Writing Short Stories

I once heard Thea Astley at a Writer's Festival talk about how she'd started writing poetry, but that was way too hard. Then she'd switched to short stories which were hard enough before finally trying a novel - a piece of cake in comparison. I'd agree that anything depending on brevity is going to be difficult. Coleridge's definitions of writing was 'prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.'

Equally every word in a short story should count.

In order for this to happen you need a good reason for writing the short story - it needs to explore an important theme, to communicate a clear message to the reader. Too often I read short stories by new writers which don't actually have an underlying theme. They may a plot and a few characters, but the theme hasn't been teased out sufficiently.

As the theme largely drives the plot and the motivation and transformation of the central character, you can see how the whole story can be shaky if the theme isn't identifiable.

I could begin two stories with identical characters and a common event as a catalyst, but where I take the story will largely depend on the theme I choose. For eg. my central character is a wife who has decided to leave her husband. She packs up and leaves while he's at work, but he comes home unexpectedly, driven by some instinct or intuition. There's a scene. He breaks down. She drives off regardless.

The theme will dictate how I frame this simple story. If I'm exploring infidelity and betrayal, I might begin the story with the wife's discovery of her husband's infidelity. It might be the final piece of the jigsaw of his indifference she's been slowly piecing together. He's been alerted by a call at work - it's not mere intuition on his part (although, in order that this is kept in the third person limited I would want the wife to guess this, rather than the reader know it from a scene at the husband's work). He breaks down and the wife drives off, not promising to return but not resolved to completely separate, either.

On the other hand if the theme is personal growth, I'd frame the story differently. The wife has felt trapped in her marriage. She's decided over a period of some time that change must happen. It hasn't. One morning she decides she has to reinvent herself or stagnate for the rest of her life. The scene when the husband arrives home is quite different. He tries to convince her that they are soulmates - otherwise how would he have guessed her intentions. She's tender with him, but her tenderness is caused through guilt. She agrees to a break. But the map she pulls out of the glovebox as she leaves gives the reader the feeling that she won't be back.

So the first thing you need to consider is the what theme you want your story to explore. Then you need to limit the cast of characters to as few as possible. You don't want the reader overwhelmed by the number of characters they have to remember. You want the story to retain a strong focus on one central character.

You need to think of the time over which the story takes place. Reduce this as much as you can. It's very difficult for a successful short story to take place over a lifetime. You need the discursive nature of the novel to accomplish this.

Do try to avoid the twist at the end of the tale. These worked beautifully at the height of their popularity. They were clever, quite unpredictable and in vogue. These days they are appear forced and predictable.

Don't think you need to explore large, melodramatic events in a short story. Small real things are often the catalysts of change - and easier to write convincingly. Remember, just because it happened, doesn't make your fictional version of an event ring true to the reader. Truth is stranger than fiction and you, the writer, must convince us that your fiction is the truth.