{"id":9088,"date":"2011-10-17T06:30:16","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T17:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=9088"},"modified":"2011-10-16T21:05:19","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T08:05:19","slug":"in-support-of-the-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/10\/17\/in-support-of-the-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"In Support of the Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On Friday<\/a> and Saturday<\/a> I talked about “Experimentation and Finding the New”<\/strong> and used the specific example of a short fiction series I worked on a few years back.\u00a0 So I was interested to read Neil Gaiman’s guest blog “A tweetathon to save the short story”<\/strong>, here<\/strong><\/a>, on The Guardian<\/strong> blog, including a comment similar to the thrust of my recent posts:<\/p>\n

” … short stories are the best place for young writers to learn their craft: to try out different voices and techniques, to experiment, to learn. And they’re a wonderful place for old writers, when you have an idea that wouldn’t make it to novel length, one simple, elegant thing that needs to be said.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n

While I agree that short stories are a great place “to experiment, to learn”<\/em>, if only because they constitute a shorter trial vehicle than a novel length work, I would enter two caveats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I don’t believe this is just for “young writers.” I feel quite strongly that if we cease to experiment and learn then shortly thereafter atrophy sets in, and atrophy is the end of art. So the need to try out the different and the new, to experiment and to learn, is important for writers at all<\/span> stages of development—and of all ages. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I feel equally strongly that the short story is an art form in its own right, not a stepping stone or subsidiary to the novel. From my time with both that experimental series and the other short fiction I’ve written, I can tell you that short stories are hard<\/em>. You don’t have the space and words a novel\u00a0 gives you to win your readers attention and get your point across. And at the end of the story, the reader has to feel just as satisfied as when completing a full length novel. My personal view is that every character, every plot thread, every sentence, every word—they all have to earn their presence in a story. And because of the space constraint, the short story is even less forgiving of the author’s failure to deliver on that than the novel. So yes, doing short stories well—that’s tough<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And here’s another thing—short stories and novels are very different beasties to write. Novels are tough, too, because you have to build and sustain your story and characters over\u00a0 that longer length work—but in the short story you have to somehow encapsulate the same intensity within a much smaller vehicle. For example, as a general principle, I would venture that the short story writer can’t accommodate the same number of point-of-view characters or plot lines, or pitch the story arc as high … But the material that the novel traverses with breadth and depth, the short story angles into like a diamond drill.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So I believe that it is quite possible for an author to be a brilliant short story writer and indifferent novelist, or vice versa—because the short story and the novel, like the poem and the play, are different forms of the art.<\/p>\n

There is a perception that interest in the short story has waned. I wonder, sometimes, if that isn’t because a great many people writing short stories don’t really understand the art, and so the diamond drill is blunted? For example, the story arc is pitched too high and so the ending falls flat or feels like an abrupt truncation.<\/p>\n

But Neil Gaiman also wrote that: “People like reading short stories. And they like \u00adlistening to short stories.” <\/em>I know that I do—<\/em>that I both love reading a good short story and very much enjoy listening to them on the radio.<\/p>\n

But what about you—do you read and enjoy short fiction, or prefer poetry or novels? And what do you think makes a really good short story?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday and Saturday I talked about “Experimentation and Finding the New” and used the specific example of a short fiction series I worked on a few years back.\u00a0 So I was interested to read Neil Gaiman’s guest blog “A tweetathon to save the short story”, here, on The Guardian blog, including a comment similar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-short-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9088"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9105,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9088\/revisions\/9105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}