Writing short stories

vs. novels and poems

I love short stories. I love them so much that I was terrified to write them. I still am.

The first short stories I loved were fairy tales. I had giant collections of them. Russian fairy tales. Norwegian fairy tales. Grimm fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. I loved the movies based on them, and the musical retellings. Once Upon a Mattress and Into the Woods were favorites. Anthologies of myths followed. Greek and Norse.

I was drawn to the magic. The transformations. One thing always capable of being another. A comb, a forest. A woman, a tree. The real world was so static and predictable compared to the world of fairy tales.

I was also drawn to the dramatic love stories. The direness. The way a clever woman was admired. The duty to family, to love. The stakes were always so high. Nothing is meh in a fairy tale. And the love is so quick and true.

But fairy tales are not really what literary short stories are about (I’ll talk about them in a second). These things from fairy tales are just important to mention because I love to draw them into my short stories. The high stakes and the magic. They’re very important in considering what a short story can do. The breadth, the depth, the scope—of the story and of the reality. As focused as literary short stories feel to me, I try to remember that outer realm of possibility that fairy tales present.

So literary short stories! I first remember reading literary short stories in 8th grade. We had a collection that included “The Birds,” “The Most Dangerous Game,” “The Lottery,” and other classics. “The Lottery” knocked me on my ass. I remember being shocked that a story could rock me the way that “The Lottery” had. I loved all the other stories in the collection, too.