Silent Eloquence » Short Story Month

Three ways of writing a short story

Surya — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:57:08 +0000

R.L.Stevenson says:

There are, so far as I know, three ways and three only of writing a story. You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a character and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or, lastly, you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to express and realize it.” When to this clear conception of his limitations and privileges the author adds an imagination that clearly visualizes events and the “verbal magic” by which good style is secured, he produces the short story that is a masterpiece

Short Story: Edgemont Drive by E.L.Doctorow

Surya — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:02:46 +0000

Have you read a short story written entirely in dialog? The latest issue of New Yorker has one such story by E.L.Doctorow. No quotation marks, no ‘he-said/she-said’s, no explanations or descriptions – just lines and lines of dialog. Stylistically very chic, don’t you think?

So he’s there. What—hitting on your wife?
No, that won’t happen. It’s not what he’s about. I’m pretty sure.
So what’s the problem?
He comes on like some prissy fuss-pot poet, doesn’t have it together, drives a junk heap, claims to have quit his teaching job but was probably fired. And, with all of that, you know he’s a player.
Yeah, I know people like that.
His difficulties work in his favor. He gets what he wants.

It’s about a man and his wife and their home and a weird old guy who just shows up in their driveway and sits in his car staring at their house. Feels like your kind of story? Check it out here.

Its not a story I would shout from the roof tops about, but it has inspired a writing prompt I am excited to try out: Write a short story entirely in dialog.

Anyone else wants to give it a try?

Short Story: The Truth and All Its Ugly by Kylie Minor

Surya — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:44:51 +0000

If you had told me yesterday that I would be recommending a short story set in 2024 with impossible science-fictionesque assumptions and which features a father who encourages his son on his first experience with drugs, I would have laughed at the improbability.

But today is different. The Truth and All Its Ugly by Kylie Minor, published at Fifty-Two Stories is a wonderful wonderful read. The full text is available online here.

An excerpt to pique your interest:

It was pure joy, watching him lift that axe and drive it into that piano. Up until then his head was always in books or that damn computer. Dead trees, I’d tell him, got not one thing on milkweed and sumac, horsemint and sweet William. But now I wasn’t so sure, and now he’d caught on. “It’s what you do with the dead trees,” he said, like he was reading my mind.

Short Story Review: Departure by Alistair Morgan

Surya — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:28:48 +0000

Today, I read Departure by Alistair Morgan, a poignant story that appeared in Paris Review last summer and surprise! is available to read online.

The story, set in South Africa, is about a couple, Anna and Miles who are checking out the venue for their upcoming wedding. From the start, it is obvious that they are not madly in love with each other, as you would expect a newly engaged couple to be. We soon know why, with some back-story into their life in England. The “story” starts with a drunk man literally running into their car. Anna insists on getting him to a hospital, even though Miles would rather leave him to the care of the companions. At the hospital, they meet the young doctor, Miranda who invites them to her house. The rest of the story revolves around the events in her house, and subsequently a visit to the hospital to check on the drunk man.

I am not quite sure why I like this story – yes, admittedly, I often have that problem with short stories. But it kept me reading, from beginning to end. If you ask me questions like, “What did the protagonist want?”, “did she get it in the end?”, “what was the conflict?” – I would probably just say I am not sure.

But the suspense remains throughout the narrative. And the language is beautiful. I am a sucker for good descriptions, and there are quite a few of them peppered through the narrative.

“He reached over the gearstick and squeezed Anna’s thigh through her skirt. He held his hand there for some time, steady and firm, like a sailor keeping his hand on the tiller in rough weather. ”

“Although Miles could recall some of the song’s lyrics, he couldn’t remember who the singer was. It was like meeting a forgotten acquaintance whose face he recognized but whose name had slipped loose from his memory’s grip.”

““Miranda, I want it off. Just take it off!” Anna was writhing inside the dress like an animal trying to shed its skin. “

Now, Alistair Morgan is definitely not known for writing the most PG of stuff, and you would not read this story expecting it. But even then, there was a certain passage which made me think that when my daughter grows up and starts reading, I wouldn’t want to leave this issue lying around. Bordering on the perverse, but definitely within the limits of artistic, there is a beautiful depiction of Miles imagining a sexual episode with the young doctor while she and his fiancée are having a conversation.

Living in a small town, Miranda was telling Anna, was a major adjustment after the city, but she was enjoying the work in the hospital, especially as she was one of only two doctors in the town. It must be difficult at times, said Anna, as Miles moved behind Miranda and gently pushed her facedown onto the table with one hand, while slapping her buttocks with the other.

Why else should you read it? A non-formulaic tale that keeps you entertained. And if you are the kind who reads award-winning stories, this one won the 2009 Plimpton Prize for, as the Observer puts it, “uncommon dedication to plot: “stories that are actually stories, full of event and surprise.”

Short Story Review: Chechnya by Anthony Marra

Surya — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:16:40 +0000

When I thought about short stories I loved, this is one of the first few that came to my mind. I must have read it, perhaps, a month or two ago, but it lingered in my mind. The hard part was finding it again. I remembered neither the title nor the author, but the story and the characters remained vivid in my mind. Finally, the search gods relented and I found it back. You can read it here (may require free sign-in)

Tim October summarizes the story thus:

This story is about 7,000 words long and it is really three stories which sort of “center” on the character of Sonja, a doctor in a nameless¹ Chechen city. Sonja is a doctor in the city hospital who has a mysterious man arrive with a small girl. The story follows the man² and his quest to protect the little girl he brings to the hospital, Sonja as she finds in the little girl a reason to go on, and on Natasha, Sonja’s sister and one of the reasons³ that Sonja is so damaged.

It is a reasonably simple story – the first line tells you what the protagonist wants (she has been ravaged by war and is struggling to find meaning in life) and the rest of the narrative has been carefully crafted to lead us to whether she finds it or not, complete with the several conflicts and resolutions along the path. Every new character introduced and back story told somehow contributes to the resolution of this MDQ. I am one of those who believe that such formulaic story telling ruins the beauty of a story, but somehow in this story, it works. I wasn’t even aware of it, till I started looking for it to write this review.

The characters are sympathetic. The circumstances are cruel. And I found myself transported into a world I did not know much about. A short story that satiates my craving to be a virtual tourist – excellent!