Short Story Tips from the Masters
Part one of a two-part series on mastering the short story
There is no shortage of materials that discuss the mechanics of storytelling. Plot structure, character design, setting and theme are commonplace subjects. This knowledge provides a wonderful foundation, but it can be daunting when a writer wants to focus on the essence of telling a short story as opposed to a novel. This fact, I discovered, in my own quest to better understand the nuances of writing a captivating short story.
I went in search of advice from the short story masters. What I found were a few pearls of wisdom among a sea of empty oyster shells. One reason may be unavoidable, which is pointed out by Flannery O’Connor, in her essay “Writing Short Stories”. O’Connor was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and thirty-one short stories, primarily in what was considered Southern Gothic style.
O’Connor says:
“I suppose the obvious things are the hardest to define. Everybody thinks he knows what a story is. But if you ask a beginning student to write a story, you’re liable to get almost anything — a reminiscence, an episode, an opinion, an anecdote, anything under the sun, but a story.”
Distilling down a craft that the masters have spent a lifetime refining is complicated, all the while obvious, as O’Connor has said. However, accomplishing this even at a cursory level, will help inform enterprising writers and expose future readers to new short stories that can be remembered for the ages.
Short Story Length
It is best to start with the simplest characteristic of a short story — its length measured by word count. Do not confuse this with a publication’s acceptance criteria, which often fall on the short, short side of fiction, ranging from 500 to 2,500 words. A short story is anything under 7,500 words, which is the definition given by most major award bodies. If you fall within these bounds, it is likely considered a short story.
No matter the word count, don’t confuse brevity with shortness of expression. O’Connor makes a similar claim, when she says:
“Being short does not mean being slight. A short story should be long in depth and should give us an experience of meaning.”
Master Tip 1: Start at the End
Where to start a short story? At the end. Do not write the ending of your short story first unless that suits your preference. What starting at the end means is that your short story is at the end of a much longer story — the one in your head, but not the one you have given to the reader. You could call this the third act in a larger, unwritten play.
Wexford-born author Claire Keegan won the Rooney Prize in 2000 for her first collection, Antarctica (Faber, 1999). She followed up with Walk the Blue Fields (Faber, 2008), which featured a number of prizewinning stories. In 2009, her long short story, “Foster”, won the Davy Byrnes Short Story Prize and was later developed into a novella.
Keegan says:
"Short stories begin after the drama has ended. So, they don't ordinarily go through the breakdown of a marriage, they begin after the marriage has broken down. And sometimes that's more interesting, and more intriguing, and more tense, because you skip the drama and go into the consequences".
Gina Berriault published three collections of short stories, including Women in Their Beds: New & Selected Stories (1996), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. In 1997 Berriault was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, for outstanding achievement in that genre.
Berriault says:
“I'm quoting from Frank O'Conner, the great Irish short story writer — he says that in the short story at its most characteristic, there's something we don't find in the novel. And that's an intense awareness of human loneliness. And I add to that an intense awareness of longing and striving that no one knows about in a particular character until the reader finds himself knowing about and caring about that person chosen by the writer to bring to his or her attention. The short story is one episode, usually a brief episode, in a life. And if the reader is intuitive enough and he picks up on subtleties or on what's intimated or suggested, then the whole life opens up.”
Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer with a career spanning over 50 years. He published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works. In Vonnegut's eight essential tips on how to write a short story, he states simply in tip 5:
"Start as close to the end as possible."
In tip 8, Vonnegut says:
"Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."
A common thread the masters highlight when starting at the end, is to arrive intensely, and to leave the reader with as much intensity as you began.
Master Tip 2: Power Through Omission
Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. One of his greatest contributions to literature, aside from his many works, was his unique style. His short stories have a brevity unmatched by many of his contemporaries, so much so that he formulated the “Iceberg Theory”. The theory stipulates that the deepest meaning, and by association a great many details, can be implied without explicitly being stated.
Hemingway says in his essay “The Art of the Short Story”:
“A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff is that you, not your editors, omit.”
Hemingway goes on to say:
“The stories where you leave it all in do not re-read like the ones where you leave it out. They understand easier, but when you have read them once or twice you can’t re-read them. I could give you examples in everybody who writes, but writers have enough enemies without doing it to each other.”
Neil Gaiman, writer of a myriad of art forms, which include The Sandman graphic novel (now a Netflix series), Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book, tends to agree with Hemmingway’s premise when he says:
“I decided very early on, when I was writing a short story, I should write it as if I were paying by the word to write it. If in my head every word is costing me money to put down, I’m going to try and make sure that every word counts; that every word does something. Pulling out a word, pulling out a sentence, pulling out a paragraph, pulling out a page should be really difficult...”
For example, I was faced with this challenge recently while writing a science fiction short story. In it, the protagonist returns to Earth after it has been nearly abandoned, decimated by unforeseen cataclysmic events. My first instinct was to arrive at the reason why it was abandoned, but determined that it had little to do with the central meaning, which highlights the significance of belonging by choice. The story reads much better because of the apocalyptic omission.
Master Tip 3: One Central Idea (Meaning)
To understand a central idea or meaning of a story, it is necessary to understand how it differs from the theme, and why it is so critical in the context of a short story. For this we first turn to O’Connor, who says:
“When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”
A theme can be applied to any other story from any other author. The central idea cannot, as it communicates the aim of the story and the characters, as told in their own words and actions. It is not a statement by the author. In the case of the short story, the overarching idea should most often be singular.
Edgar Allan Poe was an editor, journalist, poet, literary critic, and short story writer known for his Gothic horror. Two of his most famous tales are “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven”.
Poe says in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition”:
“A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents.”
Poe goes on to say in his essay “The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale”:
“Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone—whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone—afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.”
Gaiman also says that a short story needs one, strong central idea:
“A short story, generally speaking, is about one thing, and one big thing needs to happen in it. Which is not to say that you can’t have lots of different events. It’s just that a short story circles a central idea. Normally a short story for me is just a small thing that you cannot get out of your head.”
Conclusion
In the end, if you find yourself wondering why you must adhere to any given tips, or if the wisdom of the masters even applies to you, then perhaps O. Henry is a better mentor. William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer known primarily for his short stories, his most famous arguably being "The Gift of the Magi".
Porter says:
“I’ll give you the whole secret of short story writing. Here it is. Rule I: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself you’ll never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.”
Do you have any short story tips that you would like to share?
Make sure you’re subscribed to Fictionistas, as part two in this series will contain an interview with Neil Clarke, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of Clarkesworld Magazine!
Brian Reindel is a journalism graduate who opted to write code instead of hard-hitting news. After a twenty-year absence, he is now writing speculative fiction and slice-of-life essays on his Substack Future Thief.
References
Mystery and Manners, selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1969).
Donnelly, N. (2022, Apr 09). HOW TO WRITE A SHORT STORY: TIPS FROM THE EXPERTS. Irish Independent.
Interview: Gina Berriault, Short Story Writer, Discusses Writing Short Stories And How They Differ From Novels (1999). NPR.
The Art of the Short Story. Ernest Hemingway. Issue 79, Spring 1981. The Paris Review.
Book Review: Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Graham's Magazine, published in Philadelphia, in May, 1842
The Independent Publishing Magazine: 5 Authors on the Craft of Short Story Writing
Excellent piece, Brian. I like reading about stuff like this, because I always find one or two things I'm already doing "right", according to people who do it "best". 😊 The "starting at the end" is one point I adhere to most of the time. I don't even know I'm doing it, but if I think back on some of my short fiction pieces, this is exactly how they start. At the end. And the beginning/middle gets filled in through action/dialogue etc. So fascinating! Can't wait for part 2!
So well distilled. I always liked this from Julio Cortázar: “The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.”