It can be tough to find the best short story blogs with so much content out there. But never fear! The article compiles and reviews some of the best story blogs available today.
There’s something special about a good short story. Great short stories can transport you to another world in just a few pages. They’ll make you laugh, cry, and stay with you long after you’re done reading.
Are you a fan of short stories, or are you looking for somewhere to find some new ones to read? Check out these 23 amazing short story websites.
From mystery to science fiction and everything in between, there’s a little bit of everything on these great sites.
Best Short Story Blogs
1. Short Stories/ The Guardian
The Guardian site is an amazing place to find short stories online from different short story writers. The site offers a wide range of stories, from mystery and romance to science fiction.
It’s usually updated regularly with new selections. The stories on the Guardian website are well-written and engaging, and it offers something for everyone.
Whether you’re looking for a quick read or something more substantial, the Guardian site is a great place to find a few short stories.
2. Short Story of The Day
The American Literature library is a great resource for people who want to stay up-to-date on the latest short stories online.
The short story site features free classic books and daily short fiction stories from great authors worldwide.
It also has well-written poems, books, searchable quotes, and quotations. They also highlight the key points and themes of each short story.
The free blog is ideal for writers, readers, students, teachers, etc.
3. Short Story Reader
The site promotes the appreciation of short fiction by bringing attention to classic and contemporary stories. Short stories deserve to be read and enjoyed.
Whether it’s a little-known gem by a first-time writer or a beloved tale by Edgar Allan Poe, it doesn’t matter.
This site does publish about upcoming short story collections, reviews of recent publications, etc. You’ll surely enjoy exploring the short story-style posts on this website.
4. Lightspeed Magazine
The launch of this science fantasy/ science fiction magazine was in 2010. In its pages, you’ll find fantasy such as magical realism, epic fantasy, etc.
It also features science fiction such as sociological soft SF, star-spanning hard science fiction, flash fiction, and speculative fiction.
You’ll need a subscription to use Lightspeed. A 12-month subscription gives you access to over 100 stories.
The stories published are by various authors (from award winners and best sellers to voices you haven’t heard from yet).
Other than short fiction, Lightspeed has different non-fiction features such as Q&A, interviews, etc.
5. Short Stories 4 Kids
The blog has many stories classified under four main headings. They include scary stories, moral stories, fairy tales, and bedtime stories.
Each story usually includes very attractive and colorful pictures.
The stories in this blog are specifically written for kids; they’re easy to read and understand. You can download the stories in PDF from the provided link.
Reading is essential for kids since it educates them about lots of things. But kids of this era don’t love reading.
The short stories 4 kids’ blog will tempt them to read. It has awesome pictures that will steal any kids’ interest.
Plus, the pictures make it much easier to understand the different stories. The blog also offers other activities like coloring, drawing, math, and English.
6. Short-Story Me
The short story blog has been up and running since 2009. Amazingly it’s free for both readers and writers.
But they ask users to consider using their donation box (at the bottom of the page).
The website has over 1000 short stories in all genres except children’s and porn. Some narratives have adult language and scenes.
The stories have been categorized into different genres, but it’s best to read genres you normally don’t. That’s because they’re all free.
These short stories don’t need too much time to complete. You’ll be surprised at how much the adventure is amazing.
7. Stories To Grow By
The website features some of the world’s first kid-approved and kid-tested collections of stories based on human ethics themes.
The folk and fairy tales are non-denominational, diverse, and have love, justice, and kindness themes. Overall, all their fairy tales are top-notch and promote positive ethics.
The blog’s kid-testing sets it apart from other websites with story collections. All their stories have entirely passed the kid-testing.
They are read out loud to a group of kids, and reading progress and revisions are immediately incorporated into the story.
By doing this, the kids can perfect their best. That’s in terms of growing much interest and understanding it.
8. 50-Word Stories
The blog features fiction pieces that are written in specifically 50 words. That doesn’t mean close to 50-words or roughly 50-words; it means exactly 50 words.
Like other forms of fiction, 50-word fiction should have a beginning and an end. It should include other basics such as plot, character development, theme, meaning, and purpose.
From the few reads, most 50-word stories evolve around climatic moments and twists.
Today, 50-word stories post two reader-submitted fiction every week. You can publish your story through the submission page.
Amazingly there’s a $10 prize for the best submission every month.
9. American Short Fiction
The American Short Fiction is a non-profit literary organization in Austin, Texas. It does content marketing through print magazines, literary magazines, and live events.
The organization works towards producing inclusive, diverse, and good stories.
Truly literature has the power to change people’s lives and how they see the world.
It also supports emerging and established writers to advance in their art. The support is for both national writers and those within the Austin community.
In addition, host events that are free and open to the public. If you have a love of reading good writing, then you should check out this blog.
As mentioned, it has consistently beautiful, fascinating, and intelligent reading in print.
10. Apex Magazine
The blog has several fantastical fictions. It focuses on publishing short stories with passion and marrow.
The works are usually strange, beautiful, and twisted. Apex Magazine is a space where dreams are put on display.
Its publishing happens in two forms: each month and after two months. The genres include science fiction, non-fiction essays, book reviews, and author interviews.
In addition, the blog produces monthly podcasts of narrated and original short fiction.
11. Tor.Com
The platform is an online magazine dedicated to covering fantasy, science fiction, and other subjects.
To find readers, it regularly publishes new and original short fiction and commentary on fantasy, science fiction, etc.
The website’s main aim is to encourage and enable writers to explore meaningful conversations with readers.
The platform is neutral and posts content from several different fandoms and publishers. It has been up and running since 2008.
12. Fictive Dream
It is an online magazine with a specific focus on short stories.
Its content is so powerful that no reader can escape the fictional world. This type of writing is what promotes this online magazine.
Other than reading, you can also start writing fiction and publish books for them.
Contact Fictive Dream if you can write fiction with a contemporary feel. Make sure your short story offers light into the human condition.
It has a team of publishers that values eclectic taste and doesn’t shy from any difficult matter. However, your story should have clarity, a distinctive voice, and language precision.
Fiction on this platform can be unsettling, challenging, cryptic, and exhilarating.
Above all, the published posts are compelling and well crafted. It’s the type of fiction that’ll you’ll drool over.
Look at their short stories online and see if you’ll find something to pick from.
13. Fairlight Books
Visit this site and explore their published and about-to-be published stories. “Fairlight books” are a new publishing house showcasing a limited number of best writers yearly.
The site focus on quality posts rather than quantity, most of the posts on the platform are contemporary adult literary fiction.
Its mission is to promote quality writing and contemporary literary fiction.
It surely brings together a community with a shared passion. That’s the love of great writing and beautiful books.
Every week the publishing house picks the best fiction piece from their short stories. It then features them on the story of the week page.
14. Short Fiction Break
The site was founded in 2014. It’s innovative and ideal for people that love reading and writing blogs (fiction).
Everyone loves to curl up in a good book and lose their memory of engaging and creative writing.
But time is a precious commodity, and a long book or novel needs time to read. Most people find it hard to carve out time from a busy schedule read any long creative writing.
Short fiction break believes that even short stories can inspire, entertain and surprise. To that end, all the stories in this blog are truly short, less than 2500 words.
It’ll take you about five-ten minutes to complete one story. You can easily check out the short stories online at a bus stop, grocery store waiting in line, or during lunch break.
Stories are usually published on short fiction break three to five times every week.
15. Pam’s Literature
The site features the works of Pam Backlund. It’s about historical fiction; the author thoroughly researches a topic or an idea from the past life and then spins it into a fictional story.
There are times when a real person shows up in the story. Real characters are usually portrayed as they are in historical references – nothing less and nothing more.
You’ll find more than 20 short stories online from the platform with more than 100 human characters. You’ll surely love some and dislike others.
Many stories depict pleasure and struggles in a certain town in the USA.
16. Every Writer
The platform publishes short stories from both new and old writers. You’ll get to read stories of different blends and enjoy them.
You can make short story submissions from the platform’s main menu if you’re a short story writer.
The platform’s main goal is to help new writers connect with markets for their amazing posts.
It has launched a vision that encourages professional and new writers to support each other. It helps them to communicate, educate and promote each other within the community.
17. Short Story Book Club
The platform aims at advancing short story genres by making them more available. It was started by professionals in education, communication, and publishing.
The charitable non-profit organization has an amazing staff with experience identifying and developing amazing short stories. Their published works are available to a wide range of audiences.
The organization’s main goal is to celebrate, preserve, create, and ensure people read great short stories.
Other than articles, it offers scholarships to both adults and children.
18. Universal Stories
The website is dedicated to offering the best stories collection. It emphasizes creating the best place to read different articles with amazing literacy.
Their inspirational articles will make your life better. The website has expanded into more fields such as mythology and history etc.
Once on the website, dig deep to find more knowledge from previously published work. You’ll also get the chance to know all your favorite authors.
It offers detailed authors’ biographies. In addition, the platform has a lot of free literature lessons that are all free.
19. Hermant R Joshi
The blog owner, Hermant R Joshi, is a writer and product manager. With everything, including the internet, the world is rapidly changing.
The changes happening are too quick to keep up with the pace. Through stories, Hermant R Joshi tries to highlight stories that you might have missed.
Hermant has written 50+ short stories, 20+ essays, 2 books, and several first drafts. In addition, he shares his musings and short stories every week through email.
20. Reedsy Prompts
Do you need a steady supply of stories? Reedsy has over 25,000+ stories. Writers create and publish short stories on the platform weekly.
Short stories are usually small but are quite mighty.
Since the beginning, short stories have produced the most loved fiction works. These short stories range in all genres, forms, and topics.
You can filter according to the genre you love most and discover thousands of published stories. The published stories have been written by veteran and new writers worldwide.
21. Prose and Pose
The author of this blog is Dija, an aspiring writer. Her flash fiction and short stories are all free and will take you under three minutes to read.
Dija uses this blog to practice new writing and test other amazing blogging techniques through flash fiction and short stories.
The amazing part is that you can openly send feedback about the short stories from the comment section.
22. Short Stories To Entertain
The website is simple to bring short stories that provide delightful experiences to all their readers. Every story has a particular aim of making readers happy.
It’ll help you break a little bit from the world, and this helps you relax your mind.
The website offers a lot; scroll down or up through the stories and choose something amazing to read. It’s usually refreshed with varied content periodically.
23. Fiction On The Web
The platform offers amazing short stories from new and popular authors worldwide. It covers interesting genres of sci-fi, crime, horror, and fantasy.
The blog is a labor of love, and every single short story is carefully handpicked and edited by the blog owner.
Fiction on the web doesn’t have a huge team; all the money it makes from donation go back into the platform. This allows it to give the author a chance to showcase their work out there.
If you love blogging, you can make your short story submissions from the site’s main menu.
Plus, the blog owner also loves sharing great stories out there. The platform has been up and running since 1996, putting it among the oldest short stories blogs on the internet.
To date, millions of readers have enjoyed more than 1000+ posts.
Top Tips For Writing Great Short Stories
Truly not every person has the time and love to create and publish a novel. Or maybe you want to try something new.
If this is the case, then you should try writing short stories. Today short stories are highly demanded by newspapers, magazines, blogs, and many other publications.
Note that you can make more money per word writing short stories than with novels.
So how do people write down amazing short stories always accepted by a website or publication? Here are the tips on how to.
1. The Number of Characters Should Be Small
It’s quite hard to develop many characters in short stories properly. Even if you manage to create them, it can be hard for readers to keep track of all of them.
Short stories only need three characters – antagonist, protagonist, and relationship or wrench character.
The reader usually needs a character to hate, cheer on, and someone that advances the antagonist or protagonist.
Most short stories have as few as one character who you can build a great story with them.
2. Keep up The Pace
Short stories must have a fast pace. The pace does increase as the hero nears the end of a conflict.
Normally short stories do start close to the final conflict. Therefore when writing short stories, you should hit the ground fast and take the reader into action from the first sentence.
3. Understand The Differences Between Short Story and a Novel
Short stories and novels have a few common characteristics. Both need proper spelling and correct grammar and should be coherent.
No matter the length, both should tell a story. They both need elements like rising action, inciting incident, climax, etc.
However, they differ in formats. Writers of short stories need to work within certain word limits, while novelists can decide the length of their work.
In the short story, the writer has to complete the entire story on a smaller scale. Therefore they have to cut the story’s flesh down to the bone, excluding some interesting details.
Plus, the stories have to resolve problems fast. It’s the main reason they focus on a single aspect of a character’s life, problem, and relationship.
4. Give the Readers a Character To Vouch For
Every short story must have a protagonist. The best trick is to make readers care about a certain character.
There are techniques that a writer can use to strengthen the connection between a reader and the protagonist.
As a writer, you can do this by giving the character a passion the readers can share. The character should have the next-level determination to get them out of their comfort zone.
In addition, you can also give your writer a weakness that readers can relate to and share.
A slight touch on the character’s psyche can be another great approach. It’ll make the character more real and interest the reader.
5. Create conflict
All short stories should have one conflict point and shouldn’t exceed one. The character needs a revelation, dilemma, or decides some kind.
The conflict surrounding the character should have enough tension. It should be able to keep the readers invested and engaged in the entire short story.
According to some professional writers, it’s easier when writers are sadists. You should make bad things happen to your character and then make them come out of it victorious.
It shows the readers that the character is strong. Lastly, note that a story can never have too much tension.
6. Seriously Edit Your Story
No matter how good you think your story is, you can make it more compelling and concise by doing a thorough edit. People will consider your article good if you do a great editing job.
Some of the best ways to edit are by:
- Removing repetitive words
- Deleting transitory scenes
- Make each sentence count
- Remove unnecessary adjectives and adverbs
- Combine characters if possible
During editing, you’ll get to check out your backstory and rate if it’s critical to the short story.
Note that short stories aren’t that easy to write just because they are short.
Conclusion
The article lists the 23 best short stories blogs in 2022. Either of the blogs will offer you access to top-notch content.
The amazing thing about short stories is they are compact. Thus they’ll offer you a glimpse of the entire narrative in an understandable and shorter form.
Because of their shorter length, you can quickly read a piece and even re-read it.
So if you’re a lover of short stories, check out any of the listed blogs; you’ll love the works.
