I confess: after publishing nearly
two dozen short stories, I’d given up. Writing workshops were starting to tell
me my tales didn’t fit into the few-thousand-word format of a short story.
Flash fiction, micro fiction? Forget about it!
 |
| Ann Fields |
Not that Fields saw the light
immediately in her own writing career. She started by writing long – four
romance novels and one novella published under the pen name Anna Larence. Her
short fiction has been published in the anthologies Lyrical Darkness, Voices from
the Block (volumes I and II): A
Legacy of African-American Literature.
“I loved the long form, but I had
a day job and found it hard to keep my focus. So, I took a detour through short
form and fell in love with that form of writing,” she told her mystery-writing
audience.
Writers often ask how many words
it takes to make a novel. How few does it take to make a short story? Like your
summer wardrobe, there’s brief, briefer and briefest. Remember, like the length
of your skirt hem, the following word counts are suggestions. When writing for
publication, check your publisher’s website for specific guidelines.
That said, Fields’ definitions for
short fiction categories range from micro fiction (up to 100 words, or less
than a page), flash fiction (up to 300 words, or up to a single page), short
stories (up to 10,000 words, or 35 pages or less), and novellas (up to 30,000
words, or 130 pages or less).
(I’ll add a note: in my
experience, many ezines and anthologies prefer “short stories” on the shorter
side, often in the 3,000 to 5,000-word range.)
That said, short form fiction
still needs to be fiction. It must be a complete story with a definable
beginning, middle and end. It needs well-developed characters, strong
story conflict, internal (character) conflict, a provocative setting and an
intriguing story question. It will also contain such basic elements as dialogue,
action, description, narration (exposition) and internal monologue
(introspection).
Fields notes that, because of
their brief length, not all short stories will contain all of the basic elements.
Still, it seems like a lot to cover while still staying under 10,000 words,
maybe under 100.
Her suggestion is, rather than
fixating on word-counts, simply to write the story in your heart in the way
that seems natural to you – and it. “How did the story come to you?” The most
important factors in determining the form (and length) of any story, she said,
are the author’s intent, intuition, and writing sense.
“I credit (my intuition) to
reading a lot of short stories and getting familiar with the feel and the
rhythm of them.” For those not sure where to start reading short stories, she
suggests the annual Best American Short
Stories anthologies. “I spend way too much money at Lucky Dog Books and
Half Price Books for those story anthologies.”
Other resources for finding short
stories include Hemingway/PEN Award winners, New American Fiction, and Flannery O’Connor Award winners. Favorite writers include those as diverse as J. California Cooper, O.
Henry, Eudora Welty, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane and Joan Silber. (However, she urges caution when using older writers as guides. Poe’s classic, The Fall of the House of Usher, spends
its first page and a half on a description of setting, something “he would not
be able to get away with in modern times!”)
That said, short stories focus more
strongly on a single character than do longer forms of fiction. More than a
single character is acceptable, but the viewpoint of one individual must be
paramount. They also have a single theme, a unified feel, and are tightly
written. And only one plot. No subplots allowed! Think about whether your story
can be read in a single sitting. And have fun. There’s room for experimentation
and atypical styles in the short fiction format.
***
Need more motivation to write
short? Consider this short story writing contest that offers cash and
publication credits. The Dallas Area Writers Group’s 2017 Short Story Contest
(closes August 15). See the site for details.
