Mixed Anthologies

Mixed-author anthologies are hard. Even the great ones are uneven. It’s hard to focus on literary quality when you need to assess every story individually and as part of a whole. They feel like neither fish nor fowl, and so they end up pushed aside. Maybe this is the correct call: in both collections, there are some duddy stories, so they aren’t consistently excellent. Then again, in lots of novels there are small flaws we can cite if we dig deep enough, but we still consider these serious contenders.

- from a review of a short story anthology in The Library Journal.

Message In A Bottle

A story is a message in a bottle and not everyone will get the message. Some of my favorite stories by other writers have been rejected by famous editors. If someone doesn’t like your story, don’t fret. Write another story.

- Australian author, Amanda Lohrey.

See the rest of her list here.

Different Writing Conventions For SF?

Neil Gaiman, rock star of writing, is widely adored, revered and emulated. I admire his craft. I also wonder if he gets away with things that lesser mortals cannot.

Take his short story: How To Talk To Girls At Parties, available in full here. (Who can’t resist a title like that, even if you’re a girl?)

If you’re interested in reading further, read his story first. It’s engaging, I promise.

Now that you’ve read it

I wonder, did anyone else have a problem with the choice of first person narrator? My issue is this:

The narrator, Enn, is totally blown away by the magnetic charm of Stella and Triolet. He indicates several times that he’s not really listening to their words:

(after a lengthy, fairly unintelligible alien speech) ”Um,” I said, “do you want to dance?”

Also, Enn’s attention is focused on other things, such as minor details of clothing:

There were black worry beads wrapped around her wrist, and she fiddled with them as she spoke.

When Stella continues to speak of the alien world, this is what Enn is thinking:

I edged closer to her, so I could feel my leg pressing against hers.

So we know our first person narrator is not really listening to these alien girls, because he’s more interested in making a move. How then, does he remember the extended and lengthy dialogue, thirty years later, to the point where he can write it down in a short story? Especially when he doesn’t remember whether he kissed the alien girl properly or not. I would expect a teenage boy to remember that above all else!

However.

Not all things in a story make sense. That’s what makes a short story worth writing down, presumably. Many of Neil Gaiman’s short stories seem designed to leave the reader wondering, with no resolution or explanation. We’re to take as a given that weird, inexplicable things happen in this world.

Perhaps if I were writing a similar story I would have chosen third person narration, because readers don’t question what a more omniscient narrator can and cannot know (or remember) 30 years later.  I do wonder why Gaiman chose to write in first person. Perhaps he decided that he could achieve a more colloquial and engaging voice that way, which overrides any decision regarding likelihood and believability. Perhaps readers of speculative fiction are more willing to sink into stories about aliens and so on without picking the story to bits. (Once you start, where to stop?)

This makes me wonder:

Are there different rules for speculative fiction? Are there any rules at all?

The Gates of Literature

She doesn’t even know if she will read the book. She has a couple of good biographies on the go at the moment that she is sure are more to her taste than this will be.

How Are We to Live is the book’s title. A collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book’s authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside.

- excerpt from Alice Munro’s short story: Fiction, Too Much Happiness.from

I’m sure Alice Munro herself must feel somewhat embraced by the literary world, but I wonder how she really feels about being a short story writer. Is it not enough for an author to keep writing short stories? Must an author write novels in order to be taken seriously? Or to feel that they are being taken seriously?

For Advice On Short Story Competitions

Short of reading heaps and heaps of unpublished short stories on peer review sites, or finding an opportunity to read piles of competition entries yourself, it’s not always easy to know what makes editors groan.

On The Premises magazine is a weekly competition, and their editor reads many, many competition entries. Then, he kindly compiles a newsletter outlining exactly what they see far too much of. You can get back copies of that newsletter here.

I don’t like my inbox filling up with newsletters either, but I think that one is worth it. Especially if you enter short story competitions now and then. Alternatively, just bookmark that page.

 

Movies Based On Short Stories

The film Secretary (2002) is based on the short story of the same name in Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, although the two have little in common, apparently.

Brokeback Mountain is based on the eponymous story by Annie Proulx. The movie is a fairly close adaptation of the story. This is one of my favourite films and one of my favourite short stories ever. Both are just masterful. If you love one but not the other, I highly recommend the other. It’s rare when an author can move you emotionally in such a short space of time. Normally for me that requires something of novel length.

The Bear Came Over The Mountain by Alice Munro was made into a movie called Away From Her. I really enjoyed both the short story and the film. As I watched the film, I imagined myself surrounded by 60 and 70 year old women at a boutique Arts Centre viewing. They’d all be going out for raspberry tea and eclairs afterwards to discuss it. It was that sort of film.

Similar in style to Away From Her is the film How About You?, based on the short story by Maeve Binchy, which I haven’t read. This is a Christmas film, ideally, with a theme straight out of Dickens: grumpy old people come good with the arrival of a feisty young upstart. As we go along, we get to know the grumpy old people better and we all come to some understanding… You know how it goes. By the end of the film the characters are all banding together against adversity – the health inspector who has come to shut the place down. But even he has a story… And is redeemed. This film is also about old people and ageing, but that is where the similarity begins and ends, because this one is full of cliche. It is similar to Away From Her also in the feel of it — it seems to be made for TV, with a television sized budget.

Million Dollar Baby (2004), directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. This movie is based on short stories by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and “cutman” Jerry Boyd. Originally published under the title Rope Burns, although the stories have since been republished under the film’s title. I haven’t read the short stories but the film is excellent.

Memento is a 2000 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his younger brother Jonathan’s short story “Memento Mori”. There was something not right about this film and I couldn’t sit through it. Yet it was recommended by a friend who loves it to pieces. So perhaps it’s one of those films that polarises its audience. Or perhaps a big brother director really wants to do something creative for his little brother, without the vision to see that his little brother’s short story isn’t necessarily great fodder for film.

The Fly (1986) is based on a film made in 1958, which was in turn based on a short story of the same name, written by George Langelaan. Nope, I’d not heard of him either. But he had an interesting life. Langelaan was a spy who had plastic surgery to alter his appearance, apparently. He wrote short stories on the side, of which The Fly is his best known. Jeff Goldblum has the best face for that role, though it’s possible I see him as a fly only because I saw him in the film. Shame, that. Still, that’s what the movie stars get paid for…

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence, 2001) is based on Brian Aldiss’ short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. I’ve not read the short story but I enjoyed the film.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008) strikes me as a classic example of a good short story which didn’t work as a film. The pacing felt wrong to me. It is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Australian film Jindabyne (2006)was adapted from the Raymond Carver short story, So Much Water So Close to Home. For me, the film was better the second viewing. I’m still perplexed by its ending, but then those are the best kinds of endings sometimes. Perhaps if I were to read the short story I’d have that cleared up for me.

For a far more complete list of films based on short stories, see here, though the list includes novellas. I think novellas are in a category of their own.

People are always pausing in fiction.

One thing has stood out these past few days: It’s really quite a skill to convey pauses in fiction.

In real life, people pause all the time. (They also sigh a lot, but that’s another rant.) Characters hear something life changing and pause for thought. Nobody says anything for a couple seconds, then someone else says another life-changing thing. Or suggests a nice cup of tea. The pause is important. But how do you avoid that overused beat: ‘He paused.’ How to break up dialogue which needs a bit of breaking up?

I wondered this, and then I picked up a book of interconnected short stories by Daniel Handler (Adverbs) and what jumped out at me on the first few pages was how well he manages his Pauses.

Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) knows that the pause can be measured in many different ways:

“You must be nervous,” she said when we’d walked about two puffs.

(They’re smoking.)

*

“Look,” she said, and shaded her eyes with her hand for a minute like she was actually looking at something. I turned my head to see. “I just mean look,” she said, cupping my head with her hand.

(The phrase ‘for a minute’ comes in the middle of an interesting and original beat in which the characters misunderstand each other.)

*

“He’s not really,” I said, “my dad.”

Three cars went by.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

It’s also possible to create the effect of a pause without even mentioning time, or what stands in for units of time. We can just insert a beat. Let’s make sure it’s an interesting one, revealing of character.

“Please stop,” she said. She smeared one finger underneath her eye, although she wasn’t crying, just finishing a finger painting of herself. She was done. “This is worse than the last time,” she said.

*

David was picking off the traces of tape Helena had left at the end of the tub, as if they were already hoping for the security deposit back. “I think we might do better there, scrape scrape scrape,” he and his fingernails said, “and your mother scrape scrape scrape thinks the same thing.”

Other overused beats:

• She held up her hands. (Guilty, thank you critter.)
• She looked at him.
• He looked away.
• He sighed. (My *thing*. Sighing is a lazy way of indicating pause, and about as exciting and revealing as any other type of breathing.)

The Distinctive Voice of Margo Lanagan

Margo Lanagan is one of Australia’s best known short story writers. Her style is indescribable. Or is it? I will try and unravel it a little, to see exactly what it is she does to achieve that fantastic, surreal, economical voice. The following examples are from the story ‘House of the Many’, anthologised in Black Juice (2004), Allen & Unwin.

 

LEAVING OUT WORDS – JUST LEAVING THEM OUT

‘Yes, Bard Jo.’ Dot sat himself to listen.

I would most naturally say ‘Dot sat himself DOWN to listen.’ But this is an idiomatic expression and we don’t really need the ‘down’ of ‘sit down’, do we? I wonder if she crossed it out during a revision or if she never wrote the word in the first place.

MADE UP WORDS

We don’t know how she fits all that into her days, but she does, and all the time she’s humming and thrumming.

Thrumming? We sort of know what she means though. It creates a nice rhyme, and lends the voice a poetic feel.

Also: ‘tea-tent’, ‘a mystery child’, ‘his house’s smoke hole’ (obviously in lieu of a chimney), middlehood (instead of ‘middle age’), and so on and so forth, right the way through the story.

INSERTING PREPOSITIONS AND ARTICLES IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

he wears the comfortable robes

Note use of ‘the’. I might have written ‘he wears comfortable robes’, but by making use of ‘the’, it is taken for granted that there is a division of robes – some are comfortable and others are probably worn on formal occasions. ‘The’ adds to the verisimilitude of the story by suggesting everyone is already in possession of this fact.

OLD WORDS IN NEW COMBINATIONS

Dot saw the women bent to the vegetable fields.

In my dialect of English, I have never used the phrase ‘bent to’. I would probably make use of some phrase more wordy, like ‘Dot saw the women bending down to tend the vegetable fields.’ But I like Lanagan’s phrase much better. Not only does she manage to convey an idea succinctly, she creates a new ‘idiomatic expression’ – one that’s not idiomatic in OUR world, but one which the reader can easily take as idiomatic in this fantasy world of the story. Since the phrase is slightly out of whack in English, it’s like this story has been translated from another language. This adds to the fantastic mood.

Also: ‘talking wisdom with the Bard’, ‘made a bitter laugh in his throat’ (not ‘laughed bitterly in his throat’, which would be hackneyed), ‘weaves song stuff’, ‘grilled bean pats’ for breakfast.

CREATIVE GRAMMAR

And when that’s quieted, we can hear Anneh and Robbreh again, steady in their song.

Sure, ‘quiet’ is both an adjective and a verb in English, but when it’s a verb it’s usually used as a transitive verb (i.e. it takes an object) as in, ‘The teacher quieted the students’. When ‘quiet’ is used as an intransitive verb (i.e. without an object), as it is here, it’s usually used in the phrase ‘quiet down‘, e.g. ‘The students quieted down.’ So Lanagan has used a transitive verb as an intransitive verb and dropped the bit which makes it a phrasal verb.

(I’m sure she wouldn’t think of it like that, but that’s what she’s done, nonetheless!)

Also: ‘they SAW television’ (instead of watched).

UNUSUAL IMAGERY

Many of the best authors make use of imagery to create a distinctive voice and Lanagan is no different.

His voice is like a heartbeat. It’s so low, it’s hard to heard, but it’s there all the time.

*

Each of the above techniques are particularly well suited to fantasy, but you’d have to read the work to get a sense of the overall style. Lanagan’s short story ‘Singing My Sister Down’ is one of her best known, and manages to punch you in the guts. (No really, I recommend it.)

Here she reads her story Flower and Weed.

Why Yarns Don’t Make Good Short Stories

On October 31 Camilla LaPorta, a Cuban-born writer, now a Canadian citizen, was taking the manuscript of her new novel to her Toronto pulisher on Front Street. She was nervous; the publisher had been critical of her first draft, telling her it relied too heavily on the artifice of coincidence. Camilla had spent many months on revision, plucking apart the faulty tissue that joined one episode to another, and then, delicately, with the pains of a neurosurgeon, making new connections. The novel now rested on its own complex microcircuitry. Wherever fate, chance or happenstance had ruled, there was now logic, causality and science.

- from the short story Various Miracles, by Carol Sheilds

pic by justmakeit (Rachel)

This short story is an ironic one, reveling in coincidence. It is a comment on the Story Paradox:

What you think is going to make a good story doesn’t always, simply because it’s so unbelievable. The most unbelievable stories are those that actually happened. Save those ones for dinner parties (if you attend such things). I have learnt that coincidences, while noteworthy and frequent in real life, rarely work as short stories.

Cate Kennedy on writing the short story

Some notes from interview with Cate Kennedy (on the ABC Book Show):

In a short story, something has to happen to someone and this must create a shift or revelation. The most common hindrance to a short story writer is a lack of momentum or inspiration.

Hint: If you’re bored, move onto the next part of the story which interests you.

Hint: Don’t spend hours setting the scene. Avoid pages of ‘throat clearing’ before the real story starts.

Short story writing is often blatantly therapeutic. Short story writing is a need or craving in some people; life seems so random and chaotic and meaningless unless we can see patterns. When writers see how those patterns fit together we suddenly have a sense of coherence. Story writing gives people permission to take some time out and reflect on those elements and realise which patterns feel storylike and which we can make sense of.

The desire to share our stories is as old as time. We’re not much of a culture for constant self-reportage. I look at twittering and blogging and we’ve commodified this need for connection. Everything you do must be reported on. You don’t have any private life. Those anecdotal pieces of ordinary life are not in themselves stories. (There must be a pattern or a revelation.)

A short story writer must have an instinct for pathos. The unconscious mind gnaws on something and you can’t stop thinking about it. Once that process starts it’s like an unfinished piece of work. The story must be written.

And here is some more advice on writing the short story from Amanda Lohrey, another Australian author.