Here you will find advice and insights on a wide variety of topics from our members.
Writing Your Short Story
When I am editing a short story I often think of the advice of Martha Foley, co-founder of Story Magazine and the first editor of The Best American Short Stories.
She urged her writing students to get everything down in a first draft, not to edit themselves or judge, just get it all down. Later, afterwards, the writer can return to the draft and with the logical and critical part of the brain, begin to edit, sharpen, cut, expand. This may take one, or several, or many drafts.
And, she advised, don’t tell your story to anyone before you get it all down in that first draft, because that which is clamoring for expression inside you doesn’t care how it comes out.
I like to see that last draft, when the author feels the story is ready for an editor.
I’ll be reading for many things.
Does the story capture the reader right away, or is there a lot of throat-clearing in the early pages. Should the story really begin on page 2 or 3?
Does the main character come alive? Or is the author telling us what to think of him or her?
Is the author getting out of the way and letting the characters speak, rather than summarizing the dialogue?
Is there a challenge that the character is facing? Is there a conflict?
Can the reader picture the setting?
Is the story moving along? Or does it get bogged down perhaps in overlong descriptions?
Does something happen during the story, or is it just a description of an event or setting or character? Does something occur that may even allow the reader to see how the life of a character will unfold from then on?
This happens in William Saroyan’s story “Gaston,” which appeared some years ago in the Atlantic Monthly and later in The O.Henry Prize Stories collection. The story, of a divorced man and his young daughter, takes place in Paris during the course of an afternoon, as he and his daughter are meeting after an absence and are eating peaches. A bug emerges from one of the peaches. How the father reacts to this, with storytelling and imagination (he names the bug Gaston), stirs the girl’s imagination in a way that the reader fervently hopes will continue. But a phone call intervenes. And at the end of the story the path of the girl’s life is clear.
As I am reading a story I may wonder, who is the author writing for? A friend, a spouse, a former teacher? Sometimes when you write for an audience of only one person, you may make the circumstances so real that the story becomes universal. A reader may completely identify with a young man in Kenya who is in love, or with an old woman in Miami suffering deep loss. Jean Stafford’s stories were universal, she said that she wrote for God and Peter Taylor.
Read your story aloud, all versions of it, to hear how it sounds. Many of the best fiction writers do this, either alone or perhaps with an audience of one. C.S. Lewis said, “Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye.” I often read a story aloud as I am editing, to better catch repetitions, awkward moments, to note places where the pace slows.
As you read your story you may realize that something is missing that you had meant to include. Recently I was working with an author who had written an interesting story but in it, a secondary character suddenly appeared out of the blue. I asked him to give us more background for the character. Oh yes, he said, he had been thinking about the character subconsciously and had formed a full picture of him, but he had not yet translated that picture to the page. When he did, the story was fuller.
In recent collections of THE BEST SHORT STORIES: The O.Henry Prize Winners, the authors are asked questions about their work. Often, an author speaks of setting a story aside, even for years, to return to it with clarity some time later. Maybe the new version of the story begins in a different place. Many authors say that as they begin, they do not know how a story will end. In the 2024 collection, E.K. Ota is asked if she knew at her story’s inception, how it would end. She reported that she wrote the story with the ending in mind – the meeting of an old man and a girl – but this was just an image. She knew that the two would meet and that it would change their lives, but she didn’t know what the meeting meant until she had written the story.
I keep all of these things in mind as I am editing stories, hearing the voices, helping the author let the essential story emerge.