© Bridget Whelan
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For me they are like a bolt of lightning in a storm of uncertainty, waiting for the plot of the full blown novel to unravel in one’s head or the outline of one to arrive.
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog.
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin comes to mind as does The Lottery by Shirley Jackson as well. However, I must admit, hands down, my favorite A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift… You are correct, there are so many.
A good post, Bridget. Thanks for sharing. 🙂 — Suzanne
Thank you for dropping by. Glad you found this post interesting.
Of course there are different kinds of short stories, but the term seems to apply to literary short stories, which are indeed rather like sketches, rather than detailed pictures — but skilfully executed sketches complete in themselves. Then there are short genre fiction pieces (ghost stories, mysteries, etc.) that are more like mini-novels. BTW Alice Munro is Canadian, not American.
Agh! I KNOW Alice Munro is Canadian. That was a really silly and irritating mistake, but I’ve corrected it now and also added that she won the Nobel Prize as I think this article first appeared in 2013 before the news was announced. Thank you for putting me straight and if you notice anything else like that, do please let me know!
The word sketch does seem to sit well with Munro’s ‘…quick glancing light’ and Pritchett’s ‘glimpse’ from the corner of the eye, but it sounds too unfinished for me to be comfortable with it. To me, a defining quality of a good short story is that it is a polished gem, complete and satisfying to the reader (even if you would like to meet the characters again).
And I wasn’t sure about the distinction you made about genre short stories until I started thinking about the ones I love that fit into that category (The Monkey’s Paw, for example) and I think you have got something there. The tropes of a particular genre often demand more than a glimpse…
Thank you so much for coming by, Audrey.
🙂