What is a Good Short Story?

People say that short stories are the hardest form. I can understand why, because short stories consist of the same elements as novels: plot and characterisation, but the writer has less space to develop them. Besides, short stories vary widely. They can range in length from 1,000 to about 15,000 words and it is difficult to say what makes a good short story. A comparison of stories by writers from Checkov through Katherine Mansfield to Raymond Carver shows a wide variety of approaches.

When I first learned to write short stories, I read that the writer needs to give her character a problem. The character sets out to solve it, but encounters complications. By the end of the story, he has either solved the problem or completely failed to do so. However, in a short story like Hemingway’s Hills like White Elephants, it is not obvious what the problem is. Is the girl pregnant? Does the man want her to have an abortion? The reader gets the impression the girl has become disillusioned with her lover. That is all.

It is, I think, safe to say that, at the end of the story, something should have changed. That change may be dramatic. For example, Prosper Merimée’s story Mateo Falcone ends with the title character shooting his own son. But the change can be much more subtle. One of your characters may have come to a realisation about his or her life.

In Writing Short Stories Flannery O’ Connor advised writers that, if they start with the character, something would happen. However, you need to place your character in a situation where his peculiarities produce actions. If you want to write about a man who is obsessed with collecting junk, you might want to give him a house or a flat which he can fill with junk and a wife who objects. So your character and plot evolve together to build a story.

Obviously, you can’t develop a character in a short story to the depth you might in a novel. However, you do have a range of tools. Physical characteristics: does this man stoop, or frown all the time? Does this woman wear a lot of make up, or slop around in dirty jeans? The way people speak can tell you a lot: class, level of education, place of origin. And the place they live in tells you more. Does your character leave his clothes on the floor and dirty dishes in the sink? Does she fill her house with ornaments from far-off places?

Asking all these questions makes me think. Perhaps I need to go back to my stories and think a bit more about my characters.

Starting Again

It’s New Year 2016 – a good time to start again. I published my novel Dreaming in Stone in September 2015 and, since then, I’ve been asking myself ‘What next?’ I’ve written a few short stories, one of which, Motorway Madness, won a prize in the competition for Artificium’s first edition. But, some of the time I’ve been suffering from writer’s block. It’s easy to think I can’t write any longer. Maybe what I need is an idea for a new novel.

Where do you get your ideas?

My first resource is my journal. I’ve been keeping a journal for more years than I care to admit. Most of it is very boring – I even run to describing meals I’ve cooked and food I’ve bought from the supermarket. But I also throw in ideas for stories, regardless of whether I think I’m likely to write them or not. My rule for my journal is that the quality doesn’t matter. I write any old rubbish that comes into my head.

Newspapers and magazines provide a possible source of ideas. The idea for Dreaming in Stone came partly from an article in The Guardian’s magazine. An English couple bought a château in Brittany and claimed they would renovate it to provide a golf course and holiday lets. But they got into debt, drank too much and failed to get their project off the ground. In the end, the man killed his wife. I wondered if I could adapt that story to the house we own in South West France. Once I started, my novel took on a life of its own.

Of course, you can use other people’s stories – fact or fiction, to inspire your stories. That doesn’t mean plagiarism but looking at what other writers are doing and learning from it. I’ve recently read Kate Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy – Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel. These are real page-turners and beautifully written, with a strong sense of historical events resonating through time. I was interested in the way she threads the supernatural through the natural and was wondering if that was something I could use as inspiration.