I always encourage new writers to experiment with short fiction. There are numerous benefits to be gained from practicing the short form. First, you learn, by necessity, to be more efficient with your writing. The shorter the story, the more you have to scrutinize each and every word, eliminating redundancies and maximizing clarity with as few words as possible. Second, you get more experience working through the publishing process—formatting manuscripts for submission, writing cover letters, working with editors,etc—than you would by writing one or two books a year. Last, publishing short fiction improves your author brand. In order to get a story into an anthology, you need to get past the gatekeepers (editors and publishers), proving you have at least some chops at this writing thing.

When you make the decision to attempt your first piece of publishable short fiction, first you need to consider format and size. There are…