Enter Stylist’s short story competition

Whether you’re dreaming of penning your first novel or looking to find your inner voice, Stylist’s guide to the short story is just the writer’s workshop you need

Words: Michelle Davies

We probably all fell in love with short stories as children. Listening to our parents and teachers read to us aloud, we were transported to worlds far beyond our imaginations. But for most of us, that’s where the love affair ended. It’s easy to forget how wonderful short stories can be, yet short form fiction is the perfect solution to book reading in 2016; satisfyingly concise stories that fit perfectly into the brief pockets of time we whittle out while we’re commuting or just before we go to bed. Swap your phone for a short story and you can lose yourself in another land instead of flicking through the photos of someone you last saw at a school prom over a decade ago.

So, it’s no surprise that short stories are rising in popularity, with sales in the UK rising by 21% in 2015 from the previous year, according to the latest Nielsen BookScan records. It is a rare author who hasn’t produced one or two short stories within their body of work. Agatha Christie wrote 153 in total, including the Partners In Crime collection that was adapted into a BBC One drama starring David Walliams and Jessica Raine last year. George Orwell’s brave personal essay Shooting An Elephant is widely regarded as a metaphor for British imperialism, while Virginia Woolf’s A Haunted House is considered one of the all-time classics. Now, modern-day bestsellers are following in their footsteps, with Jodi Picoult’s The Color War, Philip Pullman’s The Firework-Maker’s Daughter and Rachel Joyce’s A Snow Garden.

While novels can take time to build up to the drama, a good short story delivers instantly; the twists rapid and striking. Generally, short stories can be read in a couple of hours or less and are usually between 2,000 and 20,000 words, although there are always exceptions – Ernest Hemingway is said to have penned the shortest story ever: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. Even the hardest of souls would find it difficult not to be affected by those six words.

Whether you use ten or 2,000 words, a good short story should “take you somewhere else”, says Stella Duffy, author of bestselling collection Everything Is Moving, Everything Is Joined. The form is perfect for anyone who’s ever had dreams of writing a novel: a short story will teach you to be succinct with your words and will allow you to experiment with different voices and styles. Plus, within a couple of weeks (or even hours), you’ll have something tangible to show for your efforts, giving you that much-needed motivation to tackle something bigger.

Here, we ask authors and experts for their tips on how to craft the perfect short story…

Page 1: read as much as you can

It’s a fallacy that you should stop enjoying other authors’ work because it will unduly influence your own – rather, it should inform and inspire you. Don’t feel you must stick to the topic you’re writing about either. It can be far more insightful to read out of your comfort zone: for example, look at the way a fast-paced crime fiction short story is structured compared to a literary one – does your own story need more or less suspense? Compare stories with a single character to those with a number to see what works best for your own piece of work.

Duffy recommends reading Daphne Du Maurier’s The Doll collection, which includes a tale about a young woman obsessed with a mechanical sex toy. “She’s fantastic at darkness, hidden negative feelings and shame,” she says. “It’s quite hard to read an entire novel about shame or pain, but its length gives it a quality that is bearable.” She also cites Katherine Mansfield’s Miss Brill, first published in 1920, about an English teacher living in France who has a hurtful encounter with a young couple in a park. “I first read it when I was 13 and I was stunned by the world of longing and loss captured in just one story.”

Margaret Atwood’s The Age Of Lead is lecturer Katy Darby’s recommendation, about a woman recalling the life of her friend while watching a TV news report about the exhumation of a man buried in ice 150 years ago. “It’s very persuasive and made me cry,” says Darby, who teaches short story writing at City University in London, and whose own stories have been produced for BBC Radio 4. “If you can produce stories that affect people emotionally, particularly on such a small canvas, you’ve done so much.”

Page 2: start with a fully formed idea

Many novelists prefer not to plot before they start writing and often begin with only a vague idea of where they want the book to go. But with a short story, the opposite is true: plotting is essential to avoid meandering into novella territory. Before you start, write a brief, factual synopsis: include the entire plot outline, the characters and their roles, and how the story will open and conclude.

“You need a proper narrative arc: a beginning, middle and end, just as you do for a good novel,” says author Sophie Hannah, whose short story collection The Visitors Book was published last October. “Make sure your central idea is the right length for a short form. You don’t want to cram it with too much plot, but at the same time you cannot struggle along rudderless.”

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