"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Monday, May 17
Nasty, Brutish, And Short
Interesting discussion over at Sarah's place about the current state of short stories. Now, I love short stories. I suspect I caught it from my mother, a former teacher. She had an old copy of TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL - lifted from the library in her hometown! - and I remember reading it and her Alfred Hitchcock anthologies and Roald Dahl and KISS ME AGAIN, STRANGER when I was a kid. My mother was heavily into horror.
I discovered Rex Stout as a teen, and I have almost all the Nero Wolfe 'triple' books, each with three long stories. As someone else once noted, this was his best length. Many of his novels had a stretched-out feel.
Then I got into science fiction. I probably have 50 sci-fi anthologies stashed in my attic. But it seemed to get stale after a while, and I switched to crime fiction about 10 years ago. I have another 50 or so collections of that. That's about 2,000 short stories, and I've read almost every one.
I suppose I even have a formula for when I write one. I like to jump right into the action with a line like "Babjak pulled to the curb and cut the engine," or "It's tough to follow someone who doesn't know where he's going." Then a brief but (hopefully) strong setup, and a complication or two to change direction, followed by a strong close.
And that close has to be strong. Most short stories exist only as a vehicle for their ending. A novel can be enjoyed as a destination, but in a short story, there has to be a "there" there. The end must pay off the rest of the story.
These days I tend to prefer stories about character rather than plot, but a good plot twist is nothing to sneeze at. It's tough to put together all the elements and make them all work, but it's very satisfying. I love it... when a plan comes together.
