Writing Short Stories by Courttia Newland;Tania Hershman;

Author:Courttia Newland;Tania Hershman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474257299
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

TOP TIP

Nothing is sacred; everything is up for grabs; everything is changeable.

However, it may be that you end up with the same tense and point of view you started with, after trying a load of other things, or it may be that you hit on the right elements in your first draft. There are no rules here, and there are definitely no quick fixes. These are suggestions of things to be aware of, questions to ask yourself if you are not happy with your own story yet. It’s all about the story you want to tell in the way you want to tell it. As I saw over and over again in writing workshops I was taking part in, there’s always someone who says, Why don’t you do it this way? because if it was their story they’d tell it from the point of view of the wife’s first cousin, who only gets a brief mention in your story, or they’d start the whole thing 20 years earlier, when the kid was born. But it’s your story. Even the teacher or whoever is running the workshop might be wrong. As Israeli short story writer Etgar Keret said in an interview with The New Yorker about running writing classes: ‘I have to admit that talking authoritatively about my students’ stories can make me feel, at times, like an astronaut who has just landed on a new planet and insists on giving guided tours to its inhabitants.’

This reminds me of a question someone asked me at a reading focused around one of my earliest flash stories, ‘Plaits’, about a married couple, told from the wife’s point of view. The questioner asked why I didn’t give the husband’s side, and I said it’s because it had never crossed my mind. That wasn’t the story I wanted to/was compelled to tell, but I told him he was welcome to go off and write that himself! Maybe he did.

So, this is all by way of introduction to our practical sections in which we are taking elements separately just to give some attention to each one. But everything is connected. Also, Courttia and I have intentionally duplicated several sections here because we wanted you to have at least two opinions, if not more (you have our wonderful guest authors’ thoughts too). We sometimes disagree. That doesn’t mean one of us is wrong. That means we’ve each found our own way, and Part 3 is here to help you find yours.

Further reading

Carlson, Ron Ron Carlson Writes a Story (Greywolf Press, 2007).

Hershman, Tania, ‘Plaits’, The White Road and Other Stories (Salt Publishing, 2008).

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