strictly relevant to the events which will take place in our story but further development would simply be surplus to requirements.
When we come to the actual writing of the short story, the process is similar to article writing. We have to almost rein ourselves in and prevent ourselves from getting carried away. We want the story to be exciting, we want it to grip our readers' attention and keep them reading right to the end; but what we cannot afford is to be overly descriptive in our text in a way which will take the story beyond what we have determined our length limit to be.
Writing a short story is therefore perhaps writing a chapter of a novel with the only significant difference being that we have to tie up all the loose ends at the same time.