The Long and Short of It

Guy de Maupassant

            The thing I like best about short stories is they’re short.

  A novel’s length can sometimes get a bit unwieldly.  When reviewing the first draft, you stumble on passages you forgot about, or failed to properly integrate into the story.  It’s sometimes hard to get a clear picture of the full narrative.  The manuscript print out is heavy and pages like to slither out of their proper order or turn themselves upside down. 

            But all-in-all, I find short stories much more difficult to write.  There’s little elbow room to blather on when you’re feeling expository.  A compelling twist is nearly always called for, but there’s no room for all the little twists, sub plots and mini mysteries you can fold into a novel that eat up pages without losing your reader’s interest.  You also probably need to have the story fairly well worked out ahead of time, not a convivial format for the pantsers in the audience.

            The shorter the page requirements, the harder it is for me to write.  Flash fiction?  Forget about it.  As a copywriter, I’d much rather be assigned a 20-page brochure than a bumper sticker or billboard.  I’ve known many in that craft for whom it’s the exact opposite.  One writer virtually spoke in puns and plays on words.  Quick quips that sparkled at the top of a print ad, but he could never settle down and compose an actual story, with a narrative arch that wasn’t punctuated by relentless witticisms.

Flannery O'Connor

           So it appears that fiction writers have similar predilections.  Some like to go long, others short.  It’s just a matter of brain wiring.

            I prefer short stories that  include description, character development and atmosphere that feels like a novel.  As if you were plunked down in the middle of the tale, with all the richness of a thorough backstory implied, suggested, familiar.  I also look for an interior logic, following all the rules of continuity and deference to plausibility.

            Preferences aside, if you’re writing in the crime fiction genre, something has to happen over the course of the tale.  A creative writing teacher once told me to learn the difference between a story and a mood piece, which apparently I was mostly writing.   He was one of the MFA maharishis who felt that plots were indispensable in literary fiction, bless his heart.

              If you ask Chubby Checker, there’s nothing better than a good twist.  But there is something about a bad one that wrecks the vibe.  You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to force fit a surprise, which often comes across as contrivance.   I find it best to start out with the twist in mind, and build the whole story around it so the surprise feels entirely believable.  Even predictable if you’d only been paying attention.  Though everybody does it differently.

            I‘m often disappointed by a very good story, no fault of the author.  When I get all wrapped up I want it to last, so I can turn off the bedside light and know there’s more to come the next day.  Short stories won’t let you stay past closing time, hanging with the wait staff and watching the band fold up their equipment.  When it’s done it’s done and you’re out on the street.

O. Henry

            Given that modern attention spans can be measured in nanoseconds, you’d think short stories would be enjoying a heyday.  There’s no shortage of great writing or the number of publications dedicated to the art form.  But no one’s making six figure livings off short stories the way Hemingway and Fitzgerald once managed.  That’s unfortunate, especially for short story writers, but we’ll just go ahead and write them anyway.

            

Because, after all, they’re short.