Recently, a
writing group asked me to talk about writing short stories at one of their
monthly meetings. I’ve been writing short stories since I was at university and
we’ve published a number of Michael Stanley ones, but I’ve never thought of
myself as anything close to an expert. Anyway, I thought about it a bit, made
some notes, downloaded a few ebooks, and explored on the internet. Most of what
turned up seemed to me rather obvious, but even obvious things can have value
when one focusses one’s attention on them.
What are the major requirements for a short story? Well, one needs an intriguing plot, interesting characters, and a strong protagonist. Wait a minute. That’s exactly what one needs for a novel too. The issue, of course, is length. A short story is about 2,000 to 7,000 words, a novel at least ten times that upper limit. Short stories appeal to beginning writers because they don’t feel as daunting in terms of time and development as a full novel. However, that doesn’t make them easier. There’s a quote from Mark Twain that neatly sums it up: “I apologize for writing you such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” (Actually, the same sentiment is expressed in comments made hundreds of years earlier, so the difficulty has been recognized for a long time.)
Here are a
few thoughts from various sources:
Characters:
1. You don’t have the space for a lot
of characters. Focus on a few but make them as real as you would in a novel.
Work on understanding them as hard as you would in a novel.
2. Consider first person (i.e. write
the story with one of the characters narrating it.) The advantage is that you
get a lot of character development from the way the narrator speaks and thinks
as he relates the story.
3. Don’t change point of view (POV). It
will be best to stick with one character POV (maybe first person), or an omniscient
POV.
Story:
1. The story needs to grab the reader
quickly. There’s no time to build it up. The first line better be good. After all, there
are other short stories in this magazine/collection/library.
2. The story needs one arc. There isn’t
enough time for complex subplots or red herrings.
3. James Scott Bell identifies this key:
“A great short story is about the fallout from one, shattering moment.” After
that moment, the protagonist will never be the same again. The moment can be at
the beginning, the middle, or the end. Of course, the story will be quite
different in each case. Bell claims he can’t even imagine a good short story
without this.
As I said
at the beginning, this is all pretty straightforward, but it’s interesting to
see how it fits with something you’ve actually written. Like all rules, good
writers break them successfully. But…
Sadly, the
last Crimefest is taking place in Bristol this May. For its tenth anniversary,
the organizers produced a collection Ten
Year Stretch and our contribution was a story called The Ring. It’s about one of South Africa’s informal recyclers who
go through people’s garbage extracting anything they can salvage or sell such
as cardboard, glass, broken but still usable items. One morning the recycler
makes a horrifying discovery in a bin he’s going through. Let’s see how the
story stacks up to these guidelines.
The first
line is: I guess some people are just nasty.
The story
is in first person. Obviously.
The
shattering moment is what the recycler finds in the bin and how that traps him
into a lot of trouble.
The
characters are the recycler (narrator), his partner, a gardener, a detective,
and a few bit parts.
If you'd like to read the story and decide for yourself, click on THE RING
How do your
short stories fit these guidelines? Or don't they?
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