Guest blog on short stories by Keith Darrell
Long before man first grasped a quill, he would gather his tribe around the campfire and tell tales. Fiction has always been about storytelling. It began as oral tradition, tales passed through the generations by word of mouth, and later etched on papyrus, paper, and now digital screens. Stories vary in length: there is the brief joke; flash fiction; the short story; the novelette; the novella; the novel; and the epic or saga. The short story sits on the literary landscape somewhere between the joke and the epic. It is, arguably, the most difficult format to write. It demands brevity and conciseness of the writer. Diction and vocabulary become paramount. Seeking an economy of words, the short story author must chose le mot juste. Many authors, used to writing without constraint, find it challenging not to write; it is far easier to ramble aimlessly than to choose one’s words with precision and ration them accordingly. The short story usually eschews subplots in favor ...