The ‘quietness’ of the short story genre means less attention for writers on the whole, so the most obvious first question to ask is: why write short stories, as they’re a difficult genre to publish and sell?
Although I’ve written in other forms, the short story’s my first love and choosing what I write isn’t generally commercially influenced. Images or voices just ‘arrive’ with me and I know there’s going to be something brief and bright about their place in a piece of writing. When I write radio plays or longer narratives, the work originates in quite a different way. I don’t find that ideas migrate well between the forms – an idea for a radio play is just that. It might be adapted to work on a stage as well, but it’s certainly never going to be a short story.
I came across the expression ‘the searching glance’ in relation to portrait photography, but it struck me as very fitting for the short story form itself… read on
