The Writing Life Too

“A short story is like a genie in a bottle. Once the cork is pulled, out gushes a force that may grant you wishes or hound you with malicious intent.” Shelley Lowenkopf

Dawn clouds are deep gray and thick. I’m heading to Vancouver B.C. in a few hours to teach writing workshops. Before I leave I wanted to comment briefly on short stories since I’m editing one for a client. Like many writers he has wonderful concepts, but needs to dig deeper into his writer’s toolbox of techniques.

I describe short stories as fiction on a budget. Like a poet, you need to be especially selective of what you include, what you leave out, and make sure every word counts. So you don’t have much room for a big cast, lots of scenes or settings, or major themes. They typically don’t cover a long time span and most short stories feature 5-7 scenes and only a few players. Now, a short story can range in length and range up to 10,000 words, but the classic definition of short fiction is that it can be read in one sitting. Obviously some short story writers like Alice Munro write more complex and longer stories, but most fall within this perimeter. I believe readers of short fiction are looking for an intense experience which means it needs to focus on a pivotal event in the protagonist’s life.

The best advice for short stories is the old “shoot the sheriff on the first page” adage. Short stories, like a novel, needs an inciting incident to kick the drama into gear, but this event must be explosive.

Once the story conflict is introduced you need a complication to keep the reader engaged. At least one character, usually the protagonist, needs to be suffering in the story, while all characters must want something.

Most short stories require at least one flashback or some means to deliver back story.

Strive for a single, powerful effect on the reader.

Avoid excess; every detail should have relevance to the plot.

As in longer fiction, your characters struggle to keep afloat amid troubles or dilemmas.

Short fiction requires exceptionally meaningful and taut dialogue, preferably dialogue embroidered with tension or conflict or based on a power exchange.

It requires enough details so that the story has context, the reader can imagine a specific place. But also the setting can either add tension or make things happen in the story.

Short stories require a crisis or turning point where the protagonist’s world changes.

The ending must deliver meaning and should be the best sentences you can write. Now, the ending can be open, or not quite resolved, or closed, which means there is resolution, but it always has impact. Often a short story ending circles back and mirrors the opening—the trick is that the protagonist has somehow been changed by the story events.

Sometimes when working on a short story you reach the conclusion that it wants to be a novel. You often reach this conclusion because a reader has given you feedback that he or she would like to read more; if you need lots of characters to tell the tale; if you want to keep developing it; if your time frame is fairly long, if you need lots of settings; if you cannot develop your themes adequately within the confines of a few scenes.