Short Story: Theory

Normally when people are asked to write short stories they rush out and buy as many short story anthologies as possible and assume reading all the short stories ever written (impossible) will enable them to write better.

Naturally, the more you read the better you will write. But it also helps if you know about the recipe behind the writing. You wouldn't perform a surgery without knowin the different parts of the human body, so why expect to write a good short story without knowing the 'ingredients' to a good short story?

Fortunately for me in my first year at university one of the modules I did covered short stories. In my first year I had the enthusiasm of a bull charging at a red flag (totally lost it now!) and so I read everything in the library on short stories. I've been meaning to put my notes up on this blog since last year but I never seem to have the time!

So, below you will find different short story theorie and ideas and using these same ideas I've attempted to analyse a few short stories. Much easier to comment on other people's short stories than write my own. Besides, I'm far too sensitive about my own work...:-)

Incident v Character

M.H. Abrahams in his infamous 'Glossary of Literary Terms' identifies two types of short stories. The 'Story of Incident' and the 'Story of Character'. The 'story of incident' focuses on plot, the course and the outcome of events whereas the 'story of character' focuses on the psychological and moral qualities of characters.


Opening Sentences

(The passage below is from 'The way to write Short Stories' bu Micheal Baldwin, published by Penguin Book.)

Opening sentences should suggest one of the following three things: -

a. Something of moment is about to happen or is already happening.

b. We are being initiated into a fascinating world.

c. Suspending need for a or b because this writer is so engagingly witty.


Difference between Short Story and Novel

According to Charles May in 'The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice', the difference between the short story and the novel is that in the novel characters develop through time 'as they are conditioned or determined by their milieu' but in the short story the characters are already developed and 'are brought into conflict that reveals them'.

So if you're writing a short story you need to know your characters inside-out, they need to be developed already in your head and you need to reveal their characteristics and qualities to the reader by showing their reaction against a conflict. You don't need lengthy commentary like in a novel if you manage to do this well.



(unfinished)

Existentialism

Can you believe in God and yet be an existentialist?

I don' think there is an answer to that question. I believe in God but am madly in love with existentialism. Ever since I discovered it during the first year of my A-Levels I have been obsessed with the ideas and the works of this branch of philosophy.

I find it so exhilarating and mind blowing. I love the close affair it has with Absurdism the 'Thatre of the Absurd'. Ever since the discovery of the existence of existentialism I have tried to read as much as possible about it. So below is various bits of text that I have found both enlightening and elusive.


First, some 'existentialist paintings'.


Phyllis Bramson

'The Existentialist Witness'








Andrew Baines





Above: The Existentialist.

Below: The Existentialists.




I will try to comment on the above two paintings but be warned- I am not an art critic!

What strikes me is that black suit and the bowler hats. The bowler hat was worn by men of all classes and to me this reflects the ideas of existentialists such as Sartre who believed that each individual is 'condemned to be free', that 'existence precedes essence', human being just exist and each man regardless of material things like his social status and occupation must find his own meaning to life; he has no great destiny and must choose freely.

In the first painting, 'The Existentialist' depicting just one man on his own, the sky is much brighter- more 'bluey' and less menacing than the sky in the second painting, 'The Existentialists' where there are several men. In the second painting the sky is much greyer and darker and

(unfinished)




Below: Whats the point




Is it me or does this strongly remind you of Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' ? Two men in bowling hats, they appear to be waiting, similar environment to that in Beckett's play although there is no tree. I wonder if there is any relation, I've read a little about Baines on the internet but there is very little on him and also no mention of a connection in anything I have read so far.

(unfinished)