I considered that at the time, and you could be right. However, the whole collection was like this. If this is the 'new' short story, then I've missed the turning somehow. There is certainly room for interpretation, but all I know is when I got to the end of these stories, my inner reaction was "is that it?" They were mostly lengthy descriptions of how the writer or protagonist felt, with insight into why. There was no plot to speak of at all. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. (Feeling that way today ...just made an appointment to get my computer upgraded on Friday. Not looking forward to farting around with the new—and to me unnecessary—system changes just now, but hey.)
I've noticed something similar about a lot of modern short stories in literary-style magazines. They have excellent, deep, intriguing characterization... that, to my eye, goes nowhere.
So it's not just me. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with this approach, but to me it's not a short story. It's a vignette. The best analogy to a novel I can think of is contrasting a novel with a memoir. (Of course the memoir isn't fictional, but that's not the only difference.) A memoir has no plot to speak of. It's just a series of recollections about a person's life.
@jannert @BayView Hard for me to comment on the story at issue, since I haven't seen it, but what I'm talking about is not a new phenomenon by any means. Look at short stories by James Joyce, John Cheever, Shirley Jackson, William Trevor, etc., and you'll find a lot of stories that are just a scene, or maybe a few scenes, of daily life, with interesting characterization but not much in terms of overt conflict or plot. I say overt because it is there, it's just understated, as I mentioned above. William Trevor was a master of this, and his stories going back to at least the 1960s are widely regarded. With a lot of these stories, it may appear on first read that not much has really happened, but in fact there has some been turning of a corner beyond which the character can't go back to how she was before. Not saying that applies to what Jannert is talking about - some people certainly do write vignettes that don't qualify as complete stories in my view. But in general terms the sort of thing I'm talking about is a well-established, old form. It may even described the bulk of literary short stories.
And of course, EVERYONE should read all of those wonderful entries in the Tenth Aniversary contest. Many of those can used to show different styles.
IMO you can also have a story without the character changing, if staying the same is key to the climax fallout. I think a story is basically a plot that pressures a character in some direction, and for better or worse they either bend to that pressure (dynamic character arc) or resist it (flat arc). I suppose the meaning of the story largely lies in whether that's portrayed as better or worse (i.e. happy or sad ending). Lacking plot/character arcs, I don't get the same meaning from vignettes. There can still be food for thought, but it's not really contextualised (which applies to the 'write short stories' advice that started this thread too, as everyone's discussed!). I think of short stories as 'novels that sort out their arcs very quickly'. Reminds me of certain punk songs that still have a conventional song structure, except each section only lasts 8 seconds (e.g. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Skinny Sweaty Man: intro>verse>chorus>verse>chorus>middle 8>verse>chorus in just over a minute). A novelist could learn some things by writing short stories (SPAG, voice, arcs), but less so other things (pacing, chapter structuring, +/- subplots, subtlety). I'm with @Steerpike - if you want to write novels, put the time into writing novels. Edit: Oops, looks like I posted before I realised there was a second page of posts! Sorry guys!
Oh yes, good point. But in a story like that, circumstances have changed. If the main character hasn't changed, usually the people or situations around him have. (Person is stubborn and controlling at the beginning, stubborn and controlling at the end, but during the course of the story his loved ones have given up on dealing with him. They have moved on, leaving him to suffer the loneliness to come. Or he'll need to go and find a new set of people to hang out with and control. Rinse and repeat.) In a vignette, usually nothing has physically changed. The character realises something about his situation that was there all along. He may decide he will change, based on what he's just realised. But we don't see this change happening within the story. A vignette might also be a snapshot of a crazy (or mundane) life at a given moment (for which we draw our own conclusions.) Or an observation of an event or another person's character, made by a narrator. However, it takes something else—some chain of events taking place on the page— to turn it all into a short story with a plot. In my view anyway. There is nothing wrong with either literary form, but I recognise the difference.
Here's a good (in my opinion) explanation about the difference between vignette and short story: https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/ask-writer/what-is-the-difference-between-a-short-story-and-a-vignette
I wrote a short story a week for a year. It's quite a challenge, but it did so much for my writing. Honestly, it was probably the fastest way I could have improved. I was not a new writer when I took on this challenge, but I hadn't written a short story in years when I started this. I have always loved reading short stories. It's just amazing what some writers pull off in twenty pages or so. My first few stories were not very good. However, I was truly unaware of how bad they were until I started getting better. It also kind of comes with a built-in writing routine since you know you need to do a new story every week. Of course, no one has to write short stories to write novels. But if anyone does take on this challenge, I can say from experience you'll be a better writer for it.
A vignette is a short story without an ending. A novel that has no readers at all, otherwise known as your 100 000 piece jigsaw has no vibrancy, and has no life at all, and never shall have any. Short stories are the 1000 piece jigsaws. I think you will find WHSmiths sell more of the latter, so you're all wrong, evidentially [sp].
There is no 'one way' to learn to write fiction. I've learned while writing my first novel. It has taken longer than someone who starts with the skills already established. But in my case, I used my WIP and my critique group to learn. You take a chapter full of all those newbie mistakes in and the group provides the first lesson. By the time you're bringing your last chapters in, you know what you're doing and you've gone back and rewritten the earlier stuff enough times the novel is actually coming together. The second book should go much faster but I expect to keep learning as I write that one. Think of it like writer immersion classes.
You should have stuck with us Spit boys, @GC. Any fool can write those tankers of the sky. God, I missed you... wilco, and out.
I'm not really a fan of short stories. I've bought three or so different books filled with short stories by different writers but in the same genre, both in Swedish and English. I thought it could help me in two ways. To start with - get my reading going again. I've had some issues with concentration lately and I haven't been reading like I should. I though short stories could be a good way back. Then I thought I could start learning how to write short stories, because since junior high or such I don't think I ever did that. LIE. I have written some smaller things for myself, but they've always been a sidetrack to something bigger, so in one way they were like a really unnecessary chapter to something else I'm writing. Anyway. I've read this or that many short stories by different writers, in different language, and I can't get no satisfaction. I'm not saying that short stories are inherently bad, but most I've read has felt incomplete. One in particular felt like a really crowded first chapter. If that was a novel, and they'ed edit the shit out of that first pages, I would totally read it. Now it was rushed into a short story that left disappointed. Another one I remember of the bat felt like a 5-8 pages long joke. It wasn't bad, but it was sort of like someone who is trying to tell you a funny story, and then ten minutes later they still haven't come to the punchline. Bottom line - I don't really get short stories. I think that it might be good for me to write some, mostly to learn how to wrap things up and keep to the point. Right now I keep to too big projects that I might finish on of these days - or not. Side note: In Swedish novel means short story and roman is what we call a novel, so discussing novels usually get me slightly confused.
I should start this practice as well. Writing short stories on the regular basis is challenging, but it is the path to improvement of your style. It's not a secret for me, but I need better skills to start writing novels. At this time I have no skills to write, edit, revise, proofread and publish a novel. But in the future, when I became more proficient in writing, I would like to create my own historical novel *sweet dreams*
When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far. — Hemingway I've always done this. So it struck me as curious to come across this quote. When I sit down back at my desk in the evening or in the early morning, I always struggle to pick up the rhythm and flow of my work. Sometimes I go back to the start, other times half a page. And when I do, I always pick up words or sections in the writing that don't sound or move as well as when I first made them appear on the page; I polish them and the next time I go over the correction, perhaps I stay happy with it, perhaps not.
I definitely agree with what this thread has been echoing. Short story writing is a different skill from novel writing, plotting wise. I'm in a group with a couple of other aspiring writers, and there's a weekly short story competition, which I feel are constantly without plot. It's all feels as part of a greater, but non-existent, narrative. Although I do think writing a lot of short stories will help you improve as an author overall. If you wanna write novels, though, at some point you need to transition to practicing novels.
I tried starting with a short story and it ended up at 13k words. I tried to do a proper short one next, and I got feedback that readers felt I needed to develop the MC more, so it went from about 1200 words to 8k. Maybe novels is just my thing, I dunno. I should write more short stories, though, I am sure it is good for development as a writer.
So I have my first novel WIP lying around in the second draft stage or so. I have a few people reading it while I focus on more specific aspects. I've started to write short stories about my named characters (there's only 20 or so, which means I can do it for each of my characters) which I hope will help in character development. It certainly allows me to become more invested in my characters, which in turn forces me to give them a voice powerful enough to overthrow my MC (when necessary). All in all I think it's been a successful experiment so far. I'm trying to have a word budget of around 3k words per character in two stand-alone sequences, which means I can do one in a bad two weeks, or several in a good week. I think shorter sequences help a lot with developing a sense of urgency in your characters (when writing a longer piece, I find my characters not worrying as much as they should about the dragon on their rooftops), developing them off screen and trimming off to a lean plot. Plus analysis afterwords can reveal my stylistic urges which I can then endorse or change. As a small bonus I let my critics decide who to write about next. They seem to enjoy that.
Ignore Ray. Just write the novel. Write bollocks. Write about eating a fat juicy burger in a diner. Write about the mice in the room your character is renting. Write about suicide. Be self-indulgent. Don't plot. Don't use story arcs. Type with your elbows. Faber and Faber will snap it up!
The bolded is me. I have been writing since I was nine years old and have only ever wanted to write chapter books straight from the get-go. As a result, I had no interest whatsoever in writing short stories and put little to no effort into writing them. They're just not fun for me, and now I absolutely despise them. Writers should start writing whatever they feel would be the most fun thing for them to write, regardless of age, in my opinion.
How can you despise short stories? There are some really amazing things happening with short fiction in pretty much all genres. It's fine to prefer novels and to not write short stories, but it's not bad advice to suggest a writer try his hand at storytelling on a smaller scale. Short stories are no easier to write than novels, and they are probably harder to publish. But, really, I've never heard anyone say they "despise" short stories. I guess if they hadn't read many of them or whatever, but how could you possibly despise the work of great short fiction writer such as Ray Bradbury? Writing is an art. I don't think people should despise art.
