If you want to be a good writer, then you should focus on being a good reader. Here are some links to stories that anyone who writes should take a look at.
Look at how they use their limited space. Look at how they develop their characters and plot lines. Look at how you feel when you’re done reading.
1. The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell — The story of a big game hunter finding himself stranded on an island and becoming the hunted.
2. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov — A question is posed to a supercomputer that does not get answered until the end days of man.
3. The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov — A man passes away and has a conversation with the Voice in the afterlife.
4. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman — A collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of the house.
5. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson — The story of one small town’s ritual know only as “the lottery.”
6. Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway — A couple has a tension-filled conversation at a train station in Spain.
7. All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury — A group of schoolchildren live on Venus where the Sun is visible for only two hours every seven years.
8. Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut — It is the year 2081, and all Americans are equal in every possible way.
9. The Monkey by Stephen King — The story of a cymbal-banging monkey toy that controls the lives around it.
10. We Can Get Them For You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman — A man named Peter searches the phone book for an assassin to kill his unfaithful fiancée.