A Writer's View

The short story:

The ideal place to start

You want to write, you have a fabulous idea, but the thought of tackling a novel head-on… Ouch, it’s no wonder so many wannabe writers fall by the wayside. We can’t all lock ourselves away for a year to write the great 21st-century novel and a short story is so much less daunting than being on the wrong side of 100,000+ words when you work full time and/or have kids tearing around demanding your attention. I’ve had a couple of shorts that have gone from concept to paper to good first draft in less than a weekend – and that really feels like an achievement when you go back to your day job on Monday morning!

Life-affirming

It’s too easy to sit alone, writing and rewriting and becoming disheartened. I made a pact when I started writing four years ago that I would submit each story I wrote to magazines and competitions, and if it got rejected, well then I would just try again. The thrill of getting work placed, commended or even published spurs me onwards and helps disperse the inevitable late night cries of ‘But why aren’t I JK Rowling already?’ It also makes opening your post and email in the morning that bit more exciting.

Compact and portable

Short stories are much easier to write on the move, and your friends/family/writing colleagues are more likely to give useful feedback on something they can finish in an evening. If you’re in a writing circle, it’s more rewarding for everyone (and more valuable for you) if you can read out an entire short for analysis, rather than disjointed chapters of a novel, because anyone who missed last month’s session will inevitably misunderstand that vital plot point. The ability to read a whole story on the way to work and then spend the day thinking about it, getting something complete and polished in less than 10,000 words, can be a real bonus for busy readers as well.

A little light relief

Short stories can be a palate-cleansing sorbet between full-length meals. Successful novelists like Ian Rankin and Joanne Harris ‘confess’ to enjoying creating short fiction between their longer works, as a way of clearing the mental decks before the next big project. It can work that way for readers, too.

The spice of life

If you usually stick with one particular genre, or have a series character who earns your bread and butter, then writing something that’s really ‘not you’ can be hugely liberating. I can try humour, contemporary comment, erotica, without feeling I’m going to get ‘typecast’ as a writer. And for every reader who professes to hate short stories – the “I’ve just gotten into the story and then it’s all over” syndrome – there’s another dozen who love the variety of voices, viewpoints and human interest you will find in a good anthology.

A smart idea

Concepts which work well at 2,000, 5,000 or even 10,000 words can get hideously overstretched when forced into novels; either that, or a great little idea can be lost as a subplot. I started out by writing horror stories and many ideas in this genre work best as shorts –the Stephen King adaptations that resonate best as movies are generally taken from his short stories. Shorts can be story-telling in its purest form; novels can feel padded to meet genre length requirements (how many like that have we all read?) and poets can get carried away by their own eloquence and delight in language. With short stories you constantly have to prune and hone to hit that all-important wordcount, and that can make for lean and elegant prose – and a classic read.

Model testing grounds

Short stories give you a place to experiment with styles and techniques and to learn new tricks. I’ve recently used 2nd person narration, which worked well in a short, but in a longer piece could leave the reader feeling harangued and exhausted. You can try creating diaries or letters, words spoken into a digicorder, txt spk, your own slang or heavy accents; all of which can get irritating or feel contrived for the length of a novel but can be very effective in a short. As a reader, I also love trying something different, without feeling I’m committed to a whole novel.

Where you really want to be

There’s a definite hierarchy in writing, and short stories are still (undeservedly) viewed as the Eurovision Song Contest compared with the novel’s chart-topping / indie cred status. But some writers, for example the divinely bitchy 1920s poet/author Dorothy Parker, never ‘progress’ to anything longer than the short story format, and well, that’s okay.

Just plain necessary

I write because I have to, because if I don’t get those characters and scenarios out of my head and onto the paper, they will niggle away at me and intrude on my real life. But even so, few of us are happy to write purely for our own amusement and nothing beats the feeling of seeing your work in print (especially in a ‘real’ book). I‘ve certainly found that the short story is the quickest route to gaining that thrill of publication.

So don’t take the received wisdom too seriously

the short story is certainly not ready to be consigned to history, but on the contrary, is really on the up. The market is burgeoning as small press, electronic and even traditional publishers all realise that today’s hectic lifestyles and demand for immediacy mean that readers and writers are ready to embrace the short story once again. So whether you’re writing or reading, just jump straight in, the water’s fine…

Emma Seaman

from www.theshortstory.org.uk

© Emma Seaman 2009