I got a couple of pretty interesting questions from my last two trips through history.  And both questions, in essence asked “What exactly is a short story?” (Only they were asked in very different ways. <g>)

So let me toss out a few basic thoughts about short stories.

Well, of course, a short story is under 7,500 words.  But, of course, it is so much more than that.  Just any random 7,500 words do not a short story make.  So what is a short story, exactly?

One writer told me in the past that a short story is the most important event in one character’s life.  Yeah, I pretty much buy that as well.

Another writer I admired said a short story is a single event worth telling about.  Yeah, that fits with the other description and I pretty much agree with that as well.

Algis Budrys described a short story as seven points.  1) Character in a 2) Setting with a 3) problem.  Character 4) tries to solve the problem and 5) fails.  Character builds up to 6) one final, huge try that either succeeds or fails completely.  Then somehow, the writer tells the reader in a 7) validation (imagine awards ceremony) that the story is over.

Yeah, but the structure he describes is also in every novel, with every character in the book in one fashion or another.  So Algis Budrys’s description is one of a “story” not necessarily a short story.  But he is still right.  That structure must be in a short story in some way or another.

English teachers worked out stories and short stories into beginnings (points 1-3), middles (points 4-5) and ends (points 6-7).   Yeah, simple but right as well.
I have also heard a few billion times that in a short story, every word must count.  Yeah, I buy into that as well.  The question is what do they count toward? Well, to the telling of the single event, of course.

And that was one reader’s question.  What do you put into a short story and what to leave out, how much depth to put in, how much to not put in?

Not a clue, since I am not reading your story.

My opinion in general, which is only my opinion and means not a lot, is that I put the details I need into the short story that go toward the event of the story, that make the reader like the character, and not one other detail.  Not one.  (Back to every word must count.)  If a detail goes beyond the event of the story, I leave it out.

So far, the focus on one event has really helped me with writing short fiction.  And, of course, it has also stopped me from linking a bunch of short stories together into a novel.  I have heard of a few writers trying to do that, and I have a memory of trying it early on because of my fear of the length of a novel.  But, of course, if each story is about one event, the most important event in a character’s life, it’s damned hard to link a bunch of those together to make anything readable.  It can be done I guess, but I would find it impossibly hard.  Just easier to write the novel.

One last thing about short stories.  People say, “They are sometimes harder to write than novels.”  I have heard that statement for years as well, and never really believed it because I was pounding out a short story per week.  For the record, I still don’t believe it.

Pounding out a five thousand word story about a single event is easy compared to the thousands of things that go on in a novel.

But, for heaven’s sake, don’t try writing short stories unless you enjoy reading them, unless you regularly read short fiction for pleasure.  If all you have ever read is novels, write novels.  If you don’t read short fiction and don’t like it, trying to write it for some writing reason will just drive you nuts.

All right, enough rambling thoughts about writing short stories for today.

Cheers

Dean

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