The allure of the short story

Today I’d like to welcome Aussie author Angela Savage to Murderati. This is my second instalment, following on from my interview with Katherine Howell, to introduce some Aussie authors here at Murderati. 

I’ve met Angela a couple of times on the mystery ‘scene’ and ran into her again at Sisters in Crime Australia’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards - Angela won the top honour of the night and I was there as the official presenter. You may also recognise Angela from my 'photoshoot to kill for' blog.

Given Angela’s first novel was written after an award-winning short story introducing her main protagonist, and that she’s written extremely successfully in both the short and long form, I asked Angela to blog about the short story and the novel. What attracts her to both forms? Does she approach them with a similar mind-set?

I’ve entered the Sisters in Crime Australia Scarlet Stiletto Awards short story competition twice, once in 1998 and again in 2011.

The first time I was an unpublished writer with an abandoned manuscript burning a hole in my filing cabinet. Short story competitions provided me with focus, opportunities to practice my craft and try something new. The Scarlet Stilettos held the particular appeal of being exclusively for women writers, with stories required to have an active woman protagonist.

In what was my first foray into crime fiction, I submitted a story called ‘The Mole on the Temple’ about an Australian expatriate detective called Jayne who exposes a card scam in Bangkok.

My story won third prize. More valuable than the prize money was the confidence this gave me to persevere with both the crime genre and the main character. Jayne went on to acquire the surname Keeney and became the hero of my first novel Behind the Night Bazaar published in 2006. The second book in the Jayne Keeney PI series The Half-Child followed in 2010 and I’m currently working on the third, working title The Dying Beach.

Funnily enough, Behind the Night Bazaar started life as a short story that just kept growing. I’ve since ‘cannibalised’—to use Raymond Chandler’s word—several of my early short stories for scenes or subplots in my novels.

I’m not the only author to have kick-started my writing career with a prize at the Scarlet Stilettos. So far 15 women, including category winners like me, have gone on to publish novels. But I’m the first established novelist in the 18-year history of the Scarlet Stiletto Awards to return to the scene and take home the coveted Scarlet Stiletto trophy.

So what made me decide to enter the competition again after a 13-year break?

Part of the motivation stems from a crisis I had earlier this year about whether I could call myself an ‘Australian writer’, when everything I’d written was set in Thailand in the 1990s, albeit featuring Australian characters. I challenged myself to set a story closer to home and the result was my winning entry for the 2011 Scarlet Stilettos, ‘The Teardrop Tattoos’ set in contemporary Melbourne. The plot, involving a restricted breed dog, became inadvertently topical when a four-year-old-girl was tragically killed in an attack by a pit bull terrier only weeks after I submitted the story to the competition.

As in 1998, the short story form gave me an opportunity to try something new. But this time around I have no desire to develop the characters or plots into a full-length novel.

Pound for pound, I find short stories harder and more time consuming to write than novels. Short stories and novels have different centres of gravity. Both need to hook readers in at the start, but the narratives have different arcs. Short stories are less forgiving. There’s no room for superfluous adjectives or adverbs.

With novels you can loiter a little, while the nuances of the story and characters play out. Short stories have to maintain the pace or they’re dead in the water.

Secretly, like an actor who longs to direct, I’d really like to write songs—to tell a whole story in three or four verses and a haunting refrain.

I’ll just have to keep practising.

Angela’s first book, Behind the Night Bazaar, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award as an unpublished manuscript in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Book in 2007. Her second novel, The Half-Child was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly in 2011 for Best Fiction. The Half-Child is available in Kindle version on Amazon or in hard copy through Text Publishing.

We’re interested in hearing your thoughts about short stories and novels. Do you read both? Write both?

Angela will be around to answer questions too!

The Sickness Within

by Alafair Burke

I'm dark.  My guess is we're all a little dark at Murderati.  I teach, study, and write about crime.  All crime, all the time.  So, yeah, I'm a little dark.

But every once in a while, I read words that I placed on a page and think to myself, "Damn, that's sort of sick."

I remember sitting in my office a few years ago, knowing that I needed to finish the chapter I was working on before I could join my husband and his Army friend for Friday night festivities.  I don't know whether it was the momentum of the scene or the promise of a cocktail, but I hammered out the words as quickly as I could type them.  Suddenly the bad guy was doing something I had no idea he was going to do.  And I was describing it.  (No spoilers here, but I'm referring to the big, explosive confrontation near the end of my fifth novel, Angel's Tip.)

I walked into the living room and threw my hands in the air.  "Finished!  Let Friday night begin!"  As the husband shook my martini, his friend asked, "What were you writing?"

I summed up the scene in a single, bluntly worded sentence. 

My husband's friend -- did I mention they knew each other from the Army? -- looked at my husband, then looked at me, and then said, "That's the sickest thing I've ever heard."  That's right, y'all, I managed to freak out a West Point graduate who has spent the last twenty-one years in the military.  Hollah!

 I have no idea why this puppy doesn't know the difference between "your" and "you're," but his obliviousness makes him all the more awesome.

Our friend asked where the idea had come from.  I truly had no clue.

That kind of "Wow, I'm sort of sick" moment has happened to me only once in writing seven and a half novels.  Interestingly, though, I'm two for two on short stories.

In 2008, I wrote a short story called Winning (available here), about a husband's reaction to the rape of his police officer wife.  My own editor said, "I had no idea you were so dark."

[An aside: The title "Winning" alludes to gendered responses to violence, where men think "winning" means beating down an opponent, and women think "winning" is survival.  Please note that I wrote and titled the aforementioned story prior to this man's conversion of the word to mean its exact opposite:

End of aside.]

Earlier this month, I turned in a short story for an upcoming Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child.  The book is called "Dark Justice" and features tales of vigilantism.  The story took me only a few days to write, but I find myself still thinking about it, wondering how in the world I came up with some of the story's images. 

I wonder not only where the sickness comes from, but also why I seem more able to explore it in short fiction.  Maybe living a full year with those kinds of thoughts would simply be too much to handle.  Or maybe at a subconscious level I worry about my audience, realizing that very few readers want an entire novel filled with that kind of darkness.  A short story is a low-risk, short-term way to purge some of the crazier voices that are pulling at the corners of my mind.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject.  What's the sickest thing you've ever read?  How sick is too sick?  Are you ever surprised, as either a reader or a writer, by the darkness of the books that you enjoy or write? And what is it about a short story that seems to draw out the sickness within?

P.S. A little bit of BSP this morning.  One of my favorite writers, Michael Connelly, was kind enough to write a substantive review of my upcoming book, LONG GONE, for Amazon.  Because he's cool, the review's cool, with Frank Sinatra references and comparisons to watchmaking.  You can read the review (and learn more about LONG GONE) here.

The Long And Short Of It

(Or - Killing Allison Brennan)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

This month, because I have nothing else to do, I wrote a short story. 

I don’t usually do that.   Practically ever.    I only said yes because it was for ITW’s great Thriller – Stories To Keep You Up At Night series and Our Allison  is co-editing (with Sandra Brown) and she asked me.   The thing is, we were all recruited for this book so long ago, and so much has happened since then, that I sort of misplaced the idea of a deadline, if I ever knew it to begin with.

So it came up – suddenly.    Which is good, in a way, because the reason I don’t do shorts is that they’re only short in length – the process is excruciating and feels as long as any other writing I ever do except for Twitter updates, and I rarely even do that.  I didn’t have any room to stall, I just had to do it.

On the other hand, two weeks ago I was having serious thoughts about killing Allison, which just seemed easier and less emotionally draining than doing the story.   Plus I knew she would understand, as long as I was creative about it.

But it really is amazing to me, every single time, how obliging our subconscious is  (or – “those guys in the basement”, as Stephen King says.).  When we need an idea, when we have a scary deadline, the subconscious, the guys, the Muse, the Universe - whoever it is out there always comes through.

First, since this anthology focuses on the romantic suspense subgenre, I picked a dream location in the Bahamas - sexy, glamorous, escapist, that I happened to have made a whole lot of notes about on a not-too-long-ago vacation .    Since setting is HUGE to me, always a key element in anything I write, that was a big jumpstart – I knew I could deliver a sensual experience, which is half the battle in those more romantic thrillers. 

Then, I blatantly used my own feelings at the exact moment – which happened to be deep grief over the loss of a loved one.   It instantly brought up a central emotional question: Will the protagonist ever feel like living again?   And that question led to another:  Well, what in that fantastical environment would MAKE her want to live again?   And that’s the kind of question that leads to a story.

And from there, the Universe did most of the work.  As it always does if we pay attention.  A Tarot card came up as my card of the day that gave me most of the central images and objects of the piece.   I could steal from my sister’s work history to get the heroine’s job (always one of the biggest pains for me to figure out unless I’m writing a cop story or something equally obvious).   My jazz dance teacher was playing a lot of Jamaican music that I had heard on this trip.   Because of the Oscars, Colin Firth was all over the media, and if there’s a better inspiration for sex scenes, I don’t know of one.  And having spent a week in the place I was writing about, I knew the layout of the hotel and the sounds and colors and smells, so I didn’t really have to stop and think all that much.  

And somehow it all just happened and was done in a couple of weeks and I am mad at Allison again because now I have to be grateful to her for the rest of my life that she made me do this.  

I don’t usually get this kind of instant gratification from writing.   Writing a novel is such a long process that even FINISHING doesn’t have much of a rush for me beyond profound relief leading pretty instantly to coma.   I don’t really get to enjoy writing until I start hearing back from readers and realize that the story I wrote actually EXISTS – not just for me but for anyone who wants to pick it up and step into that weird alternate universe that a book is.  Which is a huge gratification, mindblowing, really, but so delayed that it doesn’t seem to have much connection to the writing process.

But a short – somehow is a little miraculous.    One day there is nothing but a black hole of panic and three weeks later or so there is a mini standalone alternate universe.   It makes you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something.   In fact, you have physical proof that you have actually accomplished something.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine putting myself through this on a regular basis.   I know some people can churn out short stories without blinking, but that's not me.  Realistically, my novel would be a month further ahead if I hadn’t taken the time, and a month is a lot.   Since all writers really have is our time.... as much as I love the story, and as fulfilling as it is to have it, now, and as much as I admire the Thriller series (and, yes, okay, Allison) and am honored to be part of it – was writing the story actually a smart thing to do? 

So, those of you who write short stories – I’d really love to know why you do it.   What do you think is the benefit of writing short stories - in a career sense (if any)?   Or is it a more personal pleasure?    Alternately, here’s a good question:  What if anything do you enjoy about writing?   Honestly?

And readers - has a short story ever inspired you to check out an author you haven't read?

Finally, all good thoughts out to all those affected by that devastating Tokyo quake and tsunami... it's just been surreal to see.

- Alex

Short Stories

By Allison Brennan

I just finished a 4,000 word short story that's going in a special edition of ORIGINAL SIN that will be exclusively at Walmart, and then later I'll give it away free on my website (sometime before CARNAL SIN comes out at the end of June.) This is the fourth short story I've written (fifth if we count my 38,000 word novella). I've learned a lot about short stories since, but mostly I learned that they are damn hard to write.

Short is not my strong point. When I was in high school American History, I had a fabulous teacher (Dwight Perkins) who gave me an "A-" on my final essay because I, "so eloquently said in 10 pages what could easily have been said in 5."

Why did I ever think I could write a short story? I didn't even consider writing short stories when I started writing-I wanted to write a book. I meaty, 100,000 word novel. But in Stephen King's ON WRITING, he lamented the death of the short story and what a wonderful medium it was. And I reflected how much I enjoyed reading short stories, from when I was a little kid through adulthood. To this day, some of my favorite stories are short stories. "A Sound of Thunder" and "He Built a Crooked House" by Ray Bradbury; "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson; "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe; "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut; "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain; "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" and "Quitters, Inc" by Stephen King. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, what I can think about off the top of my head, the ones I think of from time to time when a theme or image from the story plays out in my life. If I took the time to cull through my shelves I would likely find a dozen or more short stories that I could call a favorite.

So when I was asked to write a short story in KILLER YEAR edited by Lee Child, I jumped at the chance (not to mention that it was being edited by Lee Child. I mean, I'm not an idiot. Most of the time.)

"Killing Justice" in KILLER YEAR was 5,800 words (over my allotted limit, but since my "mentee" Gregg Olson came way under his word count, JT was kind enough to let me keep my words.) Kind? Well, maybe not, because that story could have been better if I knew more about short stories. 

Don't get me wrong, I still love the story. It takes place in the California State Capitol and takes what I know about politics and deals and legislation and puts them in a very short story about a subject I care deeply about: child predators. But the structure of the story was like a novel-multiple viewpoints and multiple scenes. This doesn't work well when you have less than 6,000 words.

My second short story was "A Capitol Obsession" in TWO OF THE DEADLIEST edited by Elizabeth George. Yep, you guessed it, I took a setting I was intimately familiar with (the Capitol) thinking that would be easier to write the story. I had more words to play with-7-9K (my story ended up just over 10K. Remember Mr. Perkins!) But I had learned from my first short, so I focused on one crime, primarily one setting, and only two viewpoints (a female state senator and a homicide detective who were on the "off" swing of an on-again/off-again relationship.) I started with a dead body (a lobbyist) to get immediately into the story (on the fantastic advice of Ms. George who commented that my first draft didn't really begin until the second scene . . . so I cut the first scene during revisions.) I had my cop and my senator working parallel investigations. It was fun. In hindsight, I would have cut one scene (where my cop goes to the victim's employers and apartment to gather information about her) simply because though the information was important, I could have probably incorporated it in such a way so I never had to show my characters outside of the Capitol.

Next came a story that hasn't come out yet that will (hopefully) be in the HWA anthology. It's tentatively titled "Her Lucky Day" and is a supernatural "light" horror story. I put it aside for a couple weeks and will edit it one more time. One POV and two settings AND I came in under my allotted word count of 4,000! Woo hoo! (A little bit of trivia: I originally wrote the scene as the prologue for CARNAL SIN, but it didn't fit the tone or the direction that the book ended up going, so I cut it . . . but I really liked it, so I reworked it and gave it a conclusion.)

The given criteria for my short story in the back of ORIGINAL SIN was that I had to use major characters from the book in the story. As I thought about it, I realized that I also couldn't have anything majorly pivotal to the series happen in the story because it's "bonus content." So no blowing up buildings in my fictional town that I'll be visiting again, or killing off a major character, or anything that changes the goals or motivations of my main characters. I considered a lot of different ideas, but ended up with the same problem: too big. Just thinking about the ideas, I could see the bigger story behind it. That was my problem with "Killing Justice"--there was a much bigger story I tried to tell that didn't fit well in the short word count.

When I was driving back from my trainer on Thursday (amazing, I often think of murder and mayhem after working out . . . ) the idea just popped into my head: a ghost story. Well, not just popped because I'd been mulling this issue over and over for days. But the story goal, the set-up, the setting, the conflict, it was all there bam!

It was perfect for me on multiple levels. First, the series is about demons and witches, not ghosts-but I'd set up in the book that ghosts exist and could cause problems for my characters. So if I wrote about a ghost, I wasn't messing with my major antagonists-they could safely remain in hiding. Second, I had a perfect setting for the story where something tragic happened during the course of the book. Third, I had a plausible story conflict that didn't mess with my series characters primary conflicts-I could use them more as catalysts rather than being considerably changed by the event. And the one character who is truly affected had already discussed her conflict about the situation in the book, so it's believable for the story as well as if I use the issue in the future. (Sorry for being so vague, but I don't want to give anything away.) And finally, I had a "villain" (the ghost) and who had a strong motivation for his "crime."

Believe me, I was totally excited about this. I started writing. I set up my sheriff going to the scene and why . . . and my heroine and hero going to the scene and why . . . over 1000 words before they even got to the main conflict.

Argh! Seven pages and . . . they all had to go. Sure, I tried to convince myself that they didn't have to be deleted. I told myself that those 1,000 words were really the first act of the story and they did end in a mini-climax/hook. Yes, we delude ourselves when we don't want to delete something. They weren't bad pages-in fact, even the first draft was pretty tight and to the point. But I had to remind myself that this was a short story. I didn't have to painstakingly set the scene. I didn't have to SHOW why the sheriff went to the scene; I didn't have to SHOW my heroine's growing worry and sense of foreboding when she couldn't reach her friend (the sheriff.) Yes, in a full-length book such scenes are necessary at times especially leading up to the final confrontation. But for a 5,000 word story? No.

I realized I could SHOW my heroine's fear as they arrive at the scene and find all the streetlights broken, adding to her growing apprehension; be with her and the hero when they see two cars parked in the back, one being a stranger; listen as they hear a scream and gunshots as they're about to break into the building. All that in less than two double-spaced pages. It sets the tone and the scene and the primary goal (save the sheriff) without the longer, meatier lead-in. Why the sheriff is there de facto comes out as the scene unfolds.

I also made the choice to keep the entire story in my heroine's POV. Believe me, this was tough because I LOVE multiple POVs. But it kept the story tighter and more focused and, therefore, the word count down.

Easy? Hell no! As hard as writing a book. Sure, a 100,000 word novel-or in the case of ORIGINAL SIN 125K-takes far more time, concentration and revising, but no individual scene was harder than the short story.

Every short story I've written has taught me lessons about writing that I couldn't have learned in class. I was thinking about this after reading about Pari's absolutely incredible experience with her in-depth writer's program. I was itching to do something like that as well, to learn more about how to write, the different types of writing I can do, how to really dig deep and challenge myself.

And maybe, some day, I will do something like that.

But in the end, the key lessons I took away from Pari's post was that they wrote every day. They practiced. They challenged themselves by doing--not just thinking about writing, not just talking about writing, but writing.

The short story is hard for me, but the only way I can learn to do it well is to do it. I was as giddy typing THE END on the short as I was typing it on my last book.

I'm hoping that with the multiple anthologies of novellas and short stories coming out these past few years and in the future that there'll be a resurgence of sorts in short fiction. What do you think?

Readers, do you like reading short stories? Novellas? Or prefer to stick only with full-length novels? What is a short story you've recently read that stands out, or one you read years ago that you still think about?

Writers, do you like reading and/or writing short stories? Putting the time factor aside, is it easier or harder than a book? Some of your favorites?

Something to Bridge the Gap

By Brett Battles

So this week has been a very interesting one for me. By interesting, I mean…well, let’s just say there’s an installment of AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD coming up, and it’s a doozy. Can’t do it this week because a few things are still up in the air, but should be raring to go in two weeks.

That said, what has been going on has kept me a little occupied, so I hope you’ll excuse me if I post something that has appeared on-line before. It’s a short story.

Now, I haven’t written a ton of short stories. In fact, with the exception of several flash fiction piece (one of which is below), I’ve really only written two average length shorts. One is a sci-fi piece I worked on about ten years ago, but never really did anything with. And the other was “Perfect Gentleman,” the story that appeared in the KILLER YEAR ANTHOLOGY in 2008. (Side note: I am very honored by the fact that “Perfect Gentleman” was also selected by Tyrus Books to be included with their recently released BETWEEN THE DARK AND THE DAYLIGHT AND 27 MORE OF THE BEST CRIME & MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR anthology.)

So, I guess what I’m saying is that while I don’t do a lot of short fiction, I do enjoy it. Anyway, on to the story. For those of you unfamiliar with Flash Fiction, it refers to short stories that are limited to a certain small word count, quite often 1000 words. In this case, the limit was 500.

Apologies to those of you who’ve already read it.

CAFÉ LATTE

By Brett Battles

“The large one.”

“You mean venti?” the barista asked. She was probably just barely out of high school.

“Sure. Venti. That’s the large, right?” the man asked.

“That’s the large.”

“Good.”

“Can I get your name?”

The man looked around. “Why? Is there a line?”

There was no line.

“Right. Sorry. I’m a little nervous,” she said.

“This your first day?”

“No. Third.”

“You’re doing fine.”

And she was, too. Her customer service was all he could have expected.

“How much?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment like she hadn’t understood what he was saying, then shook herself and rang up his drink.

“Three forty-five,” she said.

“Annie.” It was one of her co-workers. The red-headed kid who looked like he could use a little sun. “Just give it to him.”

“It’s okay,” the man said. "I don't mind paying."

He pulled a five dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the girl. Once she had given him his change, he dumped it all in the tip jar.

While the rest of her co-workers and pretty much everyone in the coffee shop watched, Annie made the made a venti latte. No one offered to help, but she seemed to have everything under control.

Somewhere in the distance, there was the faint sound of a siren.

The man waited contentedly as she finished frothing up the milk and adding it to his cup. Once she was done, she put a lid on top and slipped a safety sleeve around the base. Her hands weren’t even shaking as she handed the drink to him.

The sirens were closer now, probably only six or seven blocks away. The man took a sip of the latte, then smiled.

“This is great.”

“Thanks,” Annie said.

“You have a good day,” he told her.

“You, too.”

Except for his footsteps on the tiled floor, the coffee shop was silent. Everyone’s eyes were on him, but he acted like he didn’t notice. The only abnormal thing he did was step over the dead body of the would-be robber lying in the middle of the floor.

The unlucky bastard’s gun was still in his hand. An ancient .38 special. God only knew how much damage the kid had done with it in the past.

As the assassin opened the front door, he glanced back at the counter. Annie was still there, watching him. As he gave her a little wave, she mouthed the words, “Thank you.”  

He smiled and walked out to his car. A glance at his watch told him he was still ahead of schedule. That was fine. It was never good to kill someone when you were in a rush.

 _________________________

Read a good short story lately? Tell us about it. And, if you can, tells us where to find it.