Today, I've invited writer, poet and editor, Allen Ashley, onto my blog, to talk about a story that's dear to my heart: the short story.
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I don’t claim to be the world’s
authority on the short story but, having been a published author for over
thirty years and an active editor for the last twelve, I certainly have plenty
of experience; which I hope translates into expertise. I am also the current judge for the British
Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. Ultimately, a lot of editorial decision-making
comes down to personal taste but I’ll offer a few pointers as to what floats my
boat and what torpedoes it.
Have
something happen in your story. Seriously.
I know that might sound trite but I have
read a lot of tales where nothing much actually occurs during the 2000-5000
words. I’m not asking for crash bang
wallop video game style action but, during the course of your narrative, your lead
character/s should undergo at least one experience – physical and/or
psychological – that changes or grows them in some way by the end of the story.
If nothing happens it’s just a character
sketch or a still life.
Keep your
focus clear. If you’ve got to the end of
page 2 and I’ve still got no idea what’s going on, I’m going to bounce the
piece. I don’t have an issue with
bravura writing or necessary description but if I don’t have a clue what’s happening
then I can’t engage.
In general,
stick to the one storyline. Multiple
narratives are quite common in and often work well within novels; for a
2500-5000 worder it’s best to stay with just the one path. Two if you must; but if you change perspective
after 300/500 words or so you risk breaking the reader’s empathy. A two-track story will need some sort of
convergence in its denouement. Of course,
rules are made to be learned and then broken and I have to own up to having
co-written with Andrew Hook a short story that had three separate narrative lines. We must have got away with it because “Mermaids in a Snowstorm” was published
by Gary Fry’s “Fusing Horizons”.
Avoid info
dumps or what I call “Second Page Syndrome”. This is where an author starts a story with a
reasonably engaging action scene on the first page then spends the next 500
words or more explaining how the protagonist came to be in that situation or
why the world they live in operates the way it does. To my mind, in the first instance, this is
cheating. Basically, you are teasing the
reader the way certain TV dramas often do by having some action before the titles
or the ad break then changing down the gears into slow build-up back to where
we started. A straightforward chronology
is often a better choice. In the second
instance, with a whole heap of world building lumped into pages 2 and 3, my
issue is that it’s illogical. We don’t
spend our lives explaining all the things we take for granted – if I boil a
kettle or catch a tube, I don’t need a thesis on the discovery and application
of electricity. Put yourself in your
character’s head – if there are aspects of their world that are commonplace and
assumed, let that be true for your
reader as well.
Don’t have
too many characters. My average is
probably four. Honestly. Sure, I’m not necessarily including minor bit
part players – the waitress in the café, the ticket inspector on the train,
etc; people who don’t need to be named other than by their function. Let me give you some names that create enough
drama without a cast of thousands: Othello, Desdemona and Iago. Or Hansel, Gretel, the witch, the stepmother
(who may also be the witch), and the feckless father. Maybe it’s my concentration issue but I find
that if there are too many named speakers I get confused about who is who.
Use dialogue
wisely. Don’t record every “um”, “ah”,
“like” and “you know” of every conversation. Taut, well-paced dialogue can move a story
along quicker than description of character or even action. Your players are defined by what they do and, crucially,
say.
As a general
rule, don’t go overboard on idiom, dialect and accent. Sure, Anthony Burgess’ droogs had their own
street slang in “A Clockwork Orange” and
that is crucial to the success of the novel; but mostly in a short story it’s
best to play safe and stick to Standard English. Lynne Barrett-Lee writes succinctly about this
in a recent issue of online writing journal “Words With Jam” – “Things I hate: Phonetic dialogue to denote
regional accents.” The internal voice
that narrates the tale doesn’t like struggling with awkwardly rendered versions
of conversation. Save the Geordie twang
or the Devon burr for when you’re scripting
the TV adaptation.
Cut the last
line off your ending. Or more. Tell the reader enough but don’t over-explain,
it spoils the magic.
Accept that
your ideas, your what ifs, might not be as original as you thought. I once had a very gentle put down from the
lovely, late Ken Bulmer when I approached him with a whole list of what I
thought were cracking plot ideas for his “New
Writings in SF” series. He told me
they were all quite familiar and rather generic.
Even the
classics might not be as brand spanking new as we believe. A misfit child at a school for witchcraft and
magic? Harry who? Sounds to me like Jill Murphy’s “The Worst Witch”. Orwell’s “1984”?
Heavily influenced by Zamyatin’s “We”. So I suppose that old adage is true: It ain’t
what you do, it’s the way that you do it.
Kurt
Vonnegut had a great piece of advice, which was: “Start the story as close to
the end as you dare.” This ensures
urgency and drama and helps you to avoid spending pages scene setting and
waffling. It’s certainly a maxim I have
tried to apply.
Another
arresting way of starting your story is what I call the trap door method. Some might call it the rug pull. This is where you set up an intriguing
scenario to reel your readers in before suddenly revealing extra significant
information that suddenly changes the emphasis and import of what’s gone
before. This is a technique I applied in
my novelette “Somme-Nambula”. In the first paragraph, the narrator John Dove
talks about a magician/mesmerist he saw in his youth, someone who could catch a
live bullet in his hands. Dove imagines
himself as a perfect choice to be plucked out as a foil from the audience “because I was already
a noted somnambulist”. In the very next
paragraph, he reveals: “Not that I said anything of the sort to the recruiting
officer as he placed light pencil ticks on my enlistment papers.” This sentence removes him from the past and
the end of the pier stage show to an immediate future in the trenches of the
First World War.
How should you end
your story? Over the years, I have
veered away from the Saki or Roald Dahl style unexpected twist at the end. This method works reasonably well for flash
fiction but can be rather unsatisfying in a longer piece. Why? Essentially,
a story that builds solely towards its twist or reversal ending doesn’t always
bear a second reading – once you know the trick or punchline, there may not be
enough else there to sustain interest. Consider
this as well: the story has in many ways been written backwards and in the same
manner as a joke, where it’s all about hitting that final line. So – go for a fulfilling end that at least
ties up some of the loose ends but is still open enough to keep resonating with
the reader for a while after they’ve put down the book or logged off the
screen.
Be bold, take chances.
The memorable stories stand out for a
reason. Admittedly, some editors like
their fiction cosy and almost indistinguishable from whatever has gone before. So here’s some advice: don’t have anything to
do with those editors. Don’t bother
submitting and don’t buy their predictable product. It’s just wallpaper; literary white bread. Find the places that genuinely want to, or better
still, require a fresh approach and
an individual voice. In 2012, the first
time that I judged the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition, I was
almost at the closing of the submission window and I had some very good stories
on my shortlist. Then something popped
into my Inbox which blew everybody else out of the water. This was “Rope
of Words” by Megan Kerr. This piece
was audacious yet light, taking in fairy tales and Greek mythology in a
brilliantly clever and inventive tale posited on the device of words
being magical, used as a currency, a treasure, artistic artefacts, etc. What really swung it for me was that Megan
used the device of relevant segments of words / word chains to demarcate the
divisions between her story sections. Like
this:
*
~ refractory ~ monger ~ wangle ~ farrier ~ ether ~ rive ~ reagent ~
expiate ~ spume ~ cranny ~ sluice ~
*
Breathtaking stuff and a
classic example of that holy grail for editors / judges: the “I wish I’d
written that!” moment.
Lastly, for
now: I also work as a lyricist and a poet. In those two disciplines, every single word or
even syllable has to earn its place. Treat
short stories exactly the same way. I
do. Follow this neo-chiasmus: You only
have a short word count, make each word count. Don’t waffle. Waffle is for maple syrup and squirty cream;
not for fiction.
Of course,
you are completely at liberty to disregard or disagree with any advice I’ve
offered here. Like I mentioned earlier,
rules are there to be broken. I’m sure
that I’ve not properly stuck by my own maxims, so don’t bother pulling me on
it. Deborah asked me for some thoughts
on the short story so, naturally, I obliged. Now go off and write… and impress me with your
story.
Thanks for reading.
– Allen
Allen is also the judge for the
British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. Entrance closes 30 June 2015.
Details here: http://www.britishfantasysociety.org/the-bfs-short-story-competition-2015/
Loved this post - some great advice. Thanks Allen (and Debs).
ReplyDeleteCheers, Simon. I'm mulling over Allen's words, too. Mulling
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