Writing Short Stories

Rain is good for writing I’ve decided – well there has to be something to celebrate in a summer full of rain!This week I’ve written a new short story and am half way through the first draft of a second.

The short story has been much on my mind lately, probably because two of my stories are about to see the light of day– one in the Bristol Prize anthology and the other in the latest edition of the literary magazine Structo. These are small but nonetheless pleasing successes especially for someone who wrote a novel before she ever wrote a short story. In fact I was pretty much a stranger to the genre until a couple of years ago, when I found myself about to co-tutor a short story day workshop with friend and writer Wendy Robertson.

I had quite a long lead into the workshop: 3 months – during which I did three things

• I read as many short stories by the masters of the genre as I could: Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Jackie Kay, Katherine Mansfield, William Trevor, Angela Carter, Helen Simpson, Tania Hershman…to name but a few

• I started collecting ideas for stories and most importantly writing them.

• I read what writers had to say about the short story – how it should work, including some great pieces on the net, on writer’s blogs and competition websites and Vanessa Gebbie’s Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt Guides for Readers and Writers) which I highly recommend

I learned a lot in this way: by really applying myself to the task and by dissecting some of the successful stories I read. Clearly some of this learning paid off which just goes to show that learning is never a one way ticket and we can learn a great deal from the workshops we run.

NEXT POST: What I learned about writing short stories – coming soon

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.― Lorrie Moore

I don’t even know if I know how I write stories. I write. I don’t have a program. There are people who are capable of saying a story has to progress, reach a high point, and so on. Myself, I don’t know. I write the best kind of story I can write . . . The story ought to reveal something, but not everything. There should be a certain mystery in the story. Raymond Carver