The Art of the Very Short Story: Start in the Middle

February 26th, 2010

A very short story has a big job to do in a small space.  If you try to write a very short story the way an ordinary short story writer would, beginning at the beginning and telling the story one event at a time until the end, you will run out of room.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s give it a try.  Here’s the first 140 characters of an ordinary short story.

Todd got his first car for his sixteenth birthday.  After he had opened all the other presents his father reached into his jacket pocket and…

Satisfying, isn’t it?  Okay, maybe not.  There isn’t enough space to let the story develop naturally.  But there are ways to transcend the limitation of space and convey as much meaning as a longer story.  Let’s try “Todd” again, this time as a vss.

The intersection was too busy and too steep for learning to drive a stick.  Or it would have been if he hadn’t already started.

This story starts in the middle, at the point where our hero has gotten himself into trouble.  The short story would have taken a few hundred words to get here.  The vss went straight to it.  The vss had to leave out some of the details: the father, the sixteenth birthday, even the name of the protagonist.  (Sorry, Todd.)  However, we can guess the details.  The driver is probably young if he is just now learning to drive a stick, and the car must be unfamiliar.  Maybe it’s new.  We can also guess how the driver must be feeling – anxious to find the right coordination of hands and feet to get the car into gear, and knowing he’s gotten himself into a risky situation.

A short story would continue from this point to describe what happens next.  Maybe he’ll crash the car, or maybe he’ll get the hang of it and make it through the intersection.  He’ll become a man, or he’ll wear a body cast, or maybe both.  The vss can’t stay long enough to tell what happens.  The reader has to decide for himself.

By starting the story in the middle, right at the point of difficulty, the reader is able to take in the entire story from beginning to end, filling in details as needed.  Dear reader, Todd’s fate is in your hands.  Treat him gently.

Here’s another.

Melanie asked Dad if she could mow the lawn now that Angus had a broken leg.

Again the story starts in the present at the point of tension and allows us to see enough to guess the past and future.  Melanie and Angus are probably brother and sister.  Melanie has wanted to mow the lawn but Angus has monopolized this chore.  (Why does Melanie want to do it?  Is it a riding lawnmower?)  Then, somehow, Angus broke his leg, and now Melanie sees her chance to take over.  Dad is caught in the middle.  What will he do?  Will Melanie get her way?  Will Angus fight back?  The story doesn’t say.  The author has done his job by showing the reader three characters and the conflict they will have to resolve.  The rest is up to the reader’s imagination.

We all love music, don’t we?  This musical story starts in the heat of the action.

He wondered how the professionals covered a drumset in flames.

How do you suppose it started?  How will it end?  Remember this story if you ever doubt that art is a harsh mistress.

So: a useful technique for fitting the most story into the least space is to start at the moment where the trouble begins.

And, every now and then the best place to start is after the trouble is over, as in this story.

He shut his locker and noticed how his glove arm was tan down to the wrist. Maybe it had been a good season after all.

What happened?  Too much losing?  Fighting among the players and coaches?  Weariness from weeks of riding the bus?  The author doesn’t say.  Instead he lets us imagine the problems and puts us at the end of the story, when the player gives them a different meaning.  We don’t see the moment of conflict, but rather the moment of resolution.

Stories by Charlie Close.

Other Articles in This Series

Introduction

About the Author

Charlie Close is a writer of very short stories. His mainstream stories are published on Twitter at @CharlieClose, and his romance stories can be found at @apinchofpassion. He is the author of Burning Embers and Other Stories of Marriage, Work, and Family, ISBN 978-1598588187. Visit Charlie’s blog at http://charlieclose.com

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The Art of the Very Short Story: Introduction

February 13th, 2010

Welcome to “The Art of the Very Short Story”, a series of articles I’ll be presenting about a new art form that is just beginning to take off.  Even though many people are writing vss now, not much has been written about them.  I’ve developed ideas about vss as an active writer and I am publishing these articles to make a contribution to vss theory and practice.

For the purpose of these articles, a very short story as any story of 140 characters or fewer in length.  I’m choosing this limit because that’s the maximum length of a posting on Twitter, the most popular place today for publishing vss.  Another good definition is any story of one to four sentences.  Another is a story that can be recited in the space of a single breath.  They all come out to about the same size.

You might think that one breath is too small a space to write an interesting or complete story.   Okay, maybe you wouldn’t think that, but your friend Steve, who has traditional ideas about storytelling, would.  Let’s try out a vss on Steve and see what he thinks.

The real job, they were told, was not to be window washers at the Victoria’s Secret Building after all, but something even better.

“Ah-ha!” says Steve.  This thing isn’t a story at all.  It has no characters, unless you accept that “they” are characters.  And nothing happens.  The only verbs, “were told” and “to be”, are passive.  No story Steve has ever heard of has no actors and no actions.  Case closed.

What Steve says is literally true, but it isn’t literarily true.  A person is reading this vss, not a computer, and a person can see more than is written explicitly on the page.  What can we tell from the vss by reading between the lines?

  • There are job-seekers, at least two of them.
  • They are probably young men since they have shown up for a low-status job where they hope to see women walking around in lingerie.
  • They are probably not very smart since everyone knows there is no such thing as the Victoria’s Secret Building.
  • There is someone who told them an obviously-false story about the window-washing job.  That person, whoever he or she is, probably has a reason for lying to the young men and does not have their best interests at heart.
  • Therefore, whatever the “even better” job is, it is likely to be even worse.
  • And because the young men are stupid, they will probably go along with it.
  • And things will end badly for them.

All this information is conveyed in one sentence.  The story starts in the middle and it implies what must have happened before and what will happen next.  What the author wrote, combined with what the reader can guess, form a complete story with distinct characters and a beginning, middle, and end.

Steve might point out that each “probably” and “likely” in the above description stands for information the vss left out.  We don’t know who is offering the job or his (or her) motivation.  We don’t know anything about the poor dupes or the particulars of what will happen to them.  If the job of a story is to tell the reader what happened, then this one falls short.

I can’t argue with Steve that information is left out, and if a story can be a story only with all the facts included, then this vss isn’t a story by that standard.

What I can argue, however, is that Steve’s standard is not the only one.  Perhaps Steve would agree that a Norman Rockwell painting tells a story, or the photograph of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima, or a Far Side cartoon.  Each of these combine the author’s skill in deciding what to show and the audience’s ability to infer what is missing from what is present.  They give the audience an emotional response just as strong as if all the details were included.  By this standard, “Victoria’s Secret Building” works as a story.

A good vss can be as satisfying as longer stories for both readers and writers.  For a reader, a vss can show a moment in time with clarity and punch without messing around with pages of description and dialogue.  To work, a vss has to win you over in the space between two blinks of an eye.  It invites you to use your imagination in collaboration with the author’s.  It is short enough to memorize and you can read several in a single sitting, each as different as two snowflakes.

For a writer, a vss gives you the chance to convey an entire scene in just a few words.  Do you want to sharpen your writing skills, no matter what form or genre you work in?  Write vss.  It requires you to choose exactly the right details and precisely the right words, and remove everything else.  To get the most out of the small space you will learn to look for nuances and multiple meanings, and your work will become both more economical and more fluid.  Each story is complete in itself and you can write several at a sitting.  A vss provides immediate gratification if it works and can be discarded without regret if it doesn’t.

In future articles I will look at other vss, both to show readers how to read them and to offer writers practical ideas for how to write them.  Much of what appears in the articles will start out to answer the question, “How do I fit a real story into a small space?” However, I believe you will also see that the techniques I describe can be used to improve any writing.  Learn them reading and writing vss, then take them with you everywhere you go.

Stories by Charlie Close.

Other Articles in This Series

Start in the Middle

About the Author

Charlie Close is a writer of very short stories. His mainstream stories are published on Twitter at @CharlieClose, and his romance stories can be found at @apinchofpassion. He is the author of Burning Embers and Other Stories of Marriage, Work, and Family, ISBN 978-1598588187. Visit Charlie’s blog at http://charlieclose.com

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Excerpt from “Burning Embers”: “Flowers”

January 23rd, 2010

Below is an excerpt from Burning Embers, which is available for purchase on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or directly from Charlie.

Want a free copy of Burning Embers?   Offer to write a review on Amazon.com within 30 days of receiving a review copy.  Contact Charlie at charlie.close AT gmail for details.


Audio version, read by Charlie

If anyone asks me, “What is the smartest thing you have ever done?” I will have an answer.

The surprising thing is that it has nothing to do with my job or any of my hobbies. I’ve done a few smart things, it’s true, but nothing like this. The smartest thing I ever did is a story of true love and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

A few years ago, Kathy, my wife-to-be, was still living in Flint, Michigan and I was living in Seattle, Washington. We had already met, courted, fallen in love and decided we were going to be with each other. Kathy was trying to sell her house so she could move to Seattle.

Kathy had no interest in Seattle itself. She had lived her whole life in Michigan and would not have thought to move west if it weren’t for me.

But not so for Kathy’s little sister Marti. For some reason Seattle fascinated her and she wanted to live there. Maybe it was the hot music and culture scene, or maybe it was just because Seattle was not Flint. Marti had loved Seattle, or the idea of Seattle, for a long time.

She convinced her best friend Crystal to move there with her. They packed their things and boarded an Amtrak train. I met them at the station when they arrived and helped them get started in their new home. Kathy expected to join us all as soon as the house was sold, which could take weeks or even months.

Those are the facts, but the truth goes deeper. Kathy and Marti’s parents both died within ten days of each other when Kathy was twenty-two and Marti was fifteen. Kathy raised Marti for the next ten years.  They lived together, took care of each other, and are as close as two people can be. When Marti moved away Kathy wasn’t just losing a roommate or a sister – she was sending her daughter out into the world for the first time.

The day Marti left, Kathy was still in the middle of packing as much of her house as she could, surrounded by shoulder-high piles of boxes.

Moving is always hard. It makes you look at the old possessions of your life and ask what they mean now. Moving is lonely work.

I knew all this was happening even though I was thousands of miles away, and I knew Kathy would feel sad and alone in her house that day.

I realized I could not do much, but I could send her some flowers to tell her I knew what she was going through and that I was thinking about her.

I was pleased with myself for having the idea. That, I thought, ought to register about a 9.8 on her you’re-so-sweet-o-meter. And in hindsight I really was thoughtful, especially for a self-absorbed, never-knows-what-to-do, women-are-from-Venus dork like I was in those days.

I was so thoughtful that for days I didn’t actually get around to ordering the flowers. Just knowing that I would send Kathy flowers to cheer her up was enough for me.

Well, time slipped away and I did not try to place an order until the day before they needed to arrive. I walked home from work a little faster that evening, and I could feel that I had not left much time.

I walked up to Johnny’s Flowers.  Even before I got there I could see it was closed. The time was 6:20 PM.

Uh-oh, I thought. No panic, no panic. There were two more shops up the street. I walk-galloped, gripping the straps of my book bag to keep it from bouncing on my back. I went to the first store, and to the second – both closed.

The walk back down to my apartment was long and slow, and my thoughts were dark and stormy. If I came up to a stone in my path, I kicked it.

But then, just as I passed the post office a block away from home, I had an idea and I started to gallop again.

I ran into the apartment, threw down my bag, and picked up the phone. I dialed Information.

“What city, please?”

“Honolulu!” I said.

“Go ahead,” said the operator.

“Give me the names of three flower shops. I don’t care which ones.”

She took a moment and told me the names. I wrote them down. “Would you like me to connect you, sir?”

“Sure,” I said. “To the first one. Thank-you.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

The phone began to ring with a tone that sounded a million miles away. A woman answered it. “Island Flowers. How may I help you?”

“Are you still open?” I demanded.

“Yes, sir, we are.”

“Oh, that’s great, because I’m calling from Seattle and we’re two time zones ahead of you. Everything’s already closed here.”

“Well, we’re open, sir. How can I help you?”

“I need you to send flowers to Flint, Michigan tomorrow. Can you do that?”

“Of course. What would you like?”

I placed the order, hung up the phone and threw both hands into the air. “Yes!”

I felt like I had just scored the winning goal at the Soccer World Cup. (Call me Rafael Pantanagua. ) The announcer cried “Goooooooooooooooal!”, and I ripped off my shirt and whirled it over my head as I took a victory lap around Estadio Nacional in front of 80,000 screaming fans. They could all see my small but very athletic torso. Some of them pulled off their shirts too.

I went to work the next day and I told everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. I told the story so many times that I honed it into a speech I could deliver from memory.

I said, “Did you know that Hawaii is two hours behind us in Seattle?” I told them about Marti coming here and how my girlfriend Kathy was sad and alone, and how I tried to send her flowers and screwed up, but that it turned out okay because of Hawaii.

Most of my coworkers listened politely. Some of them laughed, and some of them asked why I didn’t just call FTD’s toll free ordering number.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, because I didn’t know about that.” To me it made the achievement even greater because I had had less to work with. Who is cleverer, the person who builds a house with a belt full of tools, or the one who builds it with his bare hands?

That’s right. I thought so.

This, too, was before you could buy flowers on the Internet. Things were primitive in those days. All we had was the telephone.

But the best part of the day, better than telling the story to all my coworkers, was when the phone rang at my desk and it was Kathy.

“Hey, you,” she said.

“Heeey,” I said.

“Somebody just sent me some flowers. Some hunky guy. You know anything about that, Mister Charlie Close?”

“Well, maybe I do. Hunky guy, huh? What’s he look like?”

“He’s tall and handsome and he’s got cute hair that looks all messed up in the morning, and he’s very considerate…”

“He does sound hunky,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Kathy, trailing off…

Ladies and gentlemen, a call like this is what makes it all worth while. I was so happy.

Now the next thing I wanted to say was, “Did you know that Hawaii is two hours behind Seattle?…” Kathy would listen to anything I said now and think it was great. I came this close to telling her about the trick I had to pull off to get her flowers.

But I didn’t, not that day. I told her instead that I knew she would be feeling sad and that I was thinking about her.

I used to think that calling Hawaii was the smartest thing I ever did. But now, if anyone ever asks me, I will tell them this -

I was smart enough, that one time, to shut up.

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Charlie’s very short stories on Twitter

November 26th, 2009

I discovered a new way to write on Twitter: very short stories. And when I say short, I mean very short, no more than 140 characters. What can you say in such a small space? A lot, it turns out.

I write under two Twitter names. The first is at @CharlieClose. These stories can be about anything, although I often come back to my favorite themes: children, school, music, marriage. Here’s a sample below.


You can also subscribe to my tweets in an RSS reader here.

I also write romance stories at @apinchofpassion. Romance stories? Me? Yeah, I’m surprised too. It happened by accident when I suggested to a Twitter friend that she should write short romance stories. She didn’t do it, but I did. Well, I didn’t do it. My good friend Wesley Rakespeare did. He loves all kinds of romance stories, bodice-busters, costume dramas, the bright-eyed girl trying to find love and success in the big city. Have a look at some of his stories.


Subscribe to Wesley’s tweets in an RSS reader here.

Enjoy. A little bit of a good thing can be very good indeed.

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Book signing in Fenton, Michigan

September 25th, 2009

It was my pleasure to appear at the Little Professor Book Center in Fenton. I signed books and met local readers having a good time at the Apple Festival. Just as fun, I met Krissandra Gatz, author of The Secret Inside and KJ Hooten, author of The Egg Nanny Tales. It never fails when I do an event with other authors: I buy books as well as sell them!

Thanks to Laura Carpenter and the staff of Little Professor for a great afternoon.

Charlie

charlie_close_signing

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New reviews for “Burning Embers”

April 10th, 2009

I am delighted to announce new reviews of “Burning Embers” now posted on Amazon.com.

L. Stansbury wrote,

If you need to laugh then curl up in a warm fuzzy blanket, add this book, and enjoy. Now you have all the ingredients to have a conversation with a funny friend… I recommend you read this book in bits as the stories are too precious to be rushed through… Now enjoy reading and make sure to share with friends who will appreciate the book as well- there is something about the book that screams “share me!”

…and…

appydo1 wrote,

This is a wonderful book!!!!! Aside from being touched by these stories on a very PERSONAL level, having originated from the same part of the world (Pacific Northwest), and having been though a number of similar life experiences to those the author relates, this collection of anecdotes is to be savored by anyone, from anywhere, who enjoys a good laugh!… As one sits, listening and chuckling (often at the expense of the teller), one comes to realize how funny and good life can be. I consider reading this book as definitely time well spent!!! A really feel-good experience!

Thanks to the reviewers for their kind words. “Burning Embers” is available for sale now at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Charlie

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“Burning Embers” Book Launch Party

March 29th, 2009

“Burning Embers” was officially launched with a signing and reading party.

I read bunches of stories, including “Dunkin’ the Barbarian” from the book, and a brand new story called “Ciao Baby”.

Thanks to chef Leslie Owens for providing a fine, fine dinner for the audience, mistress Kathy for the mixed drinks (sad to say I didn’t get one because I had to work), and to everyone who came to listen to stories and get a book.

After the reading I signed books, and I discovered a new literary practice: hug the writer.

Burning Embers is on sale now, ISBN 978-1598588187, available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Do you have an event that needs some enlivenment? Book party? Wedding? Bar Mitzvah? Christening? I give fun readings and will entertain all offers. Contact me at charlie DOT close AT gmail.com.

Charlie Close "Burning Embers" signing

Charlie and Mary

Charlie and Kevin

Charlie and Kevin

Charlie and Mellie

Charlie and Mellie

Charlie and Mariah

Charlie and Mariah

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“Burning Embers” cover, early sketches

February 22nd, 2009

Before the final cover for Burning Embers was finalized, the artist Mister Reusch, made several preliminary sketches.  Here’s the final cover…

Burning Embers cover

Burning Embers cover

…and here’s a link to the rough drawings.  Enjoy.

Charlie

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Excerpt from “Burning Embers”: “Valentine’s Day Surprise”

February 14th, 2009

Audio version, read by Charlie.

In the past, I have had trouble with buying cards and gifts for Kathy at Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and other special occasions. I’ve meant to do the right thing, but there have been times when I have forgotten, run out of time, or not paid enough attention to what I was buying, and hurt and disappointed my wife. I have made so many mistakes that I have written them all down and held myself up as a bad example to other men. I’ve told them to learn from me and do better than I did.

Being an object lesson is not as easy as it looks. It means that now that I’ve confessed my sins and repented of them, and led the congregation of men in the singing of hymns to take better care of our wives, I had better not commit the sins again.

Which is why I was on the Internet on February 8th to order flowers for Kathy for Valentine’s Day. There was no way I could allow myself to forget. And, even though I was only doing the right thing, on time, like any responsible adult would do, I still felt a little proud of myself.

And I was still feeling proud that night when the phone rang and Kathy answered it. I could tell by what she said that it was the credit card company.

Read the rest of this entry »

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