Commentary on Short Story

It was said by more than one author that the ‘golden age’ of the short story was the 1920s, and that although varied publications remain (The New Yorker, Myslexia, The Woman’s Weekly), there is little opportunity in the modern age for the short story writer. Was this, as Kurt Vonnegut argued the result of television? Vonnegut claimed:

When I started out it was possible to make a living as a freelance writer of fiction…because it was still the golden age of magazines, and it looked as though it would go on forever…Then television, with no malice whatsoever-just a better buy for advertisers- knocked the magazines out of business.1

If Vonnegut is correct then what does the 24/7 media, Barack Obama spoke of, during his address at Hampton University in 2010, mean for the short story? How can short stories compete with the endless flow of information Obama described as a ‘distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment…putting pressure on you? There are so many other ways to while the hours, so much information to keep track of. Ofcom research concluded, in 2010, that Brits spend 45% of their waking hours using media and communications. It would be naïve to ignore the competition the short story is up against. However, it could be argued that the short story is the perfect form for the digital age, when those living in developed nations have become so accustomed to intense concentration for shorter periods of time. And there is something special, unique about the short story experience. A particular satisfaction from a well-crafted tale, which builds to a conclusion and can be read in one go, is not easily imitated. Certainly, the form has potency that keeps pulling me back, both as a reader and a writer. I feel as Edgar Allan Poe argued that ‘the intensity of short, concentrated forms read in one sitting increases there emotional impact.’2
In Silence by Alice Munro, the author manages to portray over twenty years of loss in less than eight thousand words. In this story the central character’s daughter goes to a spiritual retreat and never returns. Munro evokes the weight of loss so carefully that the feeling of the story resonates long after the last page has been turned. This is an example of the way the emotion within the best short fiction is almost tangible. It is as if the condensed nature of the story releases an essence that is absorbed by the reader.
The short story is as Ailsa Cox describes ‘…a protean form, encompassing infinite variations and, just like the novel, shading into other genres.3’ So how should we to define short fiction? Is it Joyce Carol Oates’s maximum ’10,000 words: and…it achieves closure’? Considering this question Cox goes on to argue that we shouldn’t ‘impose rigid distinctions’. Nonetheless, various definitions do exist. Collins dictionary, for example, defines the short story as ‘a prose narrative of shorter length than the novel, esp. one that concentrates on a single theme’. However, the Merriam-Webster (online) Dictionary aims for greater precision citing, ‘an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot’. Yet, unlike Oates neither specifies a maximum length. Cox continues that many highlight that short stories are ‘restricted to a limited time frame’, another distinction neither dictionary includes.
If we look back at the history of the form perhaps we gain more clarity. The emergence of the written short story, as distinct from its oral forerunner, was dependent upon increased literacy amongst wider sections of society and the development of magazine publishing. By the time these two factors coincided the public were not only ready for the short story, they were eager. As William Boyd writing in Prospect states:

…the short story effectively sprang into being in its full maturity...There were no faltering first steps, no slow centuries of evolution. The fact that in the early to mid-19th century Hawthorne and Poe and Turgenev were capable of writing classic and timeless short stories virtually from the outset signals that the ability had always been dormant within the human imagination. The short story arrived fully fledged in the middle of the 19th century and by its end, in the shape of Anton Chekhov, had reached its apotheosis.

Chekhov brought a new maturity to the short story, quickly becoming a master of the form. His representations of Russian life feel as modern today, as when they were first written. Chekhov looked below the surface of situations with an apparent casualness that appears to replicate real life. Perhaps this was the reason Tolstoy was said to have referred to him as ‘a photographer’ but this was, of course, to miss the point. Chekhov was the master of showing not telling, the first thing any creative writing student learns. Indeed, his influence is evidenced by the popularity of the Chekhovian style story over the event-plot style currently being published.
As James T Farrell wrote in 1952,

Chekhov’s influence has been one of the factors encouraging the short-story writers of [America, England and Ireland] to revolt against the conventional plot story and seek in simple and realistic terms to make of the story a form that more seriously reflects life.4

Farrell’s observation remains accurate sixty years on. The Current by Tom Lee, a story shortlisted for the 2012 The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award is a perfect example. As with Chekhov, Lee interspersed his story, about a son who finds himself disturbed by his father’s erratic and uncharacteristic behaviour, with a wry humour that almost belies the resonance of the story beneath. As I embarked on my dissertation I hoped I might be able to bring a fraction of that skill to my own work.
When I began thinking about developing story ideas for the dissertation, I chose to concentrate my research on aspects of genetics, focusing on conditions that are known to have a strong genetic element. Having once been told by an eminent Swiss geneticist that genetics is a lottery, I decided to use that idea as my starting point. Given our genes encode the instructions that define our traits provides untold opportunities for fiction, and in many ways this posed the greatest challenge. How could I refine my remit to make my collection hang together?
When I submitted my dissertation proposal I included list of story ideas, fortunately, I added that this list was subject to revision, as aside from the first one, which I wrote for the Launching the Manuscript module, none survived the final cut. For the most part, I feel that the final collection has a cohesion that the original list lacked. Yet, the final collection is much narrower than originally imagined. These are stories of affliction. Those afflicted and the distress their conditions may cause to those who care for them.
I also pinpointed broad themes within my proposal to include issues around identity, ethics, duty and predetermination, but as time went on even these felt as though they may prove rather unwieldy. With some conditions such as autism spectrum disorder I already felt confident that my depth of knowledge combined with my experience was thorough enough to produce convincing characters and authentic plots. Other areas such as childhood diabetes and schizophrenia required a significant amount of research to get up to speed. Even when I felt I knew enough to develop characters affected by these conditions I found the process of incorporating pertinent medical detail difficult to master. In my story Provenance, which opens my collection, I remain unconvinced that I fully achieved this.
The first draft of each story provided an opportunity for me to assess whether I felt that the story was worthy of development for this module. In my first draft of Finding Benji, the story of a toddler with childhood diabetes who is accidentally kidnapped when his mother’s car is stolen whilst he is asleep in the back seat, it quickly became clear that I needed incorporate the knowledge I had developed far more overtly. Clues I had considered subtle were in fact vague and easily missed. Moreover, during my tutorial I recognized that my police procedural knowledge demonstrated insufficient research when laid down in black and white. Indeed, on re-reading the piece, in light of my tutor’s comments, I felt that the elements that were working best had little to do with Benji’s condition. I tried to redress these issues in draft two, but by this point I had invested so much time in my research that I found it harder still to prioritize. As Lane Ashfeldt wrote in her essay Building a World:

“To have done a little less research might have made things easier…because when I came to it I found it hard to move on. The more obscure the information was, the more I wanted to keep it…Not even important stuff, just stuff that I’d picked up and liked.”

I wasted so much time trying to incorporate ‘clever’ fragments that the story not only lost pace but also become a muddle. By the time I was half way through the rewrite I could already see that to regain its shape, I had first tried to develop, would take it further away from my initial remit. At that point I moved it to one side, feeling that it would be better approached from the crime angle, and pressed ahead with another piece.
As I thought more about the kind of collection I hoped to produce I found myself drawn back to two of my earlier ideas. Bolt Hole, already a complete story that developed out of a writing exercise during module three, examined the relationship between an autistic teenager and his mother. In this story the boy’s father has long since gone and we meet the mother as she is trying to maintain control as her son enters puberty. The story uses a missing pet hamster to fulfill a number of tasks, not least being to place the characters under increased stress. I feel that this story embodies the ideas about isolation and connection I wanted to address within my writing for this module. It also touches on the notion of duty, I had originally identified as of interest. Moreover, I felt that Bolt Hole at least in part contained the kind of realism I was hoping for. With this in mind I decided to make this story part of my dissertation collection.
The second piece I came back to was, at that point, little more than a rough characterization. All I knew about my character was that he hated the idea of being trapped and had decided to buy a Fairway Driver taxicab. He was like a faintly drawn pencil sketch. I knew I hadn’t yet found his story but there was something about him that kept on drawing me back. This character showed, in line with Vanessa Gebbie’s assertion that “Stories have a life of their own, they come and go as they please. If you let them.”5
I left the character alone for a while, having decided that even his name was wrong, although I couldn’t explain why. It was when I wasn’t paying him too much attention that a new name materialized, and James became Stefan. Through renaming the picture of him began to build. The emergent image of Stefan reminded me of an ex-colleague of my husband’s who was a direct descendent of Countess Bathory, the Blood Countess. I remembered him telling me that, as all the males in his family end up with mental health issues, he was determined to live as a hedonistic life as possible. Some time after our conversation he gave up a very well paid job to become a rock musician!
As Stefan became clearer in my mind I wondered what would happen if Stefan were a direct descendent of the Countess, believing that his future were predetermined? What if he had a partner? What might they want from him and how would he deal with that? Suddenly, I had enough what ifs to get underway.
As with Bolt Hole, I knew that Provenance had all the ingredients to enable me to consider ideas of connection and isolation, but this time set against an underlying theme of potential predetermination.
Often my writing process starts with a statement by or about my character, as with Stefan. The line, and that is all is usually is, may come at any time, originating from an overheard conversation, from a radio program or simply a stirring within my unconscious. It is a seed and nothing more. Many of these characters do not form fully but others grow into characters that stake their claim to my waking hours (and often my dreams) until I feel ready to commit them to paper. Dorothea Brande wrote in Becoming a Writer that, ‘Stories are formed in the unconscious mind…It is a question of trusting your own creative processes.’
When I am developing a story it is as if the character moves in and lives along side me. It is as Tobias Hill described, “…that character has sprung to life. It is not merely ‘my creation’…I am not having to second guess what the character will do or say.” During that phase, we converse, I push and poke at them until I am convinced I know them fully. Yet, when eventually I begin to write their stories, they always seem to have the capacity to surprise me. In my better stories I feel like little more than the conduit for their tales.
During this time, I was reading as many short stories as I could access. I tried initially to be indiscriminate. I looked at winning stories from internet competitions, such as Spilling Ink, purchased the Woman’s Weekly Fiction Special and read and reread stories from a range of short story collections such as Julian Barnes’ The Lemon Tree, and anthologies such as The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Shortlist. After some weeks general reading, a pleasure I was for once able to pass off as research, I decided the time had come to hone in on certain elements within the stories. I decided to reread a selection of stories focusing on characters, openings and endings. I felt that through this process I would be able to scrutinize my own writing in a more structured manner.
Largely as a result of this, Provenance became the story that I reworked more than any other. The version that made it into the collection is the so far from the germ as to be almost unrecognizable. One thing that did survive however, was my opening line: ‘There were twenty-one thousand, six hundred and sixty-one licensed Hackney Carriage drivers in London.” Throughout the course we were encouraged to examine our writing through critical eyes. The same principle we applied during the workshop sessions. Looking to find the strength of a piece as well as areas for improvement, for me always begins (inevitably) with the opening. We know, as writers, that the reader must be drawn in but sometimes appear to forget how immediately this must be done. As Vanessa Gebbie explains, ‘You have one chance to entice the reader to come along with you.’6 Through every draft of this story, I remained convinced that my opening set the tone I was looking for. The opening continues ‘Stefan was not one of them. Stefan was a computing consultant, not a driver. Nonetheless, on that Wednesday, he woke up and prepared to buy a taxi, the one he’d enquired about at Taxi-mart.’ There is quirkiness to the statement that fits the central character well and I hope entices the reader to come along for the ride.
Gebbie also makes much of the importance of titles, arguing that that titles that ‘open up ideas, raise a smile, raise a question,’ offer greater pull than one-word titles. Of this I am less convinced. I would concur that when writing for a competition, especially ones that attract many thousands of entries, such as Fish or Bridport, this could be a real asset, but surely resonance within the title is the most important factor of all?
It is true when looking at collections that the titles chosen to represent the whole are often of the more colourful than those of some of the stories included. Take Raymond Carver’s What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, the title story comes second last in the running order but the idea encompasses the whole, it has the necessary resonance but also more colour than say, Sacks. It was the right choice, standing out as it would in a bookshop but Sacks did not disappoint despite its simple title. In Alison MacLeod’s Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction the author gives it to us straight, there is no title story, this is what the reader is getting, and that to me works just as well.
The title matters I believe but whilst an excellent title cannot save a weak story, the reverse may just manage to. Tom’s Shoes and Bolt Hole both came with the first draft and seemed to work well. However, it took a long time, during which I tried out a number of alternatives, before I settled on Provenance. The difference with this title, from my earlier working ones, was that it was worked hard from the off. Legacy of the Countess, my second working title, felt clunky, and Legacy, my third, seemed insubstantial. I understand how a good title works but I also understand how difficult they can be to pin down.
For my chosen fourth story Postcards, the title came over a month after I believed the story was complete. I went back again and again to the prose to try to tie down what exactly was happening, where within the piece was the title to be found? I realized that for Leon, the central character, a young boy with Asperger’s syndrome, it was about being able to create some new kind of order to help him cope with loss. Postcards were Leon’s way of holding on to memories and as soon as I recognized that the title was set.
None of my titles seemed to me to sum up my collection. In the end I settled on Affliction, believing this to be central to each tale.
I was confident with my characterizations, I understood and cared for my characters as one does for close family. Sometimes I knew them so well, and grew so attached to them, that I neglected to send them out into the world. With Stefan in Provenance we spent so much time alone in a room together that his isolation became extreme, with no dialogue occurring until the final third of the story. It was only as I was approaching my tutorial deadline that I realized what I had done and pushed him out the house, forcing him to talk to others rather than merely observe them. However, with persistence they all found their voices. I stressed them, unsettled them, played with their emotions, and still they survived. They had ‘evolved through being tested by the events of the story’7 and were ready to stand on their own.
At this stage of the course it seems apposite to turn my attention to endings, as I consider this to be one of my major weaknesses. When I develop my characters I want to give them resolution in a way that not exist in reality. It is a bad habit and one in this module I tried especially hard to address. When I felt my stories were complete, I put them aside and read, not entire stories but the endings of stories that had stayed with me. I began with Runaway and Silence both by Alice Munro.
In Silence the closing paragraph brings the central character to a new sense of acceptance, her situation remains unresolved but she has learnt to live with that and in so doing the reader finds the closure Joyce Carol Oates spoke of.

She keeps on hoping for a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.

The closing lines in Runaway are also perfectly weighted.

The days passed and Carla didn’t go near that place. She held out against temptation.

What Munro gives the reader what Elaine Chew describes as ‘organic, meaning it grows out of all that came before.’ Neither of these ‘end’ the stories, we readers are left feeling that these characters lives with all their challenges continue long after we stop looking. They are as Chew explains ‘so real that they live beyond the pages’. Munro’s stories exemplify the ‘open closure’ Chew talks of. ‘Short stories,’ she writes, ‘by definition, are windows…a short chunk of life in motion’. When I looked at my endings I knew that both Provenance and Postcards lacked this quality. I had left characters in the wrong place and if I wanted to be true to the people I believed them to be I owed it to them to put it. In Postcards my tutor’s comment that the ending seemed too neat was spot on. When I thought about how I had ended up there it became clear to me that I had wanted to spare Leon from the anguish my decisions caused but that to do him a disservice.
In my original version Leon appears untouched by his mother’s departure.

Grandma put her hand on Granddad’s and guided him out the way. My mother didn’t look back as she jogged down the drive towards Mr Tettenbourn’s shiny silver Mercedes C250.
“I would have bought an S class,” I said. “They’re much better.”
Granddad put his hand on my shoulder. “Me too Leon,” he said. “Me too.”
I recognized when I looked back that it ‘smacked too much of the fairytale’8
This shortchanged Leon, and so I set about righting that wrong. I imagined how he must be feeling and tried in my final version to allow him to express those feelings as best he is able in light of his condition. After some experimentation I made sure his mother promised to send him postcards, and through that decision I settled on this:

Grandma put her hand on Granddad’s tummy and guided him out of my mother’s way. I willed my mother to look back as she jogged down the drive towards Mr. Tettenbourn’s shiny silver Mercedes SLK250, but as she climbed in behind the tinted windows I couldn’t tell if she saw me waving, or if she waved back.
I decided, as Grandma took me into the kitchen to find some chocolate, that I should set an alarm for the morning, so I could be ready for the postman.

In the end I find myself agreeing with Chew, whether closing a story with an ‘epiphany’, a twist, a mirror or a circle we, as authors, owe it to our characters to take our time, and allow their ‘ending’ to find us. Short story endings should, in many ways, remain much like writers submitting the final piece for an MA, an open closure.