Short Story Example: Romance. A Complete Story About Two Early People
Quick answer: An original short romance, two strangers who are always ten minutes early for the same tram, with a breakdown of how habit and one disruption build attraction.
A short romance has room for one question, whether these two people will speak. Everything else, the years, the wedding, the argument about the dishwasher, belongs to a longer form. The original story below is about two people who have shared a tram stop for a year without exchanging a word, and the morning the tram does not come. The breakdown afterwards shows how the story makes a small conversation carry the weight of a declaration.
Ten Minutes Early
Farah was always at the stop by 7.30 for the 7.40, because her father had raised her to believe that on time was late, and for most of a year the only other person who shared that belief was a man in a grey coat who read paperbacks with the covers folded back so she could never see what they were. They had never spoken. They had nodded, in the way of people who recognise each other's discipline. Once, in February, he had held out his umbrella over both of them without looking up from his book, and she had stood under it for six minutes and said thank you at the end, and he had said 'Sure', and that had been the whole of it. On the second Tuesday in October the board at the stop said Service Suspended and nothing else. Farah looked at it. The man in the grey coat looked at it. The other passengers, who arrived at 7.38, looked at it and left, swearing, for the bus. At 7.45 the two of them were still there. 'You know it's not coming,' he said. It was the first sentence. His voice was lower than she had assigned him. 'I know.' 'Then why are we standing here?' 'I don't know why you are,' Farah said. 'I'm standing here because I've been ten minutes early for this tram for a year and I want to see what happens if I'm late.' He closed the book. For the first time she saw the cover. It was a field guide to lichens. She laughed before she could stop herself, and he looked down at it and laughed too, and said, 'It's a long story,' and she said, 'The tram's not coming. We've got time,' and it turned out that they did, about forty minutes of it, standing at a stop for a service that never arrived, and that the lichen story was in fact quite short, and that neither of them minded. His name was Joseph. She was late for work for the first time in eleven years and could not, when her manager asked, remember what excuse she gave.
How the story builds attraction
The romance is built out of a shared trait, punctuality, rather than out of looks or chemistry. That trait gives the two characters a private world before they have exchanged a word, and gives the story its engine: the one morning the world they are punctual for fails to appear. The umbrella in February is a plant: it establishes that he is kind and that they can stand very close without speaking, so the reader is already impatient for them by October.
The first line of dialogue is delayed to the halfway point and it is not romantic; it is practical. Farah's answer about wanting to see what happens if she is late is the story's real declaration, disguised as a joke about trams. The lichen guide makes Joseph a person rather than a coat, and her laughing at it is the moment the story turns. The ending does not deliver a kiss or a phone number. It delivers a woman who cannot remember her excuse, which says everything about the forty minutes.
Writing your own short romance
Find one habit two strangers share and let them notice each other through it. Give them one earlier moment of kindness with no conversation. Then break the habit from outside and leave them alone in the gap. Delay the first exchange as long as you can bear, make it practical, and let the real feeling arrive sideways. End before anything is promised. A romance at this length is a natural fit for Writory's short story contest, where the shortest entries are often the ones that score highest on impact.
What writers can take from this
- Build attraction from a shared trait, not a description.
- Plant one wordless kindness early and let it wait.
- Break the routine from outside so neither has to be brave first.
- Make the first line of dialogue practical; feeling comes in the reply.
- End on evidence of the feeling, never on the feeling named.
Try it yourself
Write a romance of under 600 words between two people who have shared a place, a bus stop, a laundrette, a library table, for a long time without speaking. Something external must stop the routine, and the first line of dialogue must be about the disruption, not about each other.
Questions
Does a short romance need a happy ending?
It needs a hopeful one. Genre romance at novel length promises a happy ending; a short story can end at the first conversation, the exchanged name, the shared umbrella, as long as the reader believes something has begun.
How do you write attraction without describing looks?
Describe attention. What each character notices about the other, the folded book covers, the umbrella held without looking, tells the reader far more than eye colour. Attraction on the page is where the gaze goes.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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