Why Short Stories?

Since you asked...

This past Thursday someone in workshop asked, “Why short stories?”

The gist was Why not begin by writing novels? Why write stories when the market for short stories is lousy?

First, the market isn’t quite dead.

During the lockdown several actors contacted me. With theaters closed and films not being shot, these actors had gone into recording books because that work could still be done remotely. The biggest issue was that audio publishers wanted short fiction. Per my actor friends, the podcast explosion had honed people’s taste for shorter and shorter products, and the hottest sellers were stories that could be read aloud in twenty minutes or less. Forty minutes, tops.

Novellas were suddenly saleable. For decades novellas had been the bane of publishing, but now audio houses wanted them. Short story collections, too. Decades ago, Amazon floated the idea of “Amazon Singles” — short stories that could be bought individually — and they approached me about launching Guts among the first wave. These would be like the 45rpm singles we bought up until the 80s. The project didn’t seem to get traction.

In this world of channel surfing and web surfing, I’m not surprised that my “novel of stories” Haunted is second only to Fight Club as my top seller. As first written, Haunted was supposed to be a collection of short stories, but the publisher was so averse to collections that they asked me to place all the stories within the context of a larger envelop story.

In the audio world at least, the short story is trending.

What’s more, the time is ripe.

In his history and analysis of writing programs, The Program Era, author Mark McGurl touches on story collections. He proposes that such collections are the easiest way to teach literature and creative writing, but that academia must update its syllabi every generation or so. Thus collections by Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner are replaced by collections by Junot Diaz and Nami Mun. McGurl writes that Denis Johnson will always be remembered for his collection Jesus’ Son because college students are less resistant to stories.

Students can dissect stories and learn to replicate the writer’s effects. As per McGurl this periodic need to refresh college reading lists creates short-lived-but-major demands for publishers to bring out collections. When I began to write in the late 80s and early 90s the market wanted Barry Hannah, Thom Jones, Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, and Mark Richard. The glossy magazines all bought short fiction, and a story sold to Playboy could fetch sixteen thousand dollars, easy-peasy.

We haven’t seen a bull market for short stories in decades, so academia might soon trigger one.

A short story is never just a short story.

A short story is your way to test a premise and see how readily people engage with it. A story is your way to experiment with voice and structure and see if it confuses the reader.

Among my favorite anecdotes is one about shooting the film Citizen Kane. Before the project was officially approved and funded, the director Orson Welles asked to shoot some test scenes to experiment with lighting and depth of focus. Each “test” was actually a major plot point in the overall story, so by the time RKO caught on, he’d already shot the most important scenes.

By writing short stories, you can execute the key parts of a future novel. Each can stand alone, and if you’re ever on tour to promote the book you have a self-contained story to read aloud. Likewise, if a media outlet wants to excerpt a stand-alone section, you’ve got those stories to sell them.

Also, consider my crack-pot theory that if someone likes a book or film, they really only like about ten percent of it. Maybe twenty. For instance, when I watch Citizen Kane I fast forward through most of the dialog-heavy scenes and only linger on the scenes of utter despair. Go back and revisit your favorites and you’ll find yourself skimming through long stretches. As a writer, if you can infuse a novel with a half dozen flawless chapters — which began life as short stories — it’s likely the reader will love the “whole” book.

The linear thing

If your work doesn’t ultimately surprise you it will never surprise your reader. By writing in a nonlinear way — creating a series of plot points and back stories with no clear idea how they will eventually fit together — you stand a better chance of being amazed by the result.

The goal is always to tap into your deeper self. Tom would say that everyday “monkey mind” plots and diagrams slick, ho-hum novels, and knows every twist and turn before word one is written. But the deeper, collective “elephant mind” — Tom’s distinction — will allow you to create seemingly unrelated events, then be stunned when those events seem to create their own pattern once juxtaposed with each other.

How do you assemble a jigsaw puzzle? Maybe you link all the edge pieces, first. Then you look for every piece with a little red color, so you can assemble a rose. Then you look for the bits of green you can link to create a patch of leaves. My point is that you create sub-assemblies before you discover how they fit together.

Writing short stories allows you to write a novel the way you’d assemble a puzzle. You get the short-term satisfaction of completing each detail, then the larger thrill when those smaller assemblies fit together like magic.

Don’t suffocate under the burden of the great incomplete beast

Most of us work day jobs. We care for children or parents. We’ve a lot on our plates. The fastest route to the liquor cabinet is to try and juggle the plot of an unfinished novel in your head for months or years. Or worse, to rush through writing it, just to be done.

The short story gives you the satisfaction of knowing you got one small part — but likely a very important part — done, and done well. And if an agent or editor wants to read a sample, you have the best parts ready to send.

From where I stand, that’s why we write short stories.