Monday, August 16: The Scribbler
THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY
by James Lincoln Warren
Here’s the presentation I gave to the Orange County chapter of Sisters in Crime on Sunday, August 15, 2010. It is essentially the same presentation I gave in tandem with Melodie Johnson Howe last year at the California Crime Writers Conference, but without Melodie’s contributions, at about half speed, since last year I had to cram an hour’s material into thirty minutes.
The illustrations are the same, so I’ve posted them here again for convenience.
Fascinating. Some of the illustrations look like maps of subway lines (that\’s what I thought at first) but fascinating!
I love graphs! And these are gorgeous. Your length definitions are interesting, but each publication defines them, I’ve found, so one can’t go by established guidelines for that. Everything else is very helpful. Thanks for the post!
Wow. This is splendid. Thoughtful, careful, and incredibly helpful. Genius. Thank you so much!
Love the subway map comparison, Josh, but this doesn’t mean I’m going underground. (All right, that was bad. I’m duly ashamed of myself.) Remember that idea for a short story about a haunted sword I mentioned to you? My treatment of it will be in the November 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, which is to be included in the Bouchercon San Francisco book bags. See if you can’t drop in from Vienna to snap up a copy. There’s a trailer for the story over on my personal website.
Congratulations on your Agatha nomination for Best Short Story, Kaye! My categorizations of short story lengths weren’t intended as definitions of story type so much as descriptions of marketable lengths in professional print publications. The distinctions have to do with how likely it is that a particular story will be bought by an editor.
Genius, Hank? Hardly, just experience. (If you knew me at all, you’d realize what a deep personal sacrifice it is for me to admit that I’m not a genius.) After examing the evidence, after all, I reluctantly observe that I’m not the one with Anthony and Macavity Best Short Story nominations, not to mention your already-won Agatha teapot for best short and your Anthony and Agatha nominations for best novel. See you at Bouchercon!
Many thanks for the congrats!
Oh, thank you! Yes, very excited about Bouchercon. Find me, okay?
Congratulations, James! Can’t wait to read that story . . . and yeah, maybe I will drop by San Francisco, at that. Sounds great.
(My mailing address is still in Vienna, but these days I spend most of my time in Germany and the UK.)
After receiving some questions about plot diagramming, I did a little research into their origin.
Apparently, they were invented by a German novelist in the 19th c. named Gustav Freytag, and go by the name of “Freytag’s Pyramid”. Freytag only identified seven plot elements (I identified nine), so I am puffing out my chest and calling my version a Freytag-Warren Diagram.
The best explanation of the Freytag Pyramid online can be found here.