Short Stories

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor, one of the favorite American short story writers, hit the nail on the head when she said that.

In the past few months, I have been working on short stories.

Three have been accepted for publication in various venues, one is still under consideration, and two have been rejected. Those I will reconsider, and may join a small group of stories I want to tweak again before I submit them.

Since I am always learning more about writing (not to mention pretty much everything else in my life) I decided to look at some of the most esteemed short stories published recently and, as they say in high school final exams, “compare and contrast” them to my writing and what I know about writing short stories.

Canadian author Alice Munro writes short stories, and she won a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature last year. Can’t be much more esteemed than that. I bought her book Runaway. I also bought a copy of The Best American Short Stories for 2013.

The first thing I learned is that I don’t know nearly as much about writing short stories as I thought I did. The second thing I learned is that when you’re really good, you can break the “rules” and the story can be better for it. That’s probably a matter of knowing the “rules” so thoroughly that you know when they need to be broken.

Alice Munro

And that illustrates one of the points. I go to great lengths to remain in POV, either 1^st or 3^rd person, and not stray into a 2^nd person POV, even an impersonal one like in the paragraph above. But any number of the stories did just that. Maybe I should do some experimenting with it, especially in those situations where it seems to come naturally in the story and I have to go back and rewrite.

The Boston Globe said of Alice Munro, “Each of the stories in Runaway contains enough lived life to fill a typical novel.” Many of them encompass a span of years. I have a tendency to think of short stories as a snapshot, a view of life at an important time in that life, and most of mine happen in a brief period of time, often a few hours. Another thought for me to ponder.

I tend to think of some of the “rules” of writing as sacred, but the authors of these stories have other ideas. Vast amounts of exposition—telling, rather than showing—is present in many of them. As are adverbs—

even a fair number of Tom Swifties. Flashbacks and reminisces are common, as are scenes jumping around in time, and sometimes I have trouble sorting it out. Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough a reader? And if so, how can I ever hope to be a decent writer?

One aspect of most of the stories is a change or growth in the characters, although many have endings that leave the reader hanging and not sure how the characters will implement their new-found truths, or even if they are aware of the change.

Art Taylor, who won the last Agatha award for short stories, has an article in the latest First Draft, a newsletter for the Guppies of Sisters in Crime. He gives a quote from John Updike:

“I want stories to startle and engage me within the first few sentences, and in the middle to widen or deepen or sharpen my knowledge of human activity, and to end by giving me a sensation of completed statement.”

If you're interested in more on the same topic, an article in the New Haven Review covers this in much greater detail. Here's the link:

 http://www.newhavenreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/NHR-13-Charney.pdf

Do you like short stories, either to read or write? Do you think they need to follow “rules,” or do you think it's a matter of what works best for a particular author and story?