Favorite Short Story

I've mentioned The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury before as my favorite comfort book. It also contains my favorite short story. (Though, if we had to pick second place, it would contain at least three of the ten or so I would tie for that honor.)

My favorite is called "There Will Come Soft Rains," which is the title of a poem by Sara Teasdale to which the story refers. The two lines of the poem that really encapsulate the theme of the short story are "Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, / If mankind perished utterly." The story is about an automated house that continues to do its work (alarm clocks, weather reports, making breakfast, vacuuming, etc.) after the inhabitants (and, seemingly, everyone else) are dead. Human extinction became a really big theme after nuclear weapons became a real threat, and I think this poem and this story are excellent examples of the subgenre.

I don't read a lot of short stories, but while in a Major Authors class in college, I read one by Octavia Butler.  Now, this class gave me a huge appreciation and love for this author (Female, African-American sci-fi writer.)  She wrote a lot of post-apocalyptic books, which is something I love to read anyway.

She wrote a book called "Bloodchild and other stories" and, while I didn't read the whole book, I did read a story called "Speech Sounds."  It basically works on the premise that a disease has spread throughout mankind, rendering many of them unable to read, write, speak, understand speech, or any combination thereof.  Rye, our protagonist, can still speak, and meets Obsidian, a man who can still read.  

It's well written, and short, and by an author I love.  Pick something up by her if you have the chance.  And, just in case you want to read it, here's a probably legal copy of "Speech Sounds."

The Difference Between Novels & Shorts

Short stories are much different than novels.  You have to get all your ideas in one short little time span, which is sometimes harder to do than writing a full length novel.  Octavia Butler, who wrote sci-fi and only one book of short stories, repeatedly said that she wasn't a short story writer, she was a novel writer, but that these ideas just needed a place to go.  So what are the differences between the two?

Word Count

The first and most obvious is how long each are.  NaNoWriMo says that a novel is 50,000 words or more, and that's a pretty good estimate.  You're looking at roughly 100 pages in Microsoft Word.  Short stories usually range from 1500 - 3000 words, about a sixth of novel.  But don't be fooled: shorter doesn't mean easier.

Character development

In a novel, you, essentially, have as much space as you need to create your story and your characters.  You want to write 600 pages to introduce and develop everyone?  You've got it.  George R.R. Martin has numerous characters in his books, and spans that development over (so far) five, very long, books.

In a short story, you're limited.  You only get about 3000 words, at most, and you need that space for other things.  Your character's entire background had to be succinct, and take up just a few paragraphs.

World Building

Whether it's short story or novel, you're always dropped right in the middle of a world.  When writing novels, you have to make it like this place has always existed, that it's always been there,

because in that book, it has.  But you have a ton of time in a novel to show the reader that world.  Your readers should always catch on to what's happening, and the differences in that world, within a few paragraphs, but you have the whole book to let them explore it, to become a part of it, and to discover its mysteries.

In a short story, you have very little time to acclimate yourself to that world, so you better write it well, and clearly, and let the readers know exactly what's going on it it.  Because in four sentences, you have to introduce conflict.

Favorite Scary Story

Halloween is coming, friends! And that means telling each other scary stories. What's your favorite? Here are ours:

Mine comes from this book: Scary! Stories that Will Make You Scream! It's an anthology of scary stories (go figure) by famous authors like R. L. Stine, Roald Dahl, and Stephen King. I can't find my copy at the time of this writing, so I don't recall which author wrote my favorite story, which I remember the details of vaguely, but the general idea and feeling extremely well.

It's about a girl who live in what is essentially an isolation pod. She entertains herself with weapons and people who are sent in to her by some overseeing person (nameless, faceless). SPOILER ALERT: In the story, she is given a man that she plays with (I seem to recall it was with a knife) but she winds up dead because that particular toy was Jack the Ripper.

I practically memorized this book in high school, and I loved every story in it (I recall there being one from Ray Bradbury, and this was when I was discovering his work, as well as Stephen King's... and there's one called "Hush!" that I almost wrote about here instead). In On Writing, Stephen King talks about how imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and his early writing attempts mimicked the work of his favorite authors, which is embarrassing later in life, but makes sense for a young, new writer. Many of my early attempts (and some of my current ones) at writing involved isolation pods like the one in this story. So that must mean I'm a pretty big fan.

Ok, say whatever you will about scary stories, but these book absolutely scared the ever-living daylights out of me when I was little.

Who didn't read Goosebumps as a kid?  Oh, I'm sure someone didn't, but if you were a kid, growing up in the 1990s, you probably picked up at least one of these books.  R.L.Stine writes them (in fact, he writes a lot of scary books.  Fear Street is basically the YA/Adult version of Goosebumps.)  I like that he wasn't afraid to scare kids.  I STILL like that about it.  And the endings were often "happy" endings in the sense that things worked out, but then at the last minute, something would make you think twice.

Even the covers were scary looking (like the one above.  It's pretty creepy), but you couldn't stop reading them.  It would be 11 at night, all the lights out, and you're reading about a creepy, possessed dummy that wants to kill you.

If you didn't read these as a kid, well, I'm very sorry for you.  Because they were awesome.