The return of the short story?

[SamScribble]

Many years ago, my then boss invited me to join him at dinner with a couple of women from head office. His plan was to bed the younger, prettier woman. My job was to distract the older, plainer woman; to keep her out of the way, as it were.

As I recall (and it was a long time ago) the dinner was very pleasant. But my boss’s plan didn’t quite work out. He went home to his wife. And the younger, prettier woman invited me back to her hotel room.

During the short cab ride back to her hotel, the woman and I somehow got to talking about short stories. She loved Chekhov and Maupassant and Cheever. I was pretty enthusiastic about Graham Greene and James Joyce and Philip Roth. And we had both recently discovered JP Donleavy, and the poetry of Roger McGough and Adrian Henri.

About six months later, we both ended up with new jobs at the same organisation in the same city. It was purely by good fortune. But it was good fortune. And almost every Friday night, for the next three or four years, we gathered on her playing field-sized bed to eat, drink wine, and read each other short stories interspersed with the occasional poem. (We did other stuff too, but most of you are too young to hear about that.)

The point of my story is this: It seems to me that there was a time back in the 1960s and ‘70s when the short story was enjoying a bit of a heyday. And then, with the demise – partial or total – of the ‘serious’ magazines, the short story seemed to lose its place in the panoply of fiction. Publishers seemed to turn their backs on short stories as they focused on ‘blockbuster’ novels.

And now, maybe 30, 40 years later, I get the feeling that the short story is back in favour. Short story writers are back in favour. They’re winning serious prizes. (A Nobel Prize for Alice Munro.) And even my favourite RL bookshop has a section – a surprisingly well-stocked section – devoted to anthologies of short stories.

Discuss.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I used to work for a short story competition. I would read the stories and give feedback on them, and help select ones I thought were good enough to go on to the next stage and be read by the judges.

At that time short stories were notorious for having more people writing them than were reading them!

Nowadays people read on screens - including mobile phone screens, so maybe something short and snappy fits better with their way of reading?

 

[sr71plt]

Shorter attention spans plus the e-book revolution have also brought back the novella.

 

[LadyVer]

I was under the impression that short stories are having a revival due to self-publishing, although 6 months ago one publishing "expert" was saying they were dead (I didn't agree). I love short stories. I just read one by George Saunders--Sea Oak--and it blew me away, but it was published in 2000.

Sounds like you had a period of fun Fridays.

 

[sheablue]

I hope it's true. I adore short stories. Reading them and writing them.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Short stories are as doomed as dodos.

Western Civilization is collapsing back to a Dark Ages fuedalism fueled by our passive embrace of inferior ethnic groups. The greatest sin in our times is demonstrable meritorious performance in a culture that esteems feral and illiterate spear chuckers and volatile histrionic ragheads.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think short stories are on the rise because if for no other reason every other person you meet child and adult allegedly has some form of ADD or ADHD....or......a lazy ass doctor who wants to write scripts all day and lazy ass parents who are too busy on the net to make their kids pay attention and focus on things.

But end of the day the way that's going Ogg's 50 word stories will be in incredible demand.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Wow! reading JBJ's posts today is like Christmas with my Dad! You never knew what you were going to get. One year he brought me back an antique Russian caviar dish, I love it so much. And one year he went out at ten pm on Christmas Eve so my sister got a horrid ceramic cat cookie jar, I can't even remember what I got it was so dull. And one year he brought back two dolly birds from Cambodia! I guess he decided a partridge in a pear tree was too predictable. My mom was just thrilled to little mince balls, especially being an (older) Asian dolly bird herself. There was this particular look that would cross her face when they insisted on calling her 'mama'...

I think Pilot is kinda right (although it pains me right now to admit it). Changes in technology may lead to a rise in popularity for the short story. However there are a lot of other 'fictions' around too. People interact on gaming sites and make mutual 'stories', I don't know how solo-authored work will fare against that kind of story-making.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Wow! reading JBJ's posts today is like Christmas with my Dad! You never knew what you were going to get. One year he brought me back an antique Russian caviar dish, I love it so much. And one year he went out at ten pm on Christmas Eve so my sister got a horrid ceramic cat cookie jar, I can't even remember what I got it was so dull. And one year he brought back two dolly birds from Cambodia! I guess he decided a partridge in a pear tree was too predictable. My mom was just thrilled to little mince balls, especially being an (older) Asian dolly bird herself. There was this particular look that would cross her face when they insisted on calling her 'mama'...

I think Pilot is kinda right (although it pains me right now to admit it). Changes in technology may lead to a rise in popularity for the short story. However there are a lot of other 'fictions' around too. People interact on gaming sites and make mutual 'stories', I don't know how solo-authored work will fare against that kind of story-making.

Like me, your father was prolly literate.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Wow! reading JBJ's posts today is like Christmas with my Dad! You never knew what you were going to get. One year he brought me back an antique Russian caviar dish, I love it so much. And one year he went out at ten pm on Christmas Eve so my sister got a horrid ceramic cat cookie jar, I can't even remember what I got it was so dull. And one year he brought back two dolly birds from Cambodia! I guess he decided a partridge in a pear tree was too predictable. My mom was just thrilled to little mince balls, especially being an (older) Asian dolly bird herself. There was this particular look that would cross her face when they insisted on calling her 'mama'...

I think Pilot is kinda right (although it pains me right now to admit it). Changes in technology may lead to a rise in popularity for the short story. However there are a lot of other 'fictions' around too. People interact on gaming sites and make mutual 'stories', I don't know how solo-authored work will fare against that kind of story-making.

From what I read lately...even the blockbuster novels and novellas written by the blockbuster authors are a collaboration between said author and a paid, yet unknown co-author.

That's how some of the more renowned authors are able to pump out 124 novels in 24 years. They only write a five sentence paragraph for each chapter and the paid, unknown author pumps it up until it's a novel length extravaganza.

 

[Hypoxia]

From what I read lately...even the blockbuster novels and novellas written by the blockbuster authors are a collaboration between said author and a paid, yet unknown co-author.

That's how some of the more renowned authors are able to pump out 124 novels in 24 years. They only write a five sentence paragraph for each chapter and the paid, unknown author pumps it up until it's a novel length extravaganza.

Sometimes the co-author is credited; often, not. But think of it as a logical extension of the studio system, whether in renaissance Florence or mid-wars Hollywood or Warhol's NYC. The master or producer or named 'author' sketches an outline and signs their name; the peons do the work. That's show biz, folks.

 

[sr71plt]

Oh, I don't think that very many mainstream novels are coauthored (or ghosted). Not any more than in the past. John Jake's novels notoriously were written by committee and Tom Clancy's early ones were largely ghosted and he transitioned, through coauthor, (downhill) to writing them all himself. And James Michener's later novels rest on the development of a research staff. So, it's always been there, but most of the ghosting going on now in the mainstream, I think is celebrity nonfiction and spinning out the name brands of dead authors.

There's a larger audience for short stories "now" as opposed to several decades ago primarily because there is an Internet now and there wasn't nearly four decades ago. Short stories in print can only cost-effectively be marketed in collections and "back then," like poetry, you had to be established as a writer already to be able to sell short story collections.

 

[PennLady]

I think short stories are on the rise because if for no other reason every other person you meet child and adult allegedly has some form of ADD or ADHD....or......a lazy ass doctor who wants to write scripts all day and lazy ass parents who are too busy on the net to make their kids pay attention and focus on things.

But end of the day the way that's going Ogg's 50 word stories will be in incredible demand.

I disagree here. Short stories didn't suddenly come into fashion with or because of the internet. As others have noted, they were a common form of story telling long before computers. Short stories were popular in magazines in the 50s and 60s (and perhaps the 70s, I don't know), long before the rise of diagnoses of ADD and ADHD.

Truman Capote wrote short stories (and some novels) before he became known for "In Cold Blood" (after which he wrote very little of anything). Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and plenty of other authors wrote short stories as well.

Some things simply fall in and out of fashion.

Personally I like short stories better than I used to. I like a longer story because, well, I like a longer story with more about the characters. However, I've read plenty of great short stories by many authors.

(And of course, I write short stories myself. So I guess I have come around on it. )

 

[sr71plt]

True they didn't come into being because of the Internet, but writing and reading of them burgeoned because of the Internet--and both because society moved to wanting smaller sound bites (the length of short stories in published mags has decreased from approaching 20,000 words to less than 5,000 words) and because Internet provides cost-effective access for both writing and reading them.

 

[Hypoxia]

Writers generally write for markets -- writers who don't starve, anyway. Markets vary with time and location. Ain't much market for poetry in USA, so most surviving poets teach during daytime and poetate at night. (Much bigger market for songwriters. Better royalties.)

Ain't been much market for short stories in USA, not with the demise of pulp-fiction and even 'literary' magazines. Heinlein and Asimov were mentioned -- as pulps died, they shifted to novels or (with Asimov) other forms.

Ain't much market for 'serious' longer fiction in USA, never really has been, so publishers focus on beach-reads and other blockbusters, 'cause it's, like, that's where the money is, or has been.

Ain't much difference between consuming ANYTHING in portable media, including magazines and pocket books (paper), and pocket TVs and AV players, and phones, and small-enough tablets and readers. Such hand-held media are great for consuming words / images / sounds as we move around -- not like being stuck at a desk with a big computer, or a massive volume like my 1902 Webster's Unabridged. Big hardcover books, and big video screens, and theatre sound systems, demand a commitment to stability, to keeping your butt in one place long enough to absorb the content.

Short stories. Short videos. Short attention spans. Small portable devices. Perfect matches.

 

[sr71plt]

It's very much a cost-effective issue. There actually are many more literary journals now than there were twenty years ago. They are on the Internet.

Where would you have found the 50,000 plus short stories on just this Web site twenty years ago? Nowhere.

 

[Aynmair]

I think short stories in many ways are closer to writing poetry than to writing novels, particularly the "short shorts" but even the longer format shorts - the limits they impose are much more restrictive but also, paradoxically, more freeing. Each word "counts" much more in a short story than in a novel. You can get in, say what you need to say, and get out without having to feel like you have to fill out 200+ pages in order for it to count as a novel. The poignancy and effect are sharper in a short story, like in a poem, than in a novel

It may have been said somewhere earlier in the thread - I haven't read all the posts - that the best novel writers aren't necessarily the best short story writers and vice versa. One of my favorite short story writers was Grace Paley, and I'm not 100% sure but she may never have written a novel. Coover was another in that category, as is Andre Dubus, who has written some novellas but mostly short stories. There are many other - perhaps better- examples.

I choose to read short stories versus novels depending on mood much more often than time. The mood is related to attention span and time available at the moment, but not always - much more often my reaching for a short story collection has much more to do with the quality of the writing and whether the subjects speak to me, whereas in novels I can get much more sucked in by the story and am more forgiving of less than stellar writing styles.

 

[sr71plt]

I could see that between short stories and novels. At the beginning I wrote only novels, and each one was a chore. Writing short stories was a bit of a chore two, as I came to it with the "make every word serve the story" writing advice. I find writing novellas much easier than either the short story or the novel because I found it suits exactly the words needed for the story arc I typically have in my brain. That would be the e-book novella (anything between 15,000 and 40,000 words), not the standard print novella (anything between 35,000 and 65,000 words).

I think it's more the modern free-verse poetry that's been brought closer to the prose of a short story. Much of the free verse I read just looks like lazy prose writing to me that's been chopped up into short lines.

 

[49greg]

As a young adult and teen-ager, on into my late twenties I loved reading science fiction, from the sword/sorcery sub genre to the swashbuckling space opera to the technical hard sci fi. And every so often I would run across a paperback full of short stories by favorite authors.

I generally didn't like them. I liked the fully developed novel. About the only time I enjoyed a short story then was when it was about characters I had already read about in other stories. Even then it felt like something was missing.

I still read the occasional sci-fi, but the only stand alone short stories I like are about sex.

And I feel a sense of being cheated when I download a book and find that I hadn't read the info about it, and it turns out to be a short one.

 

[sr71plt]

Amazon is misleading in advertising its e-books. It gives some sort of file size rather than wordage (or standard pages). Probably does this on purpose to mislead potential buyers on how big the book is.

 

[lovecraft68]

Yeah Amazon give pages, but kindle pages. I can only guess what length a book is by looking at a couple of mine and how many pages they assign it and going from there

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Short stories are as doomed as dodos.

Western Civilization is collapsing back to a Dark Ages fuedalism fueled by our passive embrace of inferior ethnic groups. The greatest sin in our times is demonstrable meritorious performance in a culture that esteems feral and illiterate spear chuckers and volatile histrionic ragheads.

you don't own a passport, do you?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

you don't own a passport, do you?

They kept it when I got voted off the island.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

They kept it when I got voted off the island.

Gilligan's fucking Island, you no-mark shitbreath.

 

[Gunnlaug]

People ain't changed nuthin' over the years. They want the same thing that they've always done; stuff that speaks to them. Short... long... doesn't matter. Some of the best use of words I've encountered has been in 3 minute pop songs - every emotion laid bare. And then next day I find a thousand page epic that hits me the same way.

There's always been a market for short stories and there always will be, same as thousand page epics will also have their place. The only issue is how to reach people, and if it has to be out with traditional publishers then so be it. There are plenty of medium, so why not use them all if that's what it takes.