Short Circuit - The Art of the Short Story

On Saturday I was in a noodle bar in Brighton with my current Swenglish host, and we happened to bump into two very fine writers at the neighbouring table.

The writers were Vanessa Gebbie and Tania Hershman who have been very inspiring to me when it comes to the art of the short story.

There have been many debates over the last couple of years whether the short story is dead or whether it is having a revival. I won't go into the debate, but I definitely think that short stories have a place in our society and culture.

What I love is to dip in and out of story collections, being able to finish something in one sitting that I can carry with me for the rest of the day, or week or month or year if I find something really good. Even a story short as a paragraph can be entertaining and open your mind to new ideas.

The best book I've ever come across about short story writing is Short Circuit - A Guide to the Art of the short Story which is full of essays and useful tips from some of the best story writers in the UK and beyond.

I'm not getting much time for fiction writing as I'm in the middle of my Swenglish project, but now and again I get a flash of inspiration and jot an idea down. At the moment 500 word-stories are working really well for me.

 For latest news on Swenglish please check out my Swenglish blog.

To write on a theme and stick to a word count

Most of my short stories I've thought up out of the blue and written without deciding how long they were going to be beforehand. This is fine if you're writing for yourself or are so established that you are getting collections published.

Most magazines or competitions have rules though. You're supposed to write on a theme or at least stick to a word limit. When I started writing I hated that concept. I wanted to be free to write any stories I wanted, and make them how short or how long I wanted them to be.

Now I find it quite exciting to brain-storm around a theme. It takes me to places I didn't know before. It makes me write things I wouldn't normally have written.

I've been working on a story for almost two weeks, inspired by an exercise in the excellent book Short Circuit - a guide to the short story, edited by Vanessa Gebbie. The exercise was about setting. First you were supposed to describe a room in your house, pretending you saw it for the first time. Then you were supposed to place a person in the room whose mood reflected the mood of the room. Lastly you were supposed to introduce another character and through dialogue reveal their relationship to each other. I combined this exercise with an idea I got from reading a message on my radiator, left by a previous lodger.

I have no idea where to send this story, but a lot of competition/magazines have a word limit of 2000 words so I decided to aim for that. When the story was finished I had 2350 words. I had no idea how to cut it, but leaving it a few days and getting back to it, I could easily shorten the story to 1950 words. The advantage with a word limit is that you learn how to cut out the crap. At least if you're a novelist like me and are used to waffling and having space. It might be harder if you're a flash fiction writer and feeling forced to add words ... (Normally there's no lower word limit, but I suspect it's hard to win a competition with a 300 word piece. There a exceptions though. Tania Hershman is a master when it comes to short short stories.)

Next story I'm going to work on is for the Asham Award. The word limit is 4000 words, which is not a problem. The problem is that, unlike other years, they have a theme this year. And the theme is ghosts. I've never written a ghost story in my life, so this will be a real challenge ...

Short Fuse Story Salon

I was very happy to be part of Short Fuse Story Salon at Komedia yesterday. Writers were invited to submit stories that "pushes the boundaries of what a short story can be, and experiments in some way with voice or form."

The story I read is called EX LOVE, and is a very short poetic piece that uses a feeling as a narrator. Chris Callard who also read on the night had written a story called A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME with the subtitle: Memo: Revised Tritona Corporation company guidelines. The whole story was written as a protocol which I thought was a clever idea.

Before Chris and I went on, the big stars Tania Hershman and Dave Swann warmed up the stage for us by reading a few of their stories. The reason there was time for "a few" stories is that they both write flash fiction. Their pieces are normally just one or two pages long, which is quite fascinating as they still manage to grab you.

Their readings were followed by a discussion and Q&A from the audience. I made a few notes and one of the things I remember was the point that short story collections are harder work than novels because you have to muster up the energy to constantly meet new characters and environments. At the same they can be, to quote Tania: "a box of chocolates" waited to sampled. Also with short stories you might be able to read something that is really intense, because you know it's going to finish quite soon.

Tania and Dave are quite different in their approach to what they write about. Tania makes everything up (often inspired by articles in the New Scientist) whilst Dave starts with a real life experience and transforms it into fiction. (Even though he might start off writing about a tree and end up with a car.) He also "steals" stories from his friends. I feel that I'm more of a "Dave"-writer, but after listening to Tania I feel inspired to write out of my comfort zone.

Someone, it might have been Dave, posed the question: "What's the most important in a short story?" One of his students once replied: "Does anyone get eaten?" That could translate into is anyone in danger? It doesn't have to be literal danger, but something has to be at stake. A situation, a relationship etc.

Another interesting thing that came up is how people interpret stories. Once someone told Tania "I really like your one page story about lust." She had no idea which story the person was talking about ... And I think that's quite similar to poetry. Short stories and poems are more open for interpretation compared to novels. One person thought my story was about a one-night stand whilst someone else thought it was about a long relationship that had finished ... I thought the title EX LOVE made it obvious, but obviously not!

Vanessa Gebbie was also supposed to read and take part in the discussion, but unfortunately she fell over and hurt herself - in Sweden of all places ... At least we got a little flavour of her work as the organiser Tara Gould read one of her stories.

Is a writer a writer only when she/he writes?

I just read Vanessa Gebbie's blog post where she writes that she's going to take a break from writing for the first time in eight years due to her father not being very well. She says "It is odd not being a writer any more, for the moment. I am wandering around a bit aimlessly, feeling blank. A writer has to be someone who writes…not someone who thinks about it."

A doctor is a doctor even when on holiday. If you know how to save lives you don't walk past a bleeding person in the street. That's how I imagine it anyway. If what you do is your passion it's always going to be with you. Yet it can be hard to accept when you're not sitting in front of your computer typing words that make up sentences that make up paragraphs that make up stories or chapters.

I have hardly done any writing in the past two weeks due to having visitors from Sweden. It makes me feel restless, as if life has no real meaning apart from spending time with people you love and care about. And maybe that's the plain truth. Somebody gets ill and you care for them. Somebody visits and you spend time with them. Life is about relationships between people. Yet I think everybody benefits from having a real passion in life, something that makes you feel alive, something you can return to even if all your relationships are broken.

That's why I started to write in the first place; I felt that I didn't fit in anywhere and found it very difficult to hang out with people without acting, without analysing every conversation. Also I often feel bored with life and writing about it instead is an escape. For example once I went to a quiz night and I really hate quizzes because my general knowledge about things is not that good ... But instead of sitting there hating the quiz I decided to write a short story that somehow involved a quiz night.

Because I had nice visitors and enjoyed myself over the last couple of weeks I have nothing to write about. I wasn't bored and there was no major conflict. And now I don't feel like a writer because I don't even feel like writing at the moment. I have a few short stories on the go, but my heart is not in it 100% as with my novel. Short stories don't give me the same satisfaction as novels. I prefer to follow something for a longer period of time. It's a bit like the way I like to travel. I don't like going to a new place every day, sleeping in a different hostel every night. When I go travelling I prefer to go somewhere and spend at least a month in one place so I get a bigger picture.

So ... is a novelist a novelist only when she/he is physically working on her/his novel? No! I'm a novelist waiting for a reply from the agent that I really, really want. A waiting novelist is still a novelist. Once a writer always a writer. But you do feel better when you do more of the writing and less of the thinking. However ... breaks are necessary and good, and people are more important than words. Sometimes.