Writing Short Stories Instead of Novels

I never paid much attention to short stories until I started writing them. Admittedly, that’s not a good way to start. I’m taking characters from my second novel, SUNRISING (due to be published next year) and creating new story lines for these characters with short pieces that I hope will become a third volume in the Louise Saga.

Short stories are a challenge. There’s no room for even a few paragraphs that explain historical background. If you start your writing with three ideas you’d like to use as background, you end up with one paragraph at most.

And short as they are, any short story that I’m trying to write needs a beginning, a middle and an end of some sort. It doesn’t have to be a crash-bang ending, but some conclusion or answer to a problem I established in the opening paragraphs.

They also demand concision. Unnecessary words or sentences just stick out like sore thumbs. They have to go.

That said, I’m really enjoying the process of learning how to write short stories. And of course, I’m reading a lot more of them now. The used bookstores I love (now open again, thank God) feature plenty of anthologies with stories from the modern “masters” like Raymond Carver and Alice Munro. I read their work with new and, I hope, open eyes.