by Clare Callow

Created on: May 12, 2008   Last Updated: January 30, 2009

The short story form is a nasty little critter. Because it involves fewer words, it's easy to fall into the trap of attempting one, then ending up with an overextended piece of flash fiction, which would have read better if it wasn't so drawn-out, or (worse) essentially a novel synopsis: too much plot crammed into a tiny space.

My writer's group just finished a challenge which involved writing a short horror fiction set in a hotel room, and it brought it home to me again just how hard crafting a short story can be. As we all know, writing is a breeze when the muse hits, but a professional ethic requires a writer to be able to write good work, all the time. Having to write a short (3000+) horror (not my usual genre) entirely located in a hotel room (I could cope with that one) was both a blessing and a curse - good, because restrictions help creativity flow, but bad because how in heck can you squash a horror story into a hotel room?

I was not the only one to encounter difficulties, and between us, the writers in my group got a few really good lessons in the art of the short story.

The first one was: don't try to squish a novel into a short story. One of my friends got very excited about writing in her favourite genre; so much so that she dreamt up a complicated back-story for all of her characters, which she deposed in flashbacks throughout the piece. The effect was a lot of what in TV is called 'potatoheading'; 'I know how you must feel, Myra, having lost your father at the age of two and spending your childhood in a series of foster homes, but you must understand that my desire for revenge - coming from my mysterious past when I was abducted at the age of ten and returned two years later, no-one knowing the reason why - overwhelms my sympathy.' (It wasn't quite that bad, as she really is a good writer. But you get the idea.)

My mistake was in doing the opposite - thinking up a back-story for my characters, then not including any hint of it. Having a deeply thought-out plot isn't much use when you get back comments like 'Who the heck is Alistair?' (sexily evil villain that saves the day in an is-he-or-isn't-he-evil twist) and 'Why is it important that she has a stomach-ache?' (a miscarriage).

From this, we learned that a short story shouldn't require foot-notes. A simple concept, really, but harder to learn than you'd think.

Another writer in the group crafted a marvelous supernatural piece about a man dying in a room notorious for its suicides. The piece was subtle

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