What is a Short Story? - Debra Adelaide
Many fiction writers almost instinctively commence their careers with the short story, so it is worth reflecting closely on the form. As always, the best rules for writing come from the best writing itself. Authors like Raymond Carver and Alice Munro are much-read and -studied because they have raised the short story to such perfection.
In Australia there is probably no one author known exclusively for this form, though historically, Henry Lawson, Peter Carey and Helen Garner have each made significant contributions. More recently Fiona McFarlane, Georgia Blain, Paddy O’Reilly and several others have kept the short story alive. The popularity of the form was greatly assisted by publications such as the Bulletin, which back in the late 19th century first published Lawson’s short fiction. His story, ‘The Drover’s Wife’, is now such a classic that it has inspired an entire mini-industry of rewritings or reimaginings, the latest of which is Leah Purcell’s film The Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson.
The short story’s enduring appeal is partly due to its flexibility. But is it so flexible that finding a definition of the short story is impossible? Or establishing a few clear rules futile? Taking some examples, almost at random from my bookshelf, shows the immense diversity of the short story, and the first thing that is apparent is that if there are any rules, these have nothing to do with length.
Anthropology (2001), by British author Dan Rhodes, features 101 love stories all written in exactly 100 words. These are wry, sad, macabre, eccentric, emotional, and funny, all narrated by a male narrator expressing the failings, desires, memories, and small triumphs in the process of love. Each tiny story is finely crafted, and cumulatively the effect of the collection is like a quilt, displaying different repetitions of a pattern. In isolation, each story is probably too brief to be satisfying, yet the overall effect is of a chorus on the theme of love.
In Anthropology Rhodes clearly established disciplined thematic and formal rules, and it’s possible to assume this was beneficial when compiling a first book. Such an approach also risks being formulaic or gimmicky, of using effect for the sake of effect, but Rhodes compensates by having a clear narrative arc within each micro-story.
Still very short is something like ‘Southern Lady Code’ from US author Helen Ellis’s collection American Housewife (2016). Here are more words than the Rhodes stories, yet a less ambitious scope. In this story there is no plot, nor obvious characterisation, setting, descriptive details, or discernible movement. Instead, there is a strong voice, so strong that by the end you feel you understand exactly what a southern US female character of a certain social class is.
This story relies entirely on that voice, and primarily upon what is not said in — paradoxically — a speech. But like Rhodes, Ellis also flirts with the gimmicky. You cannot imagine too many successful stories like these, but you can learn from them: for instance, how the precision of the voice is delivered, and how the structure of the piece subtly moves it forward despite the brevity.
Those are just two examples of the short story demonstrating its elastic properties, but there are also some conventions which aspiring writers should at least consider even if they don’t adhere to them. Many writers attempt to describe what a short story is and in doing so often reach for metaphor. I once thought of the short story as a small, sharp incursion, like a hand grenade lobbed by a guerrilla soldier, but which lands close by rather than right on you. Something that takes you unawares, shakes you up momentarily, then lets you go on your way.
The first book by US author Grace Paley, a great writer of short stories, was called the Little Disturbances of Man (1959). Back in 2008 my co-editor and I used the title ‘Little Disturbances’ when we published a short story issue of the journal Southerly. The idea of the short story being a little as opposed to major disturbance — a grenade, compared to, say, the bomb of a novel — appealed to us.
Now I would hesitate to use anything like a military metaphor, and indeed what metaphor could explain the rules or conventions of such a diverse form? Flower, perhaps? As opposed to the bouquet of a novella, or the entire garden of the novel?
But we still require guidelines, and the author Sunil Badami’s five ‘golden rules’ are as useful as any that I have read:
A story should be a slice of life with a bend in it
A story should start just after your reader thinks it’s meant to start, and end just before they want it to
Start with the problem
It all comes down to character
The best language is the language you never notice.
Edgar Allen Poe famously described the short story simply as something that can be read in one sitting, a practical definition and one easy to agree with. He was after a sense of satisfaction, of completeness, but the implication is that, when done, the reader will leave the chair. What if the reader is compelled to stay?
My description is different: a good short story is not dependent on duration or length but on effect: it should shake me around a little, make me feel or see or think something that is new to me; and it should always compel me to seek out other stories by the same author.
Dr Debra Adelaide is the author or editor of 18 books, including novels, short fiction and academic titles. She has been a freelance writer, book reviewer, editor, researcher, and finally an academic. She retired from the University of Technology Sydney in 2020, where she was an associate professor in the creative writing program.
1. Sunil Badami, ‘The Golden Rules’ in Creative Writing Practice: reflections on form and process ed D. Adelaide & S. Attfield (Palgrave Macmillan 2021)
This article originally appeared in WQ 277: The Short.
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