Amanda's blog
Short Stories:a defence
Posted on: 03 March 2010
PS My short story will br broadcast on Radio 4 on Wed 3rd March at 15.30pm.
Why is it, I wonder, that writing a short story always feels like laying an egg, whereas writing a novel feels like undergoing major surgery? It isn’t just, as Susan Hill pointed out to me in her usual crisp manner, that one is shorter than the other. There is an aesthetic difference which is interesting to ponder.
I’ve written a short story called The Ghost Writer for Radio 4 as part of the Bath Festival (
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r0tbv ). My story is very short indeed (2,200 words or about 7 pages) which was quite a technical challenge, and it’s also very light-hearted if not exactly light-minded, being about the conflict between serious literary aspiration and commercial fiction. This is something that all novelists wrestle with, especially if female. One the one hand, we have serious things to say about the world as we see it, or the condition of being female. On the other hand, we can only survive the latter by having a sense of humour. An imp is perpetually whispering in the ear: if you can make people laugh, you could write something with a pink cover that would make you a great deal better-off than you are now. In January, when the taxman looms, this becomes especially hard to resist. Fortunately, I have earned so little (about half the average minimum wage) in the most recent tax-year that the tax-man is actually paying me back, so in my case temptation is avoided.
Anyway: the short story. Novelists always tend to look down on the short story. The novel is the Big, Swinging Dick of Literature and the short story the timorous, self-deprecating, self-denying creature which keeps its eyes modestly cast down like the heroine of a romantic tale. It insists on elegance, grace, wit, perfection: it’s a wonder, really, that Jane Austen didn’t write short stories, because the sensibility of the short story seems so akin to hers. The short story denies itself almost everything, and, like a nun in ecstasy, grants us a single moment of mystic truth. Among the best ever written were by Joyce, Chekhov, Katharine Mansfield and Henry James; they hold their own against the novel because the novel by its very appetite and energy is imperfect.
I believe that short stories should be stories, an idea which is so old-fashioned that it may once again be fashionable. It’s hard work writing an actual story, rather than 2,200 words of beautifully-crafted prose. I hope I don’t sound conceited when I say I’ve been able to write prose for a very, very long time now and I don’t regard it with the reverence bordering on awe of some. (This does not mean that I fail to think about the precision, weight, euphony etc of every word I choose, or about the shades of personality, thought, feeling and information that each conveys. But on the whole a bit silly to constantly draw attention to how absolutely brilliantly you are writing something. You might say that I belong to the Angela Hewitt school of writing, rather than the Glenn Gould one.)
A story, on the other hand, is an extremely difficult thing indeed to write. All those idiotic books, which claim that there are only seven basic plots, miss this point. A plot is not a piece of Lego. It is like the springy piece of wood that an archer must bend in order to direct an arrow. When my children were set creative writing assignments for homework, they would wrestle with what is now called the narrative arc. How to choose the right bit of wood? How to bend it? What could happen? “A story is about something happening to someone. As a result they change,” was what I would always say. While this is far too reductive for the great masters of the form, it’s a useful rule of thumb. It’s an irony only a writer can appreciate that children are regularly asked to produce as homework the two most difficult and subtle forms of writing – poetry and the short story – for English.
I do not write short stories unless a magazine or newspaper commissions them. (You can read one of my most recent, which was the New Statesman Christmas story for 2009, called The Christmas Tin
http://www.newstatesman.com/fiction/2009/12/christmas-8220-polly-story.) They pay very poorly, though I find them a welcome relief after completing a novel; because they are usually written to order, they summon up the same burst of adrenalin that journalism does. I do not pretend to be a brilliant short story writer, like my friend Helen Simpson, but I spend three times as long editing and polishing a story as I do writing it. I find them satisfying because they only take a few days to write, and are self-contained (although I amuse myself by finding characters from my imaginary universe to bring out of their box – those who have read Hearts and Minds will recognise Justin Vest, who is the narrator of The Ghost Writer, and has a day job as Arts Editor of the
Rambler magazine.)
The best stories suggest a whole world, like a novel, but show you only a fragment of it; those which leave you with questions in your mind about the future, or reeling at an unexpected yet logical revelation are also delightful. What they do require is craft, and a kind of kink in the brain which is similar to that which generates jokes. I am appalled by the many tedious, slackly-written stories now printed by newspapers, which often seem to be accepted simply because an author is well-known. Far from acting as an inducement to discover other work, they act as the reverse. On the other hand, I loved the short-list of the recent National Short Story Competition (especially Other People’s Gods by Naomi Alderman, which I thought ought to have won) because they were beautifully-crafted, moving and genuinely interesting as stories.
Some of my own favourite short stories are “genre” – horror and SF. When I was a child, I devoured those Faber Best SF collections edited by Edmund Crispin. About half appeared to be the ravings of men in white coats, but others introduced me to Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Asimov and Heinlen, whom I then continued to enjoy to varying degrees. I love Henry James’s ghost stories, and Dickens’s. SF and horror are particularly good at what Somerset Maugham called the twist in the tail. (Maugham is another under-rated writer; even if he degenerated into hackery and wrote the same story twice in one instance, at his best, as in Rain, he is masterly.)
Given the short attention-span we are supposed to have, short stories should be flourishing as never before, yet the reverse is true. The outlets by which writers such as William Boyd, Ian McEwen and Sylvia Plath first honed their craft have largely vanished, although Prospect has found some good new voices to champion. Collections of short stories are almost bound to be turned down by publishers, unless they are by – you’ve guessed it – novelists.
So is the short story on the endangered list? I would love to write more, but will not do so speculatively even though I usually have a couple lurking shyly in the undergrowth of my filing system. I think of them as being like those early mammals in Walking With Beasts, lying low in patience and cunning, while the great dinosaur of the Novel rampages around overhead, unaware that its day is done.
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Comments
At 08:09:53 on 10 March 2010, adele geras wrote:
I too loved the short story for Christmas and will go and listen to the BBC one shortly. Agree with everything you and Kath Langrish have said about children and short story writing. Flash Fiction is a good thing to do with older children who love the challenge some of them of writing a whole story in say 150 words! Otherwise, left to their own devices they do go on and on....and why not??
At 11:09:24 on 27 January 2010, Brian Keaney wrote:
Not only are children frequently expected to write short stories, usually without being shown any models, those short stories must of necessity be incredibly brief - a few hundred words. What a challenge that is! And how often do their teachers even have time to read them properly?
At 13:12:46 on 27 January 2010, Lee Lowe wrote:
Why do you see the short story as endangered? Because publishers are reluctant to touch collections of them? This is not the only way to gauge the health of the form. In fact, I see no sign that the short story is languishing - rather, in fact, the opposite, considering the proliferation of online literary magazines which offer it a good home - and MFA programmes! And I imagine that as more and more people read electronically, there may even be a further flourishing. The best short stories are extremely difficult to write, that is true, and I'm inclined to mistrust efforts by novelists who 'take a break' by writing them. Like anything else, they require a long apprenticeship. (I consider myself a rank beginner in this regard.) You might want to have a look at this blog by a long-time critic and scholar of the short story: http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com/
At 14:42:43 on 28 January 2010, Amanda wrote:
Thanks for these comments, and welcome Joe from Texas! I think that the proliferation of stories on the web is no indication of health, any more than the proliferation of critcism - though Lee, I am going to look at http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com/ in a moment. I am often delighted and also saddened by how good many unpublished authors are. Maybe it''s enough to have an on-line readership. To me, if something doesn''t have a physical shape and form, it''s not there. Maybe I''m an old-fashioned empiricist and Luddite for feeling this way.
I do think that the reluctance of publishers to publish short stories is very sad. I got onto all kinds of authors, particularly children''s and SF ones, by means of cheap magazine-format collections. No newsagent would stock these any more. Occasionally you get charity collections, which I''ve been asked to contribute to in return for £1, but I''ve never seen these on sale...
At 06:15:14 on 28 January 2010, Joe L. Blevins wrote:
To Amanda and interested parties: Amanda has great insight in writing and her outlook into writing short stories verses being a novelist. I had some nice smiles over my morning coffee. I have lived this in my own mind, over and over again. Often I am that 'dinosaur' looking for my place in the world, and the world is far different from the world I grew up in. Finding a premise these days is so difficult unless you are a vampire, or some creature from mythology shaking the dust off yourself. These have their place, but not in my world. They are fun to visit, but I do not want to live there. I fully understand about 'bending that piece of wood' and making that plot attractive, useful, and interesting. We are dodging those 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' that are often sent our direction when we try to write something viable. We go out on that limb to publish something viable and someone is busy sawing it off behind us, it seems.There are stacks of books in my 'book box' to publish one day. A few are plays, and some have some hope to make it to someone's shelf or book bag. Writing is one thing and then doing promotions are a whole different animal too. My main point is that is a joy to read of another person that shares a similar view of the world as it is quite refreshing and much needed today. Our goal is to one day write a great novel that shakes the world to its core. In the mean time it is some lean days and we may eat many peanut butter sandwiches until our ship comes in. Thank you. It is a joy to meet you. I will be reading your stories in the near future. Joe Blevins, Farmersville, Texas USA Author of the Texas Republic series, and A Visit to Pawpaw's: for children.
At 07:13:21 on 28 January 2010, katherine langrish wrote:
I totally agree with you and Brian that it's a huge thing to ask children to write short stories. Inevitably they have trouble (often with the endings) and probably think they're not very good writers as a result. Have you noticed how children who write for fun often get together in pairs and write endless picaresque tales in which one thing follows another and there's never any conclusion?
I read your Christmas story and loved it.
At 06:12:12 on 30 January 2010, Lee Lowe wrote:
I think I haven't made my point clear. The proliferation of stories on the net does not indicate their quality, if that's what you mean by health. Of course not. All it means is that not to be published in a print magazine, which rarely pays much - there are exceptions - or not to have a volume of short stories published - which even more rarely provides a significant source of income - is no longer an obstacle to finding a readership for your stories. Any writer keen to concentrate on short fiction now has other options. Younger readers will be able to find their way into fiction, just as you did, via cheap electronic magazine formats - or at least that's my hope! But are you in fact judging the heath of the short story by its quality or by the willingness of publishers to publish short stories? These seem to me to be two different criteria. Or do you see a relationship between the two?
At 03:58:44 on 24 March 2010, Colin Leopold wrote:
Hi Amanda, First time visitor to your blog and an interesting read. I genuinely think Lee has hit the nail on the head here re The Future of The Short Story. You write that "I got onto all kinds of authors, particularly children''s and SF ones, by means of cheap magazine-format collections. No newsagent would stock these any more". Do you not see how online (self) publishing is perfectly positioned to take the baton here for the next generation, as is happening with magazines and comment? "To me if something doesn''t have a physical shape and form, it''s not there. Maybe I''m an old-fashioned empiricist and Luddite for feeling this way." I think as an industry we need to embrace the opportunities that come with new technology. I am worried anyone clinging onto this attitude will eventually be left in the charity shop with vinyl and cassettes, instead of bolding entering (and, crucially, shaping) new markets. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
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