Short Story Discussion

[BKS]

Everyone' read a short story in their time, and some of us may have even tried writing them. Discuss all things related to the reading and writing of short stories in here. Favorite short story, how you write them, etc.




I heard somewhere that writing a short story was harder than a novel. It had something to do with the length of a novel allows time for character development and plot thickening, while short stories you have to make due with what you're given. Can anyone attest to this?

Also, what do you all consider to be a "minimum length" for a short story? I find that I tend to end whatever I'm writing really quickly, and it has no length to it what so ever.


Also, on the topic of good short stories, I recommend Flowers for Algernon, got me really hooked and kinda started me down wanting to write.

[Homemaster]

Raymond Carver writes great short stories. Personally, I have no idea which is harder. Novels take a very long time, whereas a short story can be written in a week or two (plus editing).

I'm just getting into shrot stories at uni, so ill get back to you. Our main assignment has to be based on "Singing my Sister Down" by Margo Lanagan. That's a good short story, read her stuff.

EDIT: flash fiction is like 500 to a couple of thousand words. Short stories can be anywhere from 10 000 upwards to 50 000? Something like that.

[Beefjerk]

Short stories are actually harder. You begin with an idea but you have to restrain your creative self and try to produce a sort of steady flow of ideas with not as many descriptions and too much character development. Your focus is mainly the plot which has to be written in as few words as possible and still make sense in some way.Short stories always leave so much unanswered.

[Schmuffy]

I don't know if this pertains to the thread, but I've written a few short stories of my own. But I really enjoy any type of short story. I'm not familiar with any of the authors, but hey, I don't pay attention to that anyways :P

[FranticYace..]

Both short and long stories are hard to write, even if for different reasons.

I've always preferred reading longer stories though. The only kind of short stories I like is when you have a collection all on the same topic/characters/etc and a whole bunch of different stories are written about them. One old book that comes to mind is Sniff.


EDIT: I'd consider short story one that's not long enough to have chapters.

[ChristineHeyMan]

My friend writes excellent short stories. He usually writes morbid tales about murder and the like.
I think that horror stories should stay away from the length of a novel, in my opinion, it takes away the suspense.

[DarknessEqualsMe]

I prefer to write short stories, I think it's way easier than writing a long one. I've tried both, and although it's more fun to write a longer story, because it's easier to write down everything that comes to mind, I think the shorter ones just evolve into better books. Therefore I believe that it's more relevant to write a short story, unless you are a really good writer on the long stories.

However, I prefer to read longer stories, because they've got way more detail than the short stories. The writer just has to be able to keep it exciting for like 800 page, in my opinion, although I realise that's a really hard thing to do.

{If anyone got confused by my English writing skills, then I'm sorry, I'm doing the best I can to keep it clear. English is just not my native language.}

[BurgerKueen]

I actually do enjoy short stories, although most of the ones I read are by Turkish authors so you wouldn't know them. I think we have better short story writers than novelists.

Anyways, I really enjoy the short story collections of Asimov, although most of them can be related to each other in one way or other. I also enjoy the stories of Jack London. I think writing a good short story can be more difficult than a novel because the writers usually put in a lot of imagery and hidden meaning into short stories that we readers miss. Novels have that too obviously, but in short stories it's more condensed and difficult to figure out. I haven't studied any English or American authors in such depth so I unfortunately can't give any examples of this but I remember analyzing Turkish authors almost more than Shakespeare in my Turkish Literature classes in high school.

[INTUNEevolution]

Short stories are easy to write for me for one reason: I cannot write in such a way that allows for the kind of length a complete novel. Read a book and notice how much useless stuff there is. That's how you write a full story, by filling it with useless crap.

My style is really heavy for that reason :p :(

[UncleDuck2]

Roald Dahl had some great short stories.
If you saw 'Four rooms' The last story from Quinten Tarantino, with the finger, that originally was one from Roald Dahl, but then more Tarantino-esque

[charcoal]

I'm a short story aficionado - it's all I read, as far as fiction goes, when I'm at uni. You can't go wrong with anything by Salinger or Fitzgerald.
Salinger's short stories are delectable one-scene things, where not much actually happens. It's more of a snapshot of a bigger situation. My favourite is "Just Before the War With the Eskimos". It centres on a girl who doesn't like her tennis partner but eventually agrees to go and play a game with her, then meets the other's older brother. That's all that actually happens, but there's a vivid feeling of what's happened before and what will follow. Salinger's short stories are absolutely stunning.
Fitzgerald's are probably less well-crafted, but give a great insight into his characters and the time period in which he was writing. Although, "Tender is the Night" is my favourite of his works, and that's more of a novella.
I have a few anthologies of stories, sorted by time period or region. There's a vast difference between the stories in the anthology of North American works and that of English works. I much prefer the former collection, although that could be because the stories only span about two hundred years, whereas the English anthology ranges back to writers such as Chaucer, who I really struggle to engage with.
Hemingway also deserves a mention, and I'd advise you all to steer clear of Henry James and his cringeworthily verbose short stories. Some ought to stick with novels.