Setting: Where does it occur? Show it in a room, a natural setting, or within the inner reaches of the character's mind.
Character(s): Something happens to someone who is called the "protagonist." Someone or something else (the weather, an unknown force) is involved to provoke the action called the "antagonist."
Conflict: During the course of the story, something (action) has to happen. What is the initiating incident or the set up of the problem) The protagonist wants something and struggles to get it.
Crisis: The short story has only one pivotal point. Something intensifies the struggle creating tension. The dam is filled and about to go.
Climax: The dam bursts. The protagonist makes a choice.
Realization and Resolution: The protagonist changes. What is learned? What is left behind?
Begin the story in the middle of something. Something happened before and something will happen after. Don't tell the reader everything. Intrigue the reader and move to a stopping point that begs the reader to continue wondering . . . and then what?
Leave the reader with an image.
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