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Thread: Something that bugs me about short stories

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    Registered User book_jones's Avatar
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    Something that bugs me about short stories

    I hate it when a short story will be mostly descriptive until the last page or so. Then there will suddenly be a story which will usually involve the main character getting killed somehow.

    I've read dozens of stories like this, and the number would probably be much higher if I read more short stories. This always seems like a desperate move to me. The author is just trying to sneak in a story because it's supposed to be there.

    Keep this in mind, you can write a story that's descriptions and imagery, or you can write a story that has an interesting narrative, but you really can't mix the two. This is something I would teach my students if I ever got to teach writing again.
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    Registered User Leabhar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by book_jones View Post

    Keep this in mind, you can write a story that's descriptions and imagery, or you can write a story that has an interesting narrative, but you really can't mix the two. This is something I would teach my students if I ever got to teach writing again.
    Huh? Of course you can. That's what a story is; descriptions and imagery mixed with narrative...
    My mother is a fish.

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    Registered User book_jones's Avatar
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    Yeah, but you can't split them right down the middle!
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    Actually, I believe that with short stories you can do anything you want. There is the "proper" form you get taught--exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion--and there are about a million "rules" for how to balance scene and summary, but it doesn't matter. Of course, you can write great stories following these guidelines, but you can also write them while entirely ignoring these guidelines. All that matters in a short story is that the style or voice is compelling enough to make you want read it. Great short stories can have zero scene, zero summary, a fifty-fifty split, or any other combination of the two. You don't have to sustain the reader's attention for that long, so you can do anything, as long as it's interesting.

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    Registered User book_jones's Avatar
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    Well, the thing I'm trying to say is that many people ruin their stories by trying to force them to be conventional. They're afraid of writing something that isn't exactly a story so they tack it on to the last few pages. If they really want to write a good, authentic story than they need to go with their instincts and not sneak in some convoluted story at the end just because they think they're supposed to.
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    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    I know what you mean, I have that problem with Melville's stories, it is like the first 15 pages is just rather long and detailed description of the scenery, and landscape, and really nothing acutlaly happening, and than the last 5 pages, there is acutally a plot

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

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    Registered User book_jones's Avatar
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    Well the only piece of short fiction I read by Melville was Benito Cereno which I quite enjoyed, but I could certainly see him as an author who could write long, descriptive narratives that had little story. I loved Moby Dick because it weaved in and out of telling a story. It made it very mysterious and intriguing. He was smart to layer it instead of saving all the story for the end of the book.
    When the tupelo
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