I’ve written a few short stories. A couple were included in small anthologies, and in creating them, I realized they required a different technique.
I recently finished one that will be included in the Rough Country anthology I’m editing for Roand and Weatherford publishing. After I wrapped up Where the Road Forks, I remembered talking to Joe Lansdale about that idea and others a few years ago.
Joe is the accomplished and successful author of the Hap and Leonard books that eventually became a television series. Talking over sushi in Nacogdoches, Texas, I asked him about short fiction.
“I really don’t have that many ideas for short stories.”
“You’re surrounded by them.” He waved his chopsticks in the air, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d snapped a fly from the air like Mr. Miagi. The slender bamboo utensils seemed to fit his hand, because Joe is an International Martial Arts Hall of Famer and even created his own style of fighting. Those experiences often show up in his work. “I can prove it. Tell me something that happened when you were a kid.”
I thought about it as a chunk of wasabi burned its way through my sinuses, making my eyes water. The shock that went through my frontal lobes gave me time to think. When I could breathe, I told him of something that happened to my older cousins way back in the late 1950s.
Sporting flattops and one slicked-back duck tail haircut, they were three of the coolest and toughest guys in their little rural community, riding motorcycles and rolling cigarettes in their T shirt sleeves. When they heard Elvis was coming to town, Tom announced to the others they were going to meet the famous singer.
Dick and Harry allowed it was something to do, and they rode their Indians to the Grand Theater where the future king of rock and roll was waiting to go on upstairs in the “green” room at the top of a second floor exterior fire escape.
The boys parked their bikes in a nearby alley and came up to the theater opposite the bright entrance. Stomping up the metal steps in their square-toed boots as if they had backstage passes, they were met at the top of the stairs by the Memphis Mafia who heard them coming up.
One of Elvis’ buddies told them they weren’t welcome.
Harry said they didn’t care and intended to say howdy to Elvis, and they tried to push past the obstacles between them and their hero.
As Tom told me. “We thought we were tough, but those boys were tougher and more experienced. They handed us our asses, and threw us back down the stairs. When we rolled to the bottom, and we dusted off, got up, and went home.”
Joe laughed and took a sip of iced tea. “There’s your short story.”
I came home thinking about it, but haven’t yet written it down. But it’s there, perking along until the day I write the first sentence, “The boys finished their Schlitz beers and decided they were going to meet Elvis Presley, come hell or high water,” or something like that.
Those stories come easier than I expected. Maybe it’s because I write mini-stories every week for my newspaper columns in The Paris News, Country World, and now for Saddlebag Disptatches magazine. They come to mind as a single sentence, and then I watched as my fingers tuype out 950 words in one sitting that will “go to press” the next day. They’re mini-short stories, a snippit of time or experience, in which I give readers a quick glimpse into the view from my own hill.
When we’re working on novels, authors create whole new fictional worlds and can revel in taking their time to describe these worlds and establish character backgrounds and settings. In a short story, we create a can of condensed soup in a sense that, if we wanted to, could sometimes expand into a novel.
I think of them as that tiny world inside a globe, those glass spheres containing a tiny piece of a mythical world. In this case, these miniature scenes don’t always have snow, unless it’s essential to the plot.
Essential to the plot. In short stories, every element, word, character, and bit of dialogue has to be informative, moving the story forward, and must relate to everything else. The logic of the narrative has to be short and concise.
To me, it’s like flipping through the pages of a novel and picking out the necessary bits and pieces to write a book report. A quick read of what could be more, but isn’t.
There’s no room for sweeping descriptions and extensive development. In my view, the author has to know the character’s entire backstory at the outset, and the setting’s history that’s revealed by bits of information dropped in a sentence or two, or as action dialogue tags.
Readers must be swept into these juicy stories with the right words, phrases, and pacing. I suppose it’s like satisfying our need for immediate satisfaction these days. In other words you have about 6,000 words to set up the story arc, very short Acts 1 and 2, before that last couple of pages in which the bombshell drops. In fact, some authors set off that climax bomb in a couple of paragraphs, or even one breathtaking sentence.
Writing short stories is an excellent way to warm up, to refill the creative basket between novels, and to achieve the personal satisfaction of a job well done.
Writing short stories is not something I’ve done much of to this point but something I’d like to practice more.
I’m curious whether you or any of our TKZ community have tips on writing for anthologies–the short answer may simply be the universal “it depends”, but is there a commonly accepted word length that is targeted for anthology stories? If you have put together an anthology, how do you determine the scope or theme of what stories are included? What other “anthology primer” tips would you give?
For what it’s worth, I’ve been published in a few indie anthologies, and also have several friends who have been published in numerous anthologies. Check the word count range–perhaps aim for the middle, though in the end, the story matters most IMHO.
Anthology theme, like “first cat on Mars” or Valentine’s Day murder, etc. Play around with ideas for a story aimed at that, but consider how can you, while still hitting the theme, come up with something that is unexpected, rather than dead on. Perhaps your first cat on Mars story is about what happens to the first cat *after* she returns from Mars, or how she passes on that experience to another.
My two cents at any rate 🙂
Aim for the middle and look for the unexpected. Sounds like great wisdom to me. Thanks for the tips!
Sorry it took so long to respond. I’ve been fighting the wind at a grandson’s T-ball game, which in effect is a mildly organized chaotic endeavor.
The call that went out for this anthology required between 2,000 and 6,000 words on the topic of western justice, crime and punishment. The time period is what’s different. The publishers were looking for anything between 1900 and today. The submission are varied in those dates, and one even came in a post apocalyptic setting, after asking if that was permissible. We have one set in the early part of the last century featuring airplanes. The writing is as varied as the authors, and they’re all successful novelists, a few taking their first steps into the short story world. With that, we got out of their way and these folks do their creative thing.
I hope that answers your questions.
WOW. Only 2-6k words. Goes to the point of having to really hone your story for short fiction. Thanks for the info!
I like the idea of having a fairly wide date range for a particular series–especially since each of us have our own favorite time periods.
Rev, thanks for the great reminder about short stories. That’s how I started out b/c I didn’t think I could write a whole novel. Also figured they’d be easy b/c they were short. Haha!
At the time, I was taking an adult ed class in Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, etc. After I wrote 30 or so stories (and received 30 or so rejections), a few were published in little magazines that no longer exist. One even paid me $5…but the check bounced.
The best exercise came from flash fiction contests–only 100 or 500 words to cram a whole story into. That’s how I learned to make every single word count.
Now and then I still write one. Great way to reset the brain after finishing a long novel.
Short stories are fun, as you’ve found out. I still have a few that are waiting for their time. Some authors prefer this format, and I applaud anyone who can do it consistently.
I write quite a few short stories, although I rarely try to get them published. I love the challenge. For someone whose novels typically run around 90,000 to 100,000 words, I find it excruciating (but in a good way) to hone a story down to its essence. Unfortunately that tends to run around 12,000 words–too long for today’s market. I did have one short story published in The Christmas Cookies Mystery anthology based on the Oakridge Boys’ Christmas Cookies album. Each of 13 suspense/mystery novelists took a Christmas song featured on the album and wrote a story based on it. Mine was Jingle Bells Murder All The Way. It was a hoot and my shortest short story to date–8,000 words. If you’re having trouble getting started on a new novel, try writing a short story instead it. You’d be surprised what might develop!
It was a great story, Kelly, my favorite in the Christmas Cookies Mystery!
My first attempts to write short stories always came out too long, one at 12,000 words, but I believed in it so much, I wrote a second based on this characters, and then a third. By that time I realized I had a novella on my hands, but wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Almost forty years passed before I revisited that first installment and did a little tweaking. Then, when I joined Roan and Weatherford, the publisher asked if I had any short fiction. I told him about Anniversary, and he was enthusiastic. It published in Saddlebag Dispatches last year, at 12,000 words, followed by the second installment, and will soon wrap with the third in a few months. Now they’re planning to publish all three in the original novella form (in hardback) soon, with a trade paperback to follow after that.
Never give up!
I’ve had a couple of books published, but short stories are, to me, much more satisfying and demanding. Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a novel is pretty much on point.
Back in the last century, when I had to work for a living, I worked as a project manager, analyzing and redesigning work flows for large insurance companies. Writing and editing a short story gives the same thrill of crafting a tight, efficient process.
There’s great satisfaction when you wrap those stories and realize what you’ve accomplished. Thanks for weighing in, and congrats on your successes.
Wonderful post about the challenges and joys of writing short stories, Rev.
For many years I primarily wrote short fiction. My first short story sale was a flash fiction, to a quarterly magazine where each issue was a “theme.” The winter 2010 issue’s was “an encounter at a crossroads at dusk.” All at once, the idea came fully formed to me. A weird western style setting, with a gunslinger-sorcerer who was out for revenge against his former boss, a powerful sorcerer who had killed his wife, a sword-fighter. He reaches a crossroads at dusk to discover his apparently undead wife guarding it.
I wrote two more in that little “triptych,” which also appeared in 10Flash Quarterly and wrote a number of other flash fictions that appeared there, at Every Day Fiction and one as an audio. I also had two longer short stories, both collaborations, published at Perihelion Science Fiction, as well as anthology publications.
Short stories are fun and challenging to write because, as you noted, they have to be. concise, packing conflict, character, setting, and emotion into a few thousand words.
It’s been a while since I’ve written one. I think it’s high time I do so. Thanks for the reminder!
Thanks Dale! I’ve never written flash fiction, because I always have too many words left over. I’ve read some outstanding work, though, and admire those who’ve made it work.
The short story market continues to be successful. Amazon even categorizes them by reading length. While short Romance is the biggest, there is still demand in Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, Action/Adventure, SciFi, and Westerns on Amazon and all the others. The most popular lengths is between 10k and 20k words. Since distributors separate these from the rest of published fiction, your competition is lower.
I know quite a few authors making a full-time living (six figures) just writing short stories. I was making grocery money every month from just a few short stories.
The largest benefit I saw was the ability to apply what I was learning from craft books into a story that I could test in the real world market. We lost the old school way of learning how to write stories that would sell when the magazine market contracted, so this new way is almost the same.
Another benefit was the ability to expand a magazine story from the 6-8k word limit to something larger which would improve reader enjoyment (and my profits). A down side is these stories are like candy, you need to pop out a lot of them to be successful. My Romance author friends who are doing that full-time have between 40 and 100 short stories in their back catalog.
Finally, there is that adrenaline hit with completing and publishing a story.
Anyone making six figures by writing short fiction is highly successful. I can’t pop them out that fast. So many famous authors of old cut their teeth on short stories during the pulp magazine years. That’s a market we can no longer rely on, but I wish those mags would come back. I love the adventure publications, and miss so many of those I followed.
I met Joe Lansdale at a local science fiction convention, years ago. One of the panels’ topics veered into markets, reviews, etc. I was in the audience, and I mentioned the magazine “Romantic Times” which also reviewed science fiction and horror. I had a copy of the magazine. The manly men rolled their eyes at the word “romance.” At the end of the panel, he came up to me and asked about the magazine, its readership, etc., and flipped through the magazine. I told him that romance readers are genre omnivores, and they spend lots of money on all kinds of books. A few months later, his newest book was reviewed by the magazine. He’s a smart cookie.
I miss RT! And the conference! I never quite understood why the magazine went away.
Gilstrap and I went to one RT convention here in the Dallas area. It was an eye-opener for sure.
Amazon and customer reviews happened. Magazine reviews no longer had the cachet, and many of the authors who weren’t published by the traditional publishers had to buy an ad for a review. The readers and authors started going elsewhere, and the magazine folded.
Joe has the ability to read the trends and adapt. He started out by pounding a typewriter and doing it the old fashioned way. Now he has dozens of novels, a TV series that’s still running in repeats, and several movies under his belt. We should all study those who learned the hard way.
I started out writing short stories–really short, like 2500 words at first and the last 1000. It’s probably why I’m considered a lean writer. Woman’s World published three of them, and then I went on to write novels. But reading this gives me the itch to write another one. Thanks, Reavis!
You’re welcome. Write some more, please.
I wrote a short story prequel for my novel trilogy, an event in the life of one of the three main characters which explains a lot later – because the idea came to me of why he was the way he was in the Ireland before the beginning of the trilogy.
It took me SIX MONTHS to write that ONE STORY.
It’s only 1500 words – had 60K reads on Wattpad the last time I checked – and is still a favorite among my shorts.
https://prideschildren.com/too-late-prequel/
I really need to write prequel shorts for the other two main characters. Thanks for the reminder!
Short really makes you think!