In an age of shortening attention spans, could the short story be ready for a dramatic comeback?
Through the annals of literature, some of the greatest ever writers have shocked, enthralled and delighted readers with their short stories.
Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, Daphne Du Maurier, James Joyce and Edgar Allen Poe mastered the shortened form of storytelling on their way to becoming celebrated novelists.
But one author in particular, who did write six best-selling novels and two memoirs, will always be known for her short stories.
Up until her death in 1965 Shirley Jackson had published close to 200 short stories in either collections, literary journals or magazines.
But one in particular – The Lottery – is still regarded as arguably the greatest ever written.
When it was first published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1948, it prompted more than 300 letters from, mostly outraged, readers.
Jackson’s short story about small town superstitions would go on to influence generations of writers and is still used as a template for characterisation and plot structure.
And, in a Tik-Tok and Facebook age of shortening attention, who better to look to for advice in keeping the word count down.
Although it is now 60 years since Shirley Jackson’s death, the posthumously published, Let Me Tell You, provides an insight into her approach to conjuring up subjects, structure and characters.
She said: “I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.”
In other words, there’s no time off from being a writer – and she recommends embracing your weirdness by unleashing your deluded imagination at every opportunity.
“The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were.
“I am, this morning, endeavouring to persuade you to join me in my deluded world; it is a happy, irrational, rich world, full of fairies and ghosts and free electricity and dragons, and a world beyond all others fun to walk around in.
“All you have to do – and watch this carefully please – is keep writing.
“As long as you write it away regularly, nothing can really hurt you.”
With almost all her work still in print, and collections regularly re-released, it’s difficult to argue with the godmother of the short story.
Narrative arcs, with their expositions, climaxes and resolutions, are all very well, but it’s Shirley Jackson’s mantra that should, perhaps, hold precedence for any budding short story writer – “…if it’s dull no-one should have to read it, and if it’s interesting you should be using it for a story.”