Short-Shorts - Your Opinion?

[Laurel]

and I'm not talking about hotpants...

Occasionally I'll get a story submission that's under a page long. I tend to be much more strict with these than with longer submissions. Short-shorts can be excellent (just check out the 100-words-and-under thread), but they can also nothing more than scenes or paragraphs seemingly ripped from the center of a story.

What do you all think of short-shorts? What do you do when you're asked to edit them?

 

[KillerMuffin]

I think they're great. Maybe you can have a category just for them. Short shorts - Mental quickies. I edit them anyway, but some aren't very good as short as they are, they could use character development. Others are better.

If you wanna see some fantastic short shorts, check out my Society of the Dare thread on the SRP board. It's not an SRP, more like an impomptu story writing challenge that some of my friends have astounded me with.

 

[Weird Harold]

What do you all think of short-shorts? What do you do when you're asked to edit them?

They can be very effective when written well. Trouble is, it takes a LOT of skill to write one that's good.

What I do as an editor depends on how short, and how good a story is. In most cases, I'll suggest the author "expand on this scene here. It needs more detail."

Every editing job is different. Some need to be cut down to reduce the wandering, and others need more meat on the bones.

 

[SpecialK]

Would this story (which is about a page and a half when printed) fall into this catagory?

Quiver

Personally, I like the short stories, because sometimes that's all one wants. Yet, even this story, I would have a hard time considering a full story. More like an excerpt or a vignette. Incidentally, I was just thinking the other day that it would be nice to know the length of a submission (in kb) just to know whether one is in for a short or long read. A catagory for the short-shorts would probably take care of that.

K

[Edited by SpecialK on 01-22-2001 at 05:42 AM]

 

[Laurel]

"Quiver" is a short-short, and IMHO an extremely well-done short-short. THAT'S what all shorts should be - able to capture the feeling of the scene in a minimum amount of words. That, I believe, was one of the first 'real' short-shorts submitted to the site that I actually accepted and was happy to post.

 

[WriterDom]

agreed! more shorts and more hotpants

 

[alexander tzara]

LOL. I submitted a short-short-short thing, following on from the 100 words thread and it was very poorly received, getting pretty much the lowest score possible across the board. At least 56 people gave it a one. So, I don't know if that means people don't really like very short stories or if it was just that I did a pretty bad job of it. Immediately after I sent it, I thought God, what am I DOING here? I'll be sending in my shopping lists next.

I guess, maybe if there was a category for shorts, readers would know what to expect and would avoid them if they don't like that sort of thing.