lou's library

I think the short story is an underrated art form. Forever seen as inferior to the grand novel, it is often sidelined and hardly ever garners much attention in the literary sphere (let’s not even talk about beyond that). So I guess it’s about time I ramble on about it and try to argue the case that we all should be reading more short stories.

To some degree, I get the lack of enthusiasm for short stories. I hardly ever see people talk about them online and none of my friends ever recommend any to me. It’s a tough sell, a lot of the time. There’s not a lot of space in a short story to hit you right in the feels, to captivate your attention, to draw you in and choke you back out feeling dizzy and amazed.

Higher stakes?

For me, the stakes feel higher when reading a short story as opposed to a novel. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, considering I have to invest far less time in the former. But for some reason, while I will give a novel a hundred or so pages until I feel like it really needs to pull me in, with a short story I’m impatient from the very first sentence. There’s no time to lose, after all.

I’m not saying this is entirely fair, but I do prefer short stories that are so immersive that I feel like I’m inside the story from the get go. And my favourite kind are the ones who have a twist at the end. So I guess I have very specific notions about my ideal short story. All that being said though, I love nothing more than being surprised when reading, and this genre has so much potential when it comes to this. Because the length can vary from literally one page to maybe 50 or 60 pages, short stories can be so vastly different and experiment with writing in a way that I assume to be much harder in a novel.

Aside from the potential for new ideas and experiments, I do think short stories have another advantage, particularly in our day and age: they are short. In a time of ever shorter attention spans, some people might not be able to bring themselves to commit to a full length novel anymore. Sad as that is in itself, I’d much rather they read a short story than scroll on Instagram. It can be a great way to get back into reading, slowly, one story at a time.

Such great writing!!

And more often than not, you will find truly great writing in short stories, because the authors don’t have any space to waste. Every word counts. And writing succinctly and to the point is much harder than you would think, believe me. It takes a very skilled writer to pull it off.

It can also be a great way to slowly approach an author you might be slightly intimated by. Ernest Hemingway was like that for me. I read a bunch of his short stories before picking up For Whom The Bell Tolls, and it was so useful because by then I knew I loved his writing and felt more confident picking up one of his novels. So, if you feel like you could never read a big classic novel because you’re not smart / dedicated / analytical /whatever enough, start with a short story. It will help you realise that you are totally whatever enough to read that damn novel. Or that you actually don’t want to, after all.

I’d also recommend not giving up after one or two attempts if you didn’t immediately love reading short stories. Just like with longer formats, there are so many genres and topics and styles of short stories out there that you might just have to find your niche. I’ve often found that some of my favourite authors have written short stories that I didn’t know about – starting there might be a great idea if you want to get into them.

Another point that makes short stories hard to sell in my opinion is that they often come in collections, either all by the same author or by a range of them with an overarching theme. These rarely hit the spot for me, because 99% of the time there are short stories in the collection that I don’t enjoy. They can be so different and there’s so little space to pivot and change a bad first impression that it’s incredibly difficult for me to find a collection I thoroughly love. But in most cases, there’s also at least one short story in there that I do absolutely adore, in which case it has always been worth reading the entire thing for me.

I feel like this has been a really random and rambling collection of my thoughts on short stories, but somehow I struggled to articulate them more eloquently. I just really do think that we should all cut short stories more slack and encourage you to give them a try if you haven’t already – and if you have, do let me know your favourite ones as I’m always looking for new ones to read!