Tuesday, June 5: High-Heeled Gumshoe
WHY NOT THE SHORT STORY?
by Melodie Johnson Howe
Miles Davis commented that if you can’t say it in eight bars, you can’t say it. He was talking about improvisational jazz. But he could have been talking about the short story. If you can’t write it in a few pages, you can’t write it.
I know there is supposed to be a resurgence of the short story. And I hope there is. Tom Nolan talked about it on this blog and in the WSJ. But when I teach at various writers’ workshops I don’t see new writers coming in with short stories. They come in with big novels ready to sell a million copies. It never occurred to me to ask them why they don’t choose to write in the short form.
What I find missing in most new writers work is suspense, a sense of immediacy, and the sharp, quick observations that can bring a character quickly to life. There are great novelists who are not good short story writers and vice versa. But as far as honing the craft of writing what could be a better tool than the short story?
The novel form lulls new writers into thinking they have all the time in the world. They’ve watched enough movies and read enough thrillers to know they have to start out with some kind of dramatic bang, which they manage to do; and then their story dwindles into minutia. When I ask a writer, for example, what happened to the protagonist’s girlfriend in Chapter Ten, I’m told we will find that out in Chapter Twenty-five. When I reply that withholding this information muddles the story, thereby diluting the suspense, he looks at me as if I’ve just axed out the best pages of his work. Which brings us back to Miles Davis and his eight bars.
What if the burden of writing a SOCKO MEGA BESTSELLER was removed from their shoulders? What if they only had eight pages? What would they be forced to learn about themselves as writers? What magic might happen to their work? They might discover a great idea for a novel as Raymond Chandler did in The Lady in the Lake.
I’ll be teaching at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in the later part of June. Blogging for Criminal Brief has given me an idea–I’m going to poll my new writers and see how many read short stories and how many want to write them. In this day an age of text messaging, blogs, sound bites, and videos–why not the short story?
Personally, I’m fairly incomprehensible after about the 3rd bar.
I came to short stories after slogging through two novels and a handful of screenplays (minor interest, no sales). The short story, for me, is indeed the perfect format to hone skills and to experiment.
Melodie Johnson Howe: “If you can’t write it in a few pages, you can’t write it.”
To get the best “few pages,” the modern writer will have to leave most of the backstory to the reader’s imagination. There’s nothing like second-guessing a master; but, I’ll risk it anyway: Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarletwould have been much shorter and better had the author not insisted on imbedding a “western” in a “mystery!”
Today, paying pulp authors by the word only encourages prolixity. There’s got to be a better way.
“Less is more” only when the journey is valued less than the destination: you take a plane, or you read an eight-page short story. If your goal is to spend the day meandering through the countryside or slowing turning the pages of War and Peace, you’re in no hurry for the journey to end. Some experiences just can’t be distilled. It’s all or nothing.
For me, it’s all I know. I started by entering a contest and most contests are short stories. So that’s what I write. I’ve written and completed one novel, a young adult, at just over 50,000 words, but by industry standards for mysteries that is short. For young adult, I’m guessing that is pretty average. I like the short story and I love freebie contests that offer the opportunity of possibly getting published.
I have one friend who adamantly states she won’t do short stories and I’ve questioned her numerous times as to why not, and have even tried encouraging her to enter some contests with me, but she refuses to try. She says she has too much to say that she couldn’t get it in a short story. I guess to each his own. Short stories rock – so that’s where I will concentrate my writing skills. I have set a goal now to have five short stories published by the end of the year, so I need to get some of my things polished and sent to the publisher to see if she is interested. – see you all in the postings – E 🙂
I have been corrected on my previous posting about this friend – she apparently wrote short stories for 15 years and likes writing novels better. I honestly did not know and did not mean to offend her or anyone else. I have been informed that the sentence I wrote – “she refuses to try” should read that “she knows herself better than I do”. Had I known she previously wrote short stories, I wouldn’t have posted the message the same way – but I still believe it is to each his own and that some like short stories and can write them very well and others don’t like them at all – E 🙂
I like some of the 2500 (+/0) word contests, not because I have only 2500 words to say, but because it’s one hell of a learning experience trimming a 3000-3500 word story down to its bare essentials.
haha Leigh. If only I had that problem. I am always under (or so it seems to me) word counts. If a contest says top limit is 4000, I come in at 3800 or there abouts. All the Echelon Press ones are 3000 to 6000 and so far the three I’ve entered have been 3800, 3500 and maybe 4300 for the last one. I have a more difficult time reaching the upper limits. I write so straight forward (I say I write simple – I’m a very simple writer – and my friends get mad at me. Tell me that I don’t write simple – I just write straightforward. Either way, I don’t have the problem of trimming something down for a contest because usually I’m writing for that particular contest and not thinking of the next one – lol – go figure – I’m so bassackwards – lol – E 🙂
Melodie, I have enjoyed reading your short stories for some time now. “Another Tented Evening” is a favorite and what was the one about the Star and finding a package outside of Tiffany’s? I love that one. Keep the short stories coming. We love them.
L
There is a reason for avoiding the short story – for the most part it doesn’t pay. Laura Lippman brought this issue up (somewhere) recently. A short story might bring her a couple hundred dollars. If you collect 80k words worth of those stories, they might earn her $3000. If she wrote an 80k novel, I’m tempted to think she could make more money.
For myself (and I don’t make LL money) I find it is difficult writing short stories without being able to find a home for them. I still write them, but trying to figure out who to send them to is a chore.