Grading Criteria for the Short Story (both first draft and final): 

1) All story drafts must be complete. Endings are difficult, but they are absolutely necessary. Find a way to finish your draft before you turn it in. We may require a student to resubmit. 

2) Story drafts should be proofread carefully. Basic proofreading mistakes jolt the reader out of the dream you are creating. 

3) The story focuses and dramatizes, using scene and summary, a central event in a small unit of time. The story should thus reflect class learnings on story theory. 

4) The story supplies the reader with the basic, orienting facts of the ground situation that they need to understand the story. (But it need not do so at the beginning; this information can and probably should be given as the story unfolds.) 

5) Tension and conflict are developed. The story has a protagonist who wants something, and there are obstacles to what they want, and those obstacles are relevant, maybe even formidable. (In our story triangle, this is called "rising action.") These needs and wants must be articulated in the character outline. 

6) The protagonist has a "problem rooted in character" and not in the situation. Again, connect to character outline. 

7) The story has a clear turning point, signaling change. 

8) Details are concrete and significant (NOT ABSTRACT) and alive to the five senses. See “Writing Well” supplement. 

9) The writer pays heightened attention to the theories and ideas provided in class readings. 

10) The writer pays heightened attention to language: to active verbs, to sentence economy (OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS!) to diction, to sentence variety. See “Writing Well” supplement

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