Short stories are complete, and thus you know (nearly) right away what you are dealing with—whether you like it if not why, and whether you want more. They are self-contained, offering all you ever need know about the given situation. And yet they are by nature constrained and thus spare—non-essentials are left out, leaving space for the reader to slide inside, inserting imagination of whys and wherefores, physical descriptions and psychological profiles.
To read the rest of Rebecca's very eloquent post on why short stories will never die, click here.
3 comments:
Great article this. And it reminds me that I have also printed and packed the short stories for Curious Singularity!
A "good" short story needs to be pithy and believable and engaging, which takes a tremendous amount of writing skill; the writer has to dive right in, in a sense, and the reader must jump in as well. I'm thinking about hosting either a short story or poetry "contest" on my own blog about books, Suko's Notebook, in the not too distant future, if I have enough interested parties.
As often as I would like to read a novel, I simply don't always have time. A short story sometimes fills the "need to read" when I have limited time.
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