  Short Stories
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Finessing Your Short Story
If you know me at all, you know how much I love the short stories. Unlike a novel, a short story can be read in just one sitting, and therein lays the big attraction: You can read it, experience the rush of the roller coaster ride, and then get back to your normal routine. Unless you're like me. To me, short stories are like Lay's potato chips, I can't read just one.
But writing short stories can be a little tricky and requires a bit of finesse to pull it off well. Short stories are like a spinning top whirling at high velocity, setting words and images in collision to form a larger whole. With all the power and intensity, it materializes into something so bright that it astonishes the reader with how quickly the effect was achieved and was still able to encompass the feeling and emotional power of a much longer piece but conveyed in a collapsed space.
It’s true short stories don’t get to indulge in long descriptions of human psychology or examine complex moral dilemmas and weighty choices, but that’s because the characters don’t have time to act; they are too busy reacting to whatever situation they find themselves in. And it doesn’t matter how absurd the situation is, how many bad decisions were made along the way, or even how many character flaws got them to where they are. These things are not in question. What matters is that they are there, and they must now react to whatever situation they face. And, it’s those particular circumstances that draws your reader into the story.
Short stories are equivalent to ‘old time’ cliffhangers. They are filled with tightrope acts of high tension and desperation, or whatever it takes to make your reader unable to stop reading. Whether it’s a cave-in at the mine, a car wreck, a sudden storm at sea, or even an alien abduction, the situation is what makes the palms sweat, heart palpitate, and gives the nervous ‘on-the-edge-of-your-seat’ feeling that forces your reader to keep plowing through the story. One of my favorite things to do is to kill somebody off right away. There’s not a reader out there that can resist hanging around to see what happens next.
Don’t get me wrong, you can still have a fantastic character in a short story, in fact, it’s a must, but it’s the situation that makes the reader want to find out what happens. For example, just recently the ’big news’ touted by the media has been the terrible situation that a family found themselves in when they made a wrong turn off the highway and entered a section of Grant’s Pass that left them stranded in a snow storm. After several days the family was rescued, but the husband set out on his own to find help and was found dead. Also in this area, three climbers decided to take on Mount Hood just before a record-breaking windstorm. As of this writing, only one has been found in a small snow cave…he didn’t make it. These headlines are intriguing because of the situations presented: What happened? What were their last moments like? As readers, we have to know…we need to know. They are true short stories taken right out of the paper. When writing your next story, remember to offer-up something that will make your readers devour your words…a desperate situation of ‘life and death’, a nail-biter that your reader will enjoy up to the very last word.
Until next time, this is your guest editor, billwilcox, signing off.
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Short Stories: December 20, 2006 Issue [#1448]
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