This is the tale of a very short story. We begin, as many stories do, with an introduction, which is not so much telling you the story, as telling you about the story. The particular story we are introducing right now was written by someone who had no experience of writing stories, but who nonethless had resolved to write one.

We join the narrative part way through, as is the modern habit. Our writer has just made a significant revision to the story, which had started out as little more than a one-line joke but is lacking an elusive something that would turn it into an actual bona-fide work of fiction.

*

The writer furrowed his brow and rubbed his forehead. The task of writing was definitely more than putting sentences together, this much was clear now. The concept was good, he was sure of it, but now everything depended on the execution. He reflected on how unappreciative he had been of the authors whose books he had read in his youth. Sure, the stories were great fun and the characters had come to life and left lasting impressions on him, and some of the concepts and questions put forward in these works had enriched his intellectual life, but somehow the actual authors had remained invisible to him. These great architects of human emotion who were able to gently manipulate the willing minds of their readers were now enjoying new levels of respect in the new writer’s mind. Those people hadn’t been writing about subjects that you can simply research in a library, they had been creating from nothing whole worlds and - which is harder - people. People with concerns, motivations, fears and talents that were at once plausible, and yet extraordinary, and seamlessly woven into the fabric of a greater tale. THAT was writing. THAT was what he was aiming for, months or years from now.

He felt like an office worker dressed in city clothes looking up into the foothills of the Himalayas: out of his element, inexperienced, unprepared, fearful.

Perhaps, he thought, perhaps I am putting myself under too much pressure. It’s not like I have to write a best-selling novel. This is not going to be submitted to any publisher. In fact I doubt if anybody will have the patience to read this right through. But there’s definitely something missing.

It’ll probably turn out to be something really obvious, he thought.

He ran through what he knew of writing, as if through a checklist. The sentences were clear, paragraphs well formed. It had a good concept. It had a believable character, in so far as any kind of characterisation was needed in such a short piece. The narrative seemed to hang together, and structurally, well, just like he was taught at school, it had a beginning, a middle