Short Stories

I think that, like novel writing, every writer has a different approach to how s/he writes a short story. I love writing short stories because it's a fun challenge to make characters believable, but without as much time/room as you have with a novel. Sometimes this seems to make my characters more intense, which is fun.

For me, it starts similar to how a novel does--just some sort of character or storyline or place that's been bouncing around in my head, and I have to get it down on paper. I just keep writing until the story unfolds and comes to its natural end. Sometimes it turns into a novel, if there's enough story. Otherwise, the ending just comes. I dunno. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really have a strategy. I listen to the voices in my head, schizo that I am, write their story, then revise.

I know that if you read some of the short stories from the past decade, it might appear that there is no plot. If you want to be published in a litmag now however, something does have to happen in your story so we're back to some of the more classic (older at any rate) stories. The New Yorker is probably the only publication where you can get away with not completely closing the plot line and even they are getting away from the maybe this or maybe that happened. O'Connor wrote a long time ago that the difference between short stories and novels was that short stories were about "submerged" characters, people that we might not choose to write a novel about because we don't think the theme or whatever is important enough or maybe big enough to carry a full book. Other than that, I don't really know of any difference except for the compression part. I think people can take more symbolism in a short story than a novel. In a novel, they might end up forgetting the early information. Do think the writing is very similar as sarolee said. M

Thanks for the clarification. I actually came across a really helpful essay on the subject in Michael Chabon's introduction to McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Apparently Chabon is also tired of "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story," and that collection certainly rejuvenates my interest in the form. So it's encouraging to hear that plot is coming back in style.

I felt the same way when I went into my advanced fiction writing class in college. I'm a novel writer. I love my characters and settings and whatnot to condense them into a short story. They deserve better. And while I still enjoy novels more, I have come to realise that I write some pretty meaningful short stories as well. Hey, one got me into my MFA program, so I'm all for that!

I believe with short literary fiction, you just have to truncate your scope. It can have a complex web of inspiration, but the scope has to be smaller. For instance, my MFA story "Pachelbel's Echo" literally started with my listening to Pachelbel's "Canon in D." It evolved into a story about a married couple learning how to compromise in their relationship. Or another story I wrote called "Aurora" that I got inspiration from watching The Universe about a couple waiting out a solar storm without electricity in the middle of summer. It's just little things that evolve into a story. And yes, writing a novel and writing a short story requires two totally different modes of thinking. I learned that the hard way with my first story in advanced fiction writing when I couldn't find a good end for it.

What works best for me is just starting with one thing and branching out to make a plot. Or a thought or a scene. Small scenes work well as jumping off points because it gives your brain something to latch onto. Novels on the other hand, I usually have a plot that I want to work with, or a scene that I branch off into a huge plot that builds and builds until I have this web of inspiration that evolves into a story. That's what happened with my original draft of my 06 Nano. But I guess that's a bit different because I don't write literary novels per se.