Short stories are an outdated form

I've read a lot of great novels and see how powerful the medium can be, but then again I've also read a lot of bad ones that make me realize how much the medium is flooded with crap.

I feel that in today's day and age, there simply is not room for the novel. Novels served a big purpose before the development of television and movies, being an entertainment form that provided a complete story or idea in a relatively short investment of time. However, now that we have television and movies, we can get our entertainment in the short term from other sources, and the novel with a relative inconsistency of quality and accesibility from one to the other, looses its appeal. Who still keeps up with modern novels? Where do you find decent ones, and of them, how many of them are really worthwhile?

See, the problem with novels is twofold. The first is that they are easy to write, compared to verse, so any not so decent writer can write a glut of them and fill the marketplace with them. The second is that due to the brevity or longity of the medium, many novels that are written well with good ideas end up being under-developed anyway, or many good novels are far to over-devloped ruining them. Since, there's so many novels and they get read so quickly, it's kind of hard to really become enthralled with it as a medium, especially considering the inconsistency of quality. Great ones are hard to come by, because they really need to feel as though they offer the same artistic sensibility as verse. There's many to be found within the anals of literature, because they were preserved, and the other ones tend to fade.

I still see the value in reading the classic novels, but nowadays they just seem relagated to writing students flexing their skills and to authors that want to have a whole bunch of movie pitches. Hahaha. No, I'm kidding, but what I mean is that you don't see authors doing it much at all anymore, though of course in the previous stanza I said there were to many, but...um...yea....Gone are the classic novel magazines and instead are websites brimming with mediocre novels upon mediocre novels that must be sifted through to find the gold, a sifting that's not worth it.

It's a dead medium outside of novel communities within academia, and unless we have some source of really GREAT contemporary novels, it's going to stay dead, because TV and movies are simply better and easier to access nowadays.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

I've read a lot of great novels and see how powerful the medium can be, but then again I've also read a lot of bad ones that make me realize how much the medium is flooded with crap.

I feel that in today's day and age, there simply is not room for the novel. Novels served a big purpose before the development of television and movies, being an entertainment form that provided a complete story or idea in a relatively short investment of time. However, now that we have television and movies, we can get our entertainment in the short term from other sources, and the novel with a relative inconsistency of quality and accesibility from one to the other, looses its appeal. Who still keeps up with modern novels? Where do you find decent ones, and of them, how many of them are really worthwhile?

It's a dead medium outside of novel communities within academia, and unless we have some source of really GREAT contemporary novels, it's going to stay dead, because TV and movies are simply better and easier to access nowadays.

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I kind of agree with that. I mean tv gets a lot of hate but there are some good shows out there.

A lot of the tv shows I watch got me into reading the classics.

Who's to say that television can't become what the novel was back in the days of the classics. A lot of tv shows and movies borrow themes from the classics and update them so they can appeal to a modern audience. I think if modern writers could do something like that the literature of today would be better too. I mean some of the classics while they may be good would bore the crap out of the average teenager today because they wouldn't be able to relate to that time period. Obviously this isn't true for everyone I'm just saying for the average person.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

It's a dead medium outside of novel communities within academia, and unless we have some source of really GREAT contemporary novels, it's going to stay dead, because TV and movies are simply better and easier to access nowadays.

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For the record, I don't agree with your assertions that long-form fiction is dead, or that there is a dearth of good, recently-written fiction. I seem to find more than I can consume each year, but it does require a little effort, and in large part you won't find it on the best seller lists. :) But what I'm after here is a clarification: in what way are TV and movies "better"? More accessible, sure, I can see that. But "better"?

Mind you, I love movies, but I don't see them as a superior (or inferior) medium. I don't do much TV, but my gut feeling is that the signal-to-noise ratios for all three media are very similar: a high proportion of dreck in each, but enough "good stuff" to keep this consumer occupied.

They say the cream rises to the top, but then so does pond scum... So yes, there is a mixture of good and bad stories out there. Or maybe it is down to individual taste and what one person likes another hates?

With the development of eReaders, phone apps and other technological delights, I think we are about to see the return to a 'golden age' for short stories.

Incidentally, I thought I'd chip in with some short story writers of my own that I admire and enjoy.

O'Henry, Terry Southern, Will Self and Kurt Vonnegut (but his novels are much, much better). I'm rather fond of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, which still ring true today and never fail to make me laugh out loud, essentially these are books, but each chapter is its own contained short story. Wonderful stuff.

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Originally Posted by PopCultmagUK

With the development of eReaders, phone apps and other technological delights, I think we are about to see the return to a 'golden age' for short stories.

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That's an interesting idea. Why do you think so?

As a short story writer (almost none of my works exceeds 35 pages) i can tell you that they are neither outdated, nor intrinsically do they have something that makes them automatically less artistically significant. As others have said there is enough crap being produced in all styles and lenghts :)

Also there is a market for short stories. Here for example a number of publishing houses only request this form (although obviously most are interested in novels).

As a reader, I prefer whatever fits on a web page without too much scrolling.

So if my reading habits are like those of others, this might suggest that the short story is not dead, unless it is a very long short story.

I reckon there will be a resurgance of the short story with eReaders. But apart from that, many people I know lead such busy lives that they never manage to finish a book and instead prefer books of collections of short stories

It is almost impossible for a writer to get short stories published today. Before WW11 they were almost de rigueur for writers such Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Forster, Hardy, Maugham etc. etc., who were all noted practitioners of the form. It is strange that, given that peoples' attention span appears to be much shorter and instant gratification rules the day, short stories are not even more popular than previously.

It’ll never work.
Yes it will - you’ll see.

Or not, if it does.
When it does.

And when is when?
After this final adjustment...

He put the spanner down, placed his hand on the lever, and they looked into each others eyes for the last time.

And together they became invisible.




There you go. One of the best short stories ever written.

The fact that I wrote it... well, that's got nothing to do with it.

Intrigue, romance, sci fi, tension, mechanics, character development, Kapow climax - it's got eveything.