Short Fiction

Growing up as a writer—through the classes I took in high school and college, articles and books, I do not remember ever running across a truth about short fiction writing. In defense of all of those professors and the authors of those books and articles, the subject matter was short story writing and thus must have seemed obvious. After all, if the story is shorter, the plots are less cumbersome and the writing must be tighter than in a novel, it should have appeared to be obvious that the mindset of the author is also different.

I have spent most of my life writing long fiction, only writing short stories for classes during my student days. My mind develops complex (i.e. novel length) plots as second nature. Creating short story plots, keeping the framework so tight is difficult with a novelist mindset. I have wanted to take the story to a point that the style of fiction writing will not support. As a result, my short story writing has been stumbling along like a man who has left a bar after far too many drinks. Sometimes, as with the drunken man, I get lucky and bring the story home. More often, it is on the side of the road sleeping amongst the dumpsters.

As I have been exploring a new sub-genre (see my Coffee With David posting titled “An Argument for the Space Cowboy”) I have been pealing away at the layers of how to write short stories in that genre. The epiphany that should have come more than 20 years ago finally mounted the peak of my stubborn muse and raised a flag declaring “change your mindset.” A short story is a quick story. Get in, get out AND DON’T LOSE the quality of the story.

With this mindset change, I will be conquering new stories and rewriting unpublished ones—taking them to “I will not be a novel anonymous”—and hopefully have more success in this style of writing.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.