Principles of Short Story
Principles of Short Story
B
ACK IN THE mid-1960s, I found I was hav- simple clarity, and the hint of revelation that’s
ing trouble concentrating my attention implied. There is mystery, too. What has been
on long narrative fiction. For a time I unclear before? Why is it just now becoming clear?
experienced difficulty in trying to read it What’s happened? Most of all—what now? There
as well as in attempting to write it. My are consequences as a result of such sudden awaken-
attention span had gone out on me; I no longer had ings. I feel a sharp sense of relief—and anticipation.
the patience to try to write novels. It’s an involved I overheard the writer Geoffrey Wolff say “No
story, too tedious to talk about here. But I know it cheap tricks” to a group of writing students. That
has much to do now with why I write poems and should go on a three-by-five card. I’d amend it a little
short stories. Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on. It to “No tricks.” Period. I hate tricks. At the first sign of a
could be that I lost any great ambitions at about the trick or a gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or
same time, in my late twenties. If I did, I think it was even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks
good it happened. Ambition and a little luck are are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which
good things for a writer to have going for him. Too may go along with my not having much of an attention
much ambition and bad luck, or no luck at all, can be span. But extremely clever chichi writing, or just plain
killing. There has to be talent. tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don’t
Some writers have a bunch of talent; I don’t know need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be
any writers who are without it. But a unique and exact the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of
way of looking at things, and finding the right context appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able
for expressing that way of looking, that’s something to just stand and gape at this or that thing—a sunset
else. The World According to Garp is, of course, the mar- or an old shoe—in absolute and simple amazement.
vellous world according to John Irving. There is Some months back, in the New York Times Book
another world according to Flannery O’Connor, and Review, John Barth said that ten years ago most of the
others according to William Faulkner and Ernest students in his fiction writing seminar were interested
Hemingway. There are worlds according to Cheever, in “formal innovation,” and this no longer seems to be
Updike, Singer, Stanley Elkin, Ann Beattie, Cynthia the case. He’s a little worried that writers are going to
Ozick, Donald Barthelme, Mary Robison, William start writing mom and pop novels in the 1980s. He
Kittredge, Barry Hannah, Ursula K Le Guin. Every worries that experimentation may be on the way out,
great or even every very good writer makes the world along with liberalism. I get a little nervous if I find
over according to his own specifications. myself within earshot of sombre discussions about
“formal innovation” in fiction writing. Too often
This essay first appeared in the “New York Times Book
“experimentation” is a licence to be careless, silly or
Review” in 1981 as “A Storyteller’s Notebook.” Entitled “On
imitative in the writing. Even worse, a licence to try to
Writing,” it is included in “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”
brutalise or alienate the reader. Too often such writing
(Harvill Press) by Raymond Carver. © 1968 to 1988 by
gives us no news of the world, or else describes a
Raymond Carver, 1989 to present by Tess Gallagher
desert landscape and that’s all—a few dunes and
lizards here and there, but no people; a place uninhab- artistic sense will simply not be engaged. Henry James
ited by anything recognisably human, a place of inter- called this sort of hapless writing “weak specification.”
est only to a few scientific specialists. I have friends who’ve told me they had to hurry a
It should be noted that real experiment in fiction is book because they needed the money, their editor or
original, hard-earned and cause for rejoicing. But their wife was leaning on them or leaving them—
someone else’s way of looking at things—Barthelme’s, something, some apology for the writing not being
for instance—should not be chased after by other writ- very good. “It would have been better if I’d taken the
ers. It won’t work. There is only one Barthelme, and time.” I was dumbfounded when I heard a novelist
for another writer to try to appropriate Barthelme’s friend say this. I still am, if I think about it, which I
peculiar sensibility or mise en scène under the rubric of don’t. It’s none of my business. But if the writing can’t
innovation is for that writer to mess around with chaos be made as good as it is within us to make it, then why
and disaster and, worse, self-deception. The real do it? In the end, the satisfaction of having done our
experimenters have to “make it new,” as Pound urged, best, and the proof of that labour, is the one thing we
and in the process have to find things out for them- can take into the grave. I wanted to say to my friend,
selves. But if writers haven’t taken leave of their senses, for heaven’s sake go do something else. There have to
they also want to stay in touch with us, they want to be easier and maybe more honest ways to try and earn
carry news from their world to ours. a living. Or else just do it to the best of your abilities,
It’s possible, in a poem or a your talents, and then don’t jus-
short story, to write about com- tify or make excuses. Don’t
monplace things and objects complain, don’t explain.
using commonplace but precise In an essay called, simply
language, and to endow those enough, “Writing Short Sto-
things—a chair, a window cur- ries,” Flannery O’Connor talks
tain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s about writing as an act of dis-
earring—with immense, even covery. O’Connor says she most
startling power. It is possible to often did not know where she
write a line of seemingly was going when she sat down
innocuous dialogue and have it to work on a short story. She
send a chill along the reader’s says she doubts that many writ-
spine—the source of artistic ers know where they are going
delight, as Nabokov would have when they begin something.
it. That’s the kind of writing She uses “Good Country Peo-
that most interests me. I hate ple” as an example of how she
sloppy or haphazard writing put together a short story
whether it flies under the ban- whose ending she could not
ner of experimentation or else is even guess at until she was
just clumsily rendered realism. nearly there:
JOHN HOLDER
the story had offered itself to me when I began it. For THE STORY: A SHORT MISCELLANY
several days I’d been going around with this sentence
in my head: “He was running the vacuum cleaner ● Among the earliest writers of the modern short
when the telephone rang.” I knew a story was there story were Miguel de Cervantes, Walter Scott,
and that it wanted telling. I felt it in my bones, that a Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe. One of
story belonged with that beginning, if I could just the earliest short story collections was Washington
have the time to write it. I found the time, an entire Irving’s Sketchbook (1820)
day—12, 15 hours even—if I wanted to make use of it. ● Edgar Allen Poe wrote a critique of Nathaniel
I did, and I sat down in the morning and wrote the Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales (1837), which has been
first sentence, and other sentences promptly began to used as a definition of the short story. For him, a story
attach themselves. I made the story just as I’d make a should be structured: 1) to be read at one sitting, 2)
poem; one line and then the next, and the next. Pretty using a limited number of characters, incidents, style
soon I could see a story—and I knew it was my story, and tone, 3) using words efficiently and sparingly.
the one I’d been wanting to write.
● The publishing explosion at the turn of the 19th
I like it when there is some feeling of threat or
sense of menace in short stories. I think a little men- century was unprecedented in history. When the fic-
tion-packed Strand magazine launched in January
ace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it’s good
1891, it sold 300,000 copies in Britain.
for the circulation. There has to be tension, a sense
that something is imminent, that certain things are in ● The “synchronic series” format of story publishing
relentless motion, or else, most often, there simply took hold with the success of the Sherlock Holmes
won’t be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fic- stories, beginning in July 1891. Arthur Conan Doyle
tion is partly the way the concrete words are linked had realised that serial stories in magazines were a
together to make up the visible action of the story. But mistake because if the first number were missed read-
it’s also the things that are left out, that are implied, ers would be debarred from the story; so he thought
the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes of writing a serial without appearing to do so, with
broken and unsettled) surface of things. each instalment standing alone, yet retaining a con-
VS Pritchett’s definition of a short story is “some- necting link by means of the leading characters.
thing glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.” ● James Joyce’s short stories are characterised by
Notice the “glimpse” part of this. First the glimpse. deletions, the most obvious deletion being that of the
Then the glimpse given life, turned into something conventional beginning and ending. The technique
that illuminates the moment and may, if we’re lucky— has been considered Chekhovian but it is as likely that
that word again—have even further-ranging conse- Joyce adopted it from the work of English story-writ-
quences and meaning. The short story writer’s task is ers of the 1890s.
to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He’ll ● The major British prizes for fiction (the Man
bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his tal- Booker, the Whitbread) are specifically for novels; US
ent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of prizes (such as the Pulitzer) are for fiction in general,
things: of how things out there really are and how he and have been won by numerous short story collec-
sees those things—like no one else sees them. And this tions, including by writers Jhumpa Lahiri, John
is done through the use of clear and specific langage, Cheever, Jean Stafford, Katherine Anne Porter,
language used so as to bring to life the details that will William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James A
light up the story for the reader. For the details to be Michener and Robert Olen Butler.
concrete and convey meaning the language must be ● The most prolific of British short-story writers was
accurate and precisely given. The words can be so pre- VS Pritchett.
cise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; Compiled by Sophie Lewis
if used right, they can hit all the notes. ■