Short Story
Dec. 24th, 2004 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Short Story
Attempts to define the short story seem to be of more interest to critics than to writers. In books on the short story, you can find distinctions between tales, fables, yarns, sketches, anecdotes, and something the critic will posit as the true short story. Ultimately, definitions might as well read, "A short story is what feels like a short story." If you read definitions of short stories that have been written over the decades, it is easy to see that what was indispensable for one generation is considered archaic in the next.
So what advice can be offered to writers today? First, how long should a short story be? Writers have pushed at these limits by writing short stories that are fewer than 100 words long and more than 15,000 words long. Most short stories published today seem to run between 2,000 and 7,000 words. The longer the story, the more space it takes, and the more the editors have to love it to make that commitment. The shorter the story, the easier it is for an editor to assent to it. That doesn't mean you should write stories that are shorter than you want. It just means that some muses present more problems than others.
Second, start fast. These are impatient times. Readers will give you about two paragraphs. If nothing happens by that time, they're gone.
Third, make sure what you have is a story. But what is a story? If you read widely, you'll find stories that read like essays, like sketches, like anecdotes, like reminiscences, like poetic descriptions, like condensed novels, like movie scenarios, madman's monologues, cubist collages, like tons of things. So what is a story? The most pragmatic definition is: A story is what the editor says is a story. A tradition-minded editor might have some very specific criteria in mind, such as "I want to see conflict, resolution, and a change in the main character." A nontraditional editor might say, "Anything is a story as long as it's interesting."
I would say this: A story is what happens to the reader.
Whatever methods or anti-methods, structures or un-structures you choose, it is a story if something happens to your readers. By something I mean something that's emotionally and intellectually moving enough to have some gravity, some weight, some sense of significance. By happens I mean makes an impression, causes a reaction, precipitates a thought, creates a mood. A story makes readers feel that they have had an experience, whether the story's form is traditional or strange, whether the narrator explains its meaning or lets it lie on the plate.
If you feel free to explore possibilities, you are likely to discover ways of making things happen for your readers that have not been part of previous formulations or definitions. The test for a story lies in its effect, not its method.
See Beginnings, Endings, Plot, Short Novel, Tension.
Short Story
Attempts to define the short story seem to be of more interest to critics than to writers. In books on the short story, you can find distinctions between tales, fables, yarns, sketches, anecdotes, and something the critic will posit as the true short story. Ultimately, definitions might as well read, "A short story is what feels like a short story." If you read definitions of short stories that have been written over the decades, it is easy to see that what was indispensable for one generation is considered archaic in the next.
So what advice can be offered to writers today? First, how long should a short story be? Writers have pushed at these limits by writing short stories that are fewer than 100 words long and more than 15,000 words long. Most short stories published today seem to run between 2,000 and 7,000 words. The longer the story, the more space it takes, and the more the editors have to love it to make that commitment. The shorter the story, the easier it is for an editor to assent to it. That doesn't mean you should write stories that are shorter than you want. It just means that some muses present more problems than others.
Second, start fast. These are impatient times. Readers will give you about two paragraphs. If nothing happens by that time, they're gone.
Third, make sure what you have is a story. But what is a story? If you read widely, you'll find stories that read like essays, like sketches, like anecdotes, like reminiscences, like poetic descriptions, like condensed novels, like movie scenarios, madman's monologues, cubist collages, like tons of things. So what is a story? The most pragmatic definition is: A story is what the editor says is a story. A tradition-minded editor might have some very specific criteria in mind, such as "I want to see conflict, resolution, and a change in the main character." A nontraditional editor might say, "Anything is a story as long as it's interesting."
I would say this: A story is what happens to the reader.
Whatever methods or anti-methods, structures or un-structures you choose, it is a story if something happens to your readers. By something I mean something that's emotionally and intellectually moving enough to have some gravity, some weight, some sense of significance. By happens I mean makes an impression, causes a reaction, precipitates a thought, creates a mood. A story makes readers feel that they have had an experience, whether the story's form is traditional or strange, whether the narrator explains its meaning or lets it lie on the plate.
If you feel free to explore possibilities, you are likely to discover ways of making things happen for your readers that have not been part of previous formulations or definitions. The test for a story lies in its effect, not its method.
See Beginnings, Endings, Plot, Short Novel, Tension.