What is a Short Story

Short Story?
From Marion Zimmer Bradley

The following extracts(c) copyright 1996 by Marion Zimmer Bradley, are from an excellent article that goes into much greater detail.
I want these snippets to give you a taste, an overview that will sharpen your appetite to read the whole item, which offers advice related to almost any genre of creative writing!

Marion Zimmer Bradley says:

When I speak of a short story, I am referring to the commercial or category short story, not the New Yorker or "literary" short story. I am dealing with the techniques for writing and selling what is known as commercial fiction. I have long contended that anyone who can write a literate English sentence can learn to write and can make a modest living ...

Virtually all category fiction -- whether science fiction, romance, suspense, fantasy, adventure, western or any other category -- follows a similar outline which for convenience is known as a formula. This word has acquired very negative connotations, but basically it is a simple summing up of what experience has told editors that the readers appear to want in fiction. Writers who master this formula by giving the editor what his readers want can make a modest living anywhere, and some of them make amazing amounts of money. Writers who ignore this formula, either out of ignorance, or because they honestly believe that creative writing must not be bound by the demands of category or formula, usually end up as starving artists -- unless they are geniuses, in which case they would not need writing technique classes. They call their work literature, and rage against the public which does not recognize literary forms.

So let us examine the elements of commercial fiction.


THE ELEMENTS OF THE SHORT STORY

Most short stories work on some variation of the following (so do most novels, but the novel works at a different speed):

A LIKABLE CHARACTER overcomes ALMOST INSUPERABLE ODDS and BY HIS OR HER OWN EFFORTS achieves a WORTHWHILE GOAL.

Amateur stories, in general, are unsalable because:

1. The main character is NOT LIKABLE ENOUGH. Your reader wants to

2. The odds are NOT INSUPERABLE ENOUGH, or the reader does not believe

3. The main character DOES NOT SOLVE HIS PROBLEM BY HIS OWN EFFORTS. The problem is solved FOR the character by

4. The RESOLUTION is too predictable, too pat; the reader knows all along that


5. The GOAL is not worthwhile enough, or this particular audience does not see it as


STARTING YOUR STORY

In the first couple of paragraphs -- certainly on the first page, unless your story is approaching novel length -- the reader will want to know the following things:

WHO is your main character?


WHERE is this happening?

WHEN does this take place?

WHAT kind of story is this?


SELF CRITICISM: HOW TO ANALYZE YOUR STORY

Most of the elements of the short story (as well as the novelette or novel) come down to these simple elements.

So as you analyze your story, remember your likable character up against

WHAT KIND OF PERSON is your main character?

HOW can you best tell this person's story?

Where do you START your story?

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY? Nobody, these days, wants

IN CONCLUSION

Most sales are lost either on the first page, where the editor simply cannot get interested enough in your story to continue reading, or on the last page, where the editor is not satisfied with the solution; the resolution is not tight enough, believable enough, or interesting enough.

Remember one thing: It is not the editor's job to try to get interested in your manuscript. ...it's still your job to get her (or him) interested in the story you are telling, to keep the editor turning those pages until she comes to the end; you have to
.

If the editor gets bored, nothing is easier than to stop reading, ... There are always more stories waiting.

And this, guys, is where we came in.