  Short Stories
This week: The Impact of the Short Story Edited by: THANKFUL SONALI back on Jan 4  
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| At the Bangalore Literature Festival recently, various writers discussed the impact of the short story and why it endures. I give below excerpts from the discussion. These are diverse writers giving their views, I have presented it as one letter in this newsletter. |
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Dear Reader,
Here's a discussion about short stories, by various writers.
What is it that is so compelling about a short story? For me, and I suspect it is true for many members of the audience, readers and writers alike, it is that experience, that intense burst of exhilaration, where we come out of our own skin, in to another world and back again. Even when we get back in to our own little world, we find something has changed within us – within our thoughts and feelings - and we carry it with us for quite a long while. It’s a very strangely long impact for a short work to have.
There is a magic in short stories. Take Tolstoy for example. He has written the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) but what you remember and quote from more often is his short story ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’ Be it a Chekhov or an O.Henry, somewhere a short story changes you, shakes your thoughts. A short story forces us to feel things for those ten or fifteen minutes, that half-an-hour. So a short story casts a long shadow.
DEFINITIONS AND COMPARISONS
Well, let’s create an analogy. If you compare a short story with a novel. A short story is like a tree – you climb the tree and pick one fruit. The novel is like wandering about in a big garden. This means that a short story is ripe, precise and well-defined. A short story cannot tolerate even a single sentence which does not fit exactly, because then you lose the reader. A novel can be compared to a journey, to long travel. A short story involves standing at one point and experiencing things. We experience a short burse of energy, but it endures, it lingers in our minds and souls. We do have some short stories which we collect and go back to again and again, depending on the mood at the time.
To my mind, the short story is the most democratic form of literature. You can come in where you want. It can be a cameo, it can be an insight, it can be an experience, it can be a situation, it can be a life-progression. Or, you can have a short story which is novelistic in its approach, in which you get in to a back story. So it’s a very engaging form, you can experiment with it as much as you want to and yet there is a certain sense of perfection which you aspire to because you don’t want to lose the reader at any point.
On a lighter note – a short story is like an affair, you are on someone else’s time, so you better deliver and deliver quickly. Whereas a novel is like a marriage, it has its good parts and its bad parts but you stay with it.
THE READER
A short story reader is someone who is introspective and wants to know about the moments that make life, unlike a novel where you might also seek entertainment. A short story reader is specifically looking for introspection, for something reflective, and to be transported at the end of the story. I think s/he is a more discerning reader.
THE SETTING
“I was about seventeen years old when I started writing short stories seriously. At that time, my hero was a writer who hails from the same small coastal town I was born in. When I mentioned my intention of becoming a writer to my friends, they said I needed to travel the world first. However, when I read my hero’s stories, they were all set in my home town, I recognised most of what he was talking about. That’s when I understood – you don’t need to travel to write a short story, you need to look around you for interesting situations and characters.”
NUGGETS ABOUT THE CRAFT
The craft of writing a short story is like the nails in a chair. The nails have to be there, but they should not be seen. They should not be felt. But without them, you can’t assemble a chair.
A short story falls somewhere between poetry and a novel. It has the lyricism and conciseness of poetry, and at the same time, a life-revelation as in a novel. It is probably harder to write a short story than a chapter or two in a novel or novella. There is some space for meandering in the longer form, but in short fiction you have to be so precise and perfect. You have to get the physical and emotional landscape right in a short span of time. You have to get the characters down just so. They have to grip you. And the pace. In the space of 1,000 to 10,000 words, you need to vary the pace, pick it up, bring it to a climax, have a revelation, and at the end of it all you have to feel satisfied and the reader has to be fulfilled.
When I started writing short stories, it took me six years to write my first collection. When I decided to work in the short form, I started with a character and an issue, and then I would journey with my character. It was very important that I did everything right – the issue, the character’s life, the environment. I chose the short form so that I could address so many more issues.
In a short story, what you say is important – but what you don’t say is more important. That is how you capture the mind of the reader. You hook the reader in the beginning and lead the reader in, then you show what you want to show and don’t show what you don’t want to show. How much you say and how much you don’t say is very important. What lies beneath the surface is the magic of short fiction. Economy works marvellously in this form. A short story needs to be deliberately just a little obscure or mysterious. If you just touch upon something without elaborating and a reader gets what you are trying to say, it is beautiful.
The short story is also all about HOW you say something. For example, I wanted to write a story about a character who was involved in the railways. All I wanted to capture in that story was the movement of a train. I wanted the words and pacing to evoke a moving train. Everything else had to fit in to that desire of mine.
TO CONCLUDE
There was a Russian writer named Issac Babel who wrote about the revolution. He wrote little nuggets – short stories like essays. His collection is called Red Cavalry And Other Stories. He was actually warned by the authorities that he was going to be killed. He was eventually shot by the secret police, for his short stories. That gives you an idea how effective the short story can be. His last words as he was being taken away by the secret police were, “They did not let me finish my story!” That about sums up the importance of the short story, for the reader and writer.
Thanks for listening!
Sonali.
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Thank you for the responses to "Short Stories Newsletter (August 31, 2016)"
Shannon  Great newsletter, Sonali! Thank you for sharing. 
Elfin Dragon-finally published  I love the idea of "telling" a story. It's like the end of your day and you come home and your spouse or family member asks how your day went. When I was younger and doing book reports in school, my parents always made my brother and I stand in front of them and tell them what the book was about. (we couldn't look at any notes) They simply wanted to make sure we understood what we'd read. But your article brought to mind that simple event. And I know when I read a book I still tell my family and friends what it's about.
An apple a day....  Great newsletter, Sonali! I love to listen to stories. |
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Short Stories: January 18, 2017 Issue [#8056]
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