Story Lengths – Short

For this week’s entry of the story length mini-series, I’ll be touching on my experience with short stories!

This length is very popular for quite a few reasons. First off, they have so much flexibility to them. With a 1000 – 6000 word count range for most publishers, the possibilities are endless as to what kind of a story can be delivered. As well, the majority of creative writing contests tend to have this length in their criteria since it’s long enough to let a story take shape at its own pace but can also fit in printed magazines and journals.

Short stories always intrigue me as, like flash, they are bite-sized and can be very experimental. Unlike flash length stories, however, you can expect short stories to encompass more than single scenes or only 1 – 2 main characters. Still, don’t expect perspectives to change regularly as they generally stick to one viewpoint.

Currently, short stories encompass most of my completed work to date. They’re also the ones I like circulating for publication. I’ve been reading Hemingway’s short story collection lately to see how a real master pulls these off. The way he implements his ‘iceberg theory’ is masterful and I highly recommend any writer taking the time to dive in as well. Turns out I still have much to learn!

Site Update – As of writing this post, I’ve just come across an incredibly similar url out there. Currently, mine is ‘chrisprestonwrites’ but, because of this discovery, it needs to change. This other Christopher Preston is also an author and does blog posts about writing, along with other interests. It’s a valuable lesson in doing research prior to investing time into building such a personal site like this. Stay tuned on what I change the url to…

Keep turning the page,

Chris