Is the short story really worthwhile, is the novel really dead? by Ali Bacon

Ali Bacon

My feelings about short stories have always been mixed. Until I began writing I’d read very few unless you count my Mum's Woman’s Own on a rainy day circa 1967.  Then in my quest to Become A Writer I signed up to an evening class without noticing the topic was short stories.  I enjoyed it but was over the moon when I found out that the excellent teacher was starting another course the following autumn on writing a novel. Since then I only ever really considered short stories as a kind of career stepping-stone, a ‘look at me’ moment in the greater plan of trying to sell a novel to an agent or publisher. 

Even when I began having some modest success in competitions I was still a reluctant consumer of short stories, literary or otherwise, and if I’m honest, viewed all those claims about the short story having at last come into its own with some scepticism.

Don’t get me wrong I’m still not completely won over (of the several anthologies I own, I don’t think there’s one in which I’ve read every single story - *blush*) but I may be on the path to conversion.

What has changed? Well as you’ll have seen from previous posts  I've discovered that if I have a limited attention span for reading short stories, I do like listening to them and have been involved in several ‘livelit’ events where I’ve met talented local writers who can write and perform with great panache.

Jenny Heap with other writers (I'm 3rd from right!) at Hawkesbury Upton Litfest

But what about reading short fiction? Well at HawkesburyUpton Literature festival (where I was in the company of as many short story writers as novelists without feeling like a fish out of water) I ran into Jenny Heap who has recently published ‘a circle of short stories.’  That had me intrigued straight away. In my short stay on the MA at Bath Spa the idea of a collection of linked short stories was often bandied about, but had I ever met one, as it were, in the flesh? Tessa Hadley’s Accidents in the Home has been given this label but to me it was more coherent than that. Other collections (Debbie Young’s witty Marry in Haste or the Unchained library anthology published by my writing group) have themes but no interconnections.

The Woman Who Never Did (I reviewed it here)is both entertaining and thought provoking and doen't conform to many (off-putting!) preconceptions of the short story genre. Its interconnections (some tight some loose) also kept me interested.  As a result, when I came across this article by Anthony Cummins Clear-eyed and cutting edge, has the short story come of age,  I decided to suspend my usual scepticism and read it properly. 

Cummins  praises a number of short story collections including a new one by Mark Haddon but also identifies quite a few novels which are really made up from separate stories.  He says: 

"This is either a grown-up way to construct a story that trusts the reader to make sense of it, or it neglects the writers duty to build something coherent. It can be a way to sidestep the contrivance of plot and let the characters breathe..."

Sidestepping the contrivance of plot rings a bell with me even as a reader. I think modern commercial fiction has become increasingly plot-driven. I’m thinking of things like Gone Girl or even Elizabeth is Missing. These are compelling reads but do they give the lasting satisfaction of a novel that builds more slowly and demands more of us? And as a writer who has had struggled with plot in the past, I’m always on the look out for a McGuffin or a plot-twist and even if I don’t see it, the knowledge that it’s there is somehow distracting.  I remember a few years ago Andrew Marr declared himself growing weary of the novel form and although they will always be my staple reading diet I think I see now where he was coming from.

And so I am attracted at least in theory to this new form of novel and although I’ve twice started and given up on Cloud Atlas (more blushes) maybe it’s time I got to grips with some of the others mentioned in the article. As to the ‘pure’ short story collection, Cummins hits the nail on the head in explaining my own past aversion, "A traditional novel can be put down and picked up with steady enjoyment, whereas short stories demand engagement, continually renewed. It’s a form that asks for more attention, not less."

This has been my problem exactly. Reading short stories consecutively is just too mentally tiring. Unlike a novel I just have to put them down!

Of course there are exceptions, and If anyone needs more persuading to give short stories a go, there's our own anthology Another Flash in the Pen availabe on pre-order now - no mental tiredness or your money back!
(I can say that can't I?)






You can read more about Ali Bacon on our author website.