The English Breakfast: Nine Components of a Great Short Story

February 12, 2026

By Whitney Collins, fiction faculty

During Covid, thanks either to an Anthony Bourdain episode or a late-night scrolling of Pinterest baked beans, I became enamored with the traditional English Breakfast and its nine components: eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread (yes, please!), potatoes, blood pudding (no, please!), beans, and sausage.

Googled images of this generous and unapologetic mainstay revealed overflowing plates that balanced the beautiful with the butchered, and the ordinary with the odd. It seemed to me the English Breakfast hit all the notes one would want in a meal: sweet, sour, savory, salty, spicy . . . plus a few things that slipped past the brunch bouncer.

After this deep culinary dive, I made a literary leap. What if the English Breakfast approach was applied to writing? What if we made sure our work was more than just eggs and bacon? What if we dazzled our readers with fried bread or disturbed them with blood pudding? With that in mind, I embarked on assigning roles to the nine foods, then translating them to short story elements. (I’m focusing on fiction here, but these rules could easily apply to other genres.)

What resulted were nine parts I decided were, in some way, fundamental to the success of a piece. I began reading notable stories and holding them to the English Breakfast model. It turns out nearly of them did, indeed, incorporate the following literary elements.

EGGS: Eggs represent that which is hopeful, the sunny side of life, and every story, even a tragic one, needs a glimmer of yellow yolk. Writers of darker work should remember that readers can’t have all doom and gloom, and even one sentence of possible resolution or relief can balance things out. Alternately, overly optimistic storytellers who like everything tied up in a bow might consider scaling back on the cheer, as no one needs a four-egg omelet.

BACON: Let’s face it: bacon is the Taylor Swift of breakfast meats, the Achilles heel of almost every eater. There are very few people who don’t like it. Even vegans will often admit bacon is what they miss or sneak the most. So be sure to put it in your stories, and by that I mean: give your readers something you know will be consumed, savored, and appreciated. Give them at least one universally adored topic. Usually, this is humor, sex, or justice.

TOMATOES: Tomatoes are vivid and eye-catching. Your story needs this, too. Give your readers the stand-out details, the lush visual imagery. They don’t want sad, they want bereft. They don’t want rainy, they want torrential. They don’t want green eyes, they want irises the color of the old farm pond.

MUSHROOMS: Mushrooms mean magic, and every story deserves a hint of the other side. No need to go full-blown Gabriel García Márquez unless that’s your jam. Just give readers a glimpse of a dream, a daydream. Have a character enter a surreal conversation, receive a kiss that transports. Take your readers, or a character, momentarily out of this world. Please!

FRIED BREAD: Fried bread is genius, and all amazing stories have a moment of utter brilliance. This isn’t something a writer achieves by trying. It just happens, somehow, in the midst of feverish typing, ultimately emerging as an unexpected, unplanned turn of phrase or turn of plot that astonishes first the writer and later, the reader. You can’t make it happen; you just have to write until it does. Write until you’re surprised.

POTATOES: Potatoes are earthy, grounded, stable. And every story needs something potato-ish to anchor it, whether that is one character standing in their truth, a recognizable setting, or an object that is literally or symbolically sturdy. Sometimes, just the use of time gives parameters to a story. If readers start out knowing that the tale before them takes place in thirty minutes, they are immediately moored by the timeframe even if the story itself is chaotic.

BLOOD PUDDING: It’s important to disturb your reader a bit. It creates tension and engagement, and it invites voyeurism. If you’re a horror writer, you’ve got this part down. But if you write literary fiction, the ghastly is often best achieved by revealing the dark intentions or foul idiosyncrasies of a character. Pull back the curtain and show your readers something unsettling. They’ll keep reading.

BEANS: Beans, like emotions, are healthy but hard to digest. And a story without feelings always falls flat. To make your story emotionally compelling, ask yourself: what is at stake here? What does my character stand to gain or lose? Remember: good stories are ultimately about the human experience: the desire to fit in or fall out. Keep this in mind if a story seems too aloof or one-dimensional. You probably need beans.

SAUSAGE: And finally, my favorite: sausage. Because, what’s in sausage? Or better yet, what isn’t in sausage? Sausage is a multi-ingredient food that no one wants to see made but many enjoy as an end-product. I believe all great stories employ a “sausage sentence” or “sausage section”—a resourceful, densely packed stretch that gives the reader a bunch of information at once (backstory, setting, problem, and more). My favorite place to do this? The beginning. Always try to hook your readers (and editors, agents) early with the people, the place, and the problem of your story.

It's my hope that you’ll use the English Breakfast model going forward, as both a reader and a writer. I think you will find what I did: that great storytellers are able to serve up tales with all nine of these ingredients, resulting in readers who don’t walk away hungry. Challenge yourself to do the same. And don’t forget the coffee (or tea).

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Whitney Collins is the author of Ricky & Other Love Stories, which was longlisted for The Story Prize, and Big Bad, which won the Mary McCarthy Prize, a Gold Medal IPPY, and a Bronze Medal INDIES. She is the recipient of a Distinguished Story mention from The Best American Short Stories, a Pushcart Prize, a Pushcart Special Mention, and the American Short(er) Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Idaho Review, and Gulf Coast, among others.