Chain Reaction | Karen Kao
The Shanghai Quartet is going to be my magnum opus: four interlocking novels spanning a quarter century of Chinese history. Volume one was my my debut novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle . I’ve just finished the manuscript for volume two, Peace Court . While I await feedback from my beta readers, my mind wanders to volume three. I see Laogai as a collection of interlocking short stories. But what exactly is that and, more importantly, how do I write them? Definition Writing short fiction is notoriously difficult. You have to accelerate from zero to sixty miles an hour in the space of a few sentences. A short story is often more about what’s not said than what is. According to author Baird Hunter , that’s what makes the short story so powerful. the ambiguities on which short form often insists, in the white spaces of section breaks and in the big dark void at the end. But not all writers can carry off the short form. Author Sonja Chung is embarrassed...