Good Short Stories 3 – Space

Good short stories do not tell us everything. They tell us enough while at the same time leaving space for the reader to bring their imagination, experience and interpretation to the piece. They pose questions which are not always answered. We do not expect good short stories to tie up all the loose ends. Writing good short stories means as writers we’re often managing the balance between what to put in and what to leave out. Also between the seemingly contradictory: transparent prose and layered meaning, intensity and elusiveness, density (of ideas or feeling) and space.

Ernest Hemingway is the writer best known for describing the way in which creating ‘space,’ within a good short story works, with his famous iceberg principle, ‘If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.’

I try to do this in my own writing of short stories in several ways:

When I’m editing I ask myself what I can take out or where taking something out will add strength and another possible layer of meaning; room for another interpretation – a certain kind of ambiguity. Very like the poetic process.

Using clear simple prose which I wrote about in Good Stories 2 – Language  automatically creates space.

I try to know as much as I can about the people in my story, what their lives have been  and then as Hemingway says leave most of this out and not worry about it because it will show through in the writing. What’s not said becomes implicit in what is said.

I try never to be deliberately obscure or tricksy but to write honestly; even if the story is surreal or fantastic it must be truthful at its core.

I’d like to add these are not rules I followed they are ideas I came to assimilate, the most important thing is writing in your own way, with your own voice and as I always say reading the best. The more you read good short stories the more the form will embed itself in your writing.

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