I read novels by the dozen, or so it seems. I read so many that my wife has disallowed me to purchase anymore until I start adding a few more bookshelves to the house. I love to read.

But I never read short stories much. I've started purchasing anthologies of the "Best of..." type of collections of short fiction. With a few exceptions (such as a Stephen King short I read in one volume), I simply find them too awkwardly written, experimental, or disjointed to get any real appreciation. Invariably, I find myself finishing a story thinking, "That was it?"

So I figure one of two things is going on here: Either 1) I just don't have the proper appreciation for the literary form, or 2) these "best of" volumes tend too often toward the experimental and unconventional, and therefore do not give a proper sampling of the quality short fiction available out there.

Which is it?

Maybe I need a subscription to Asimov's or F&SF before I sell the short stories, er, short.

Thoughts?

Z
 

You might want to check them out, also the WildCard anthologies edited by George RR Martin are pretty good short stories. Though they often have recurring characters in multiple pieces.
 

Anyway, I will definitely give Hubbard's anthologies a try. I think kickle hit the nail on the head for me -- I like the straighforward story, and some of these anthologies seem to have stuff that pushes the envelope a bit beyond my taste, I guess....
 

I read sf and fantasy magazine more than collections in a book. I find that the stories can vary widely. If you don't like the way they are done, it might just be you prefer full stories to brief ones. Nothing wrong with that.
 

With the SF magazines, I tend to find I like most of the stories in Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales(If I can find it). FS&F and Asimov's I'm a bit more hit and miss with -- some I love completely, and some I end up scratching my head over.

It isn't always an author thing either. I do think people experiment more in the short forms. And individual readers are bound to like some experiments more than others.

[This message has been edited by GZ (edited January 01, 2005).]
 

I filled a whole room of my house, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves.
My wife was having a FIT, and tried to do the same thing, cut me off from bookstores. "You're not buying any more books until you get rid of some of the ones we've got!" (She reads too) It was the first time in our marriage that I blatantly just looked at her and said, "Oh yes I am!", not backing down an inch, no compromise.
In the end, I went to a supermarket that was closing down and bought a whole row of racks for shelves for like, forty bucks.
You might want to try that, btw. They often throw out old ones, and if nothing else, you can get those metal strips, and the slotted hanger things and the boards out of the rack. You have to install them, but oh well.

Now we've got more than enough room. For now.

But as to short stories, I feel the same way. I read little that I like,(except my own stuff, which doesn't count) but there is one book of SS that really blew me away, and for the life of me, I can't remember what it was called. It's by Fred Saberhagen, and it was a collection of Berzerker stories; some of them were really well done.
If anyone knows the name, I would like to know. I'd snap it up.

[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited January 04, 2005).]
 

But then, the short story is not only the hardest form of fiction to write well, it's also the hardest to read well. I think Lord D. is on the right track. A short story gives us only one thing. It can't give us more than that. If it does, then it's not a short story, it's a novella or novel. The key to reading a short story is to figure out what that one thing is.

If the writer comes from the modern school (say, of Chekhov, Joyce, and Hemingway), then it can be very difficult to figure out what that one thing is, that one thematic thread that holds the story together. Sometimes writers from this school are soo subtle you have to read a story several times before you begin to see what's going on.

If they come from the contemporary school of William Gass and Barthelme, well, you're on your own, there.

But if the writer comes from the older school (de Maupassant and Maugham), then you'll have a short story with a clear cut beginning, middle, and end. And because they're more upfront, they're easier to enjoy (upon the first reading, that is). Thus, the reason you like King's short fiction.

In the early days of SF/F/H, short stories followed the older form. Nearly all of the stories in THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, VOL 1 have a clear beginning, middle, and end. But with the New Wave that Ellison ushered in, writers of speculative fiction began utilizing modern and contemorary literary techniques, which seems to be the vogue thing right now in magazines such as F+SF and ASIMOV'S, as well as the "best of" anthologies. Which is probably why you don't like them so much.

[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 04, 2005).]
 

I thought it was a pretty good anthrology, as such things go. Some top-notch writers contributed stories.
 

T
h
e

T
w
i
l
i
g
h
t

Z
o
n
e

i
s

g
r
e
a
t

s
h
o
r
t

f
i
c
t
i
o
n

(Sorry ahead of time, Kathy)
 

I, too, find most short stories to be difficult to enjoy. There are several problems. First, many of the magazines and anthologies I've tried (and I haven't tried all that many, I admit) seem to care more about strange styles rather than a good story. Second, even the good stories in short form leave me feeling vaguely unsatisfied. I recently read OSC's short version of "Lost Boys" and found that it read very much like a summary of the book with no depth to it. I did not feel the emotional attachment for the characters that I did when I read the novel.

One thing that I've found in short stories is that it is difficult to characterize. Many of the suggestions I've heard for how to characterize stories require time and patience and *chapters* worth of work and ground laying. A short story gives you paragraphs or sentences, not pages, to develop a character and then you have to get to the story. This leaves you with shallow or stereotypical characters as your options. Perhaps someone has figured out a far better way than I've read or tried, but so far I haven't seen it and am open to suggestions if you have.

But mostly, when I take the time to invest emotion into a tale I want to be with it for a while. I've always liked novels better than short stories and continue to enjoy them better to this day. I only read them because I'm trying to learn to write them and I only write them because I am hoping that through short stories I can get some publications in sooner rather than MUCH later.
 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0886779502/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-2203335-8116058#reader-link

Most of the short stories I read, I find in: magazines, old language arts and English text books, or here on Hatrack. As to why all the "edgy" stuff makes it into the critical best-of books, well here is something I read the other day from OSC about critically acclaimed movies, and I think the principle is mostly the same:

quote:

---

Sideways is precisely the kind of bleak, people-are-sometimes-almost-noble-in-spite-of-their-repulsive-emptiness independent movie that critics love to praise....We have our sadly obvious symbols (ooooh, did you see how the wrong way signs got worked into that shot?), we have our ugly frontal nudity from an angry fat guy to show we're "cutting edge," and we have our long conversations that seem to be about one thing when they're really about another.

So the recipe has been followed for a really stupid critical hit.

---

Rather than worrying about whether the story is enjoyable or whether the writing is good, the critics seem to be more concerned with a secret check-list of the bizarre in order to determine what literary sheep will think of as chic.

You know, there is probably a secret society of critics who sit around and think of ways to exalt certain styles of writing just so they can laugh at the people of buy into their "Best-of" lists.
 

quote:

---

Perhaps someone has figured out a far better way than I've read or tried, but so far I haven't seen it and am open to suggestions if you have.

---

quote:

---

The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady.

---

But, of course, once you paint a picture, the words and actions of the character have to back it up. O'Connor knows this; she knows that a grandmother who dresses this way (traditional) and is that concerned with how she's preceived if she were dead on the street (propriety), she'd would have certian ideas about things. So, a few paragraphs later, we get this converstaion between her and her grandchildren as they're driving down the highway.

quote:

---

"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said.

"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains but Georgia has the hills."

"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."

"You said it," June Star said.

"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cut little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved.

"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.

"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little niggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.

---

Again, we could talk about a lot of things here. But notice how the dialogue here follows the same pattern of the description. In juxtaposition to her grandchildren, we see that the grandmother is indeed old-fashioned. And just like all old people, back when they were young things were very much different. Kids didn't talk bad about their native state (just as mothers didn't wear slacks and put their hair up in green kerchiefs). Then we move to the absurd: her comments about the poor black boy, who's so poor he doesn't have what middle class people have--pants.

Of course, O'Connor is a master of the short story, and all of this character development comes in to play at the end of the story. We should also note that this is a "literary" story and therefore a character story. If you're not writing a character story--if, you're writing an idea story, or an event story, or a melieu story--then this kind of character development isn't as essential.

But I think we can learn two things from this passage. First, you need vivid details for character development, details that point toward a character's "character." And second, these details must be confirmed by actions and dialogue. Even a story set in a place where everyone is dressed in the same uniform, people will have distinctive traits you must describe as vividly as you can to make the characters as vivid as you can.

I hope this helps. It certianly helped me.

[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 06, 2005).]
 

Thank you...this;

"You know, there is probably a secret society of critics who sit around and think of ways to exalt certain styles of writing just so they can laugh at the people of buy into their "Best-of" lists."

Sounds like a wonderful premise for a piece of comical short fiction!

 

I think one key to O'Connor's success here is simplicity. We learn only the aspects of the characters that are important to the story, which in the case of Grandma, John Wesley, and June Star, is only one aspect each: Traditional, bratty, and bratty. The space is limited, so she dedicated it to developing one character trait well and vividly instead of trying to "flesh out" the character with other, superfluous traits.
 

Leiningen versus the Ants, BY CARL STEPHENSON

The Cask of Amontillado, by EDGAR ALLAN POE

The Most Dangerous Game, by RICHARD CONNELL

These are three of my all-time favourite shorts and each one has a limited cast of character. The emphasis is on getting to know only one character really well, and the other characterization comes mainly from a juxtaposition, as Jeff Vehige said.

By the way, I happened upon a great little website with all kinds of classic short stories:

http://www.classicshorts.com/
 

[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 06, 2005).]