There is an art to writing short fiction. It’s such a beautiful form, and it’s been great to feel like it’s had something of a resurgence in recent years. Whether that’s readers trying to fit satisfying tales into the short down time they have in busy lives, or just an appetite for satisfying stories that don’t take weeks of commitment I’m not sure, but if more people are reading and writing short stories and flash fiction then that’s a good thing in my book.
I love the form, really got into it years ago when the FlashDogs community (still going with #vss365) were writing together and putting out anthologies, and while I’m also working on longer pieces I’ve learned so much about the craft of writing from carving out shorter works. I like to think of it as like moulding clay. There is the idea, the shape of what the story wants to be. There is a lump of words. The words need to be prodded and pressed and smoothed and etched until they’re shaped into something small but powerful. (You might at this point realise that I know nothing about sculpting, other than there’s something about scoring bits of clay that you need to stick together, and that hours of work can easily blow up in the kiln. But I hope the comparison still stands, albeit it with less explosions.)
The restricted word count trains you to be ruthless, keeping only what serves the shape you need to make. I imagine it’s a little like writing poetry, although I’ve never really turned my hand to that. I love to explore vignettes, small windows into the parts of lives that are sometimes skipped over, and in fact, the longer piece I’m working on at the moment is likely to take the form of novel-in-flash, or a mosaic novel, taking inspiration from some of the ‘interconnected’ collections I’ve loved to read.
So I wanted to swing by here and share a few collections that have the sort of stories that I still remember vividly long after reading, that make me want to be a better writer, and that (for me) show the power of the shorter form.
First up, there’s Samanta Schweblin’s Seven Empty Houses. I’ve always enjoyed her work, first coming across her wonderful novel Little Eyes, and then Fever Dream (which also has an excellent film adaptation). The stories in Seven Empty Houses capture a sense of domestic unease, of the quiet horrors of normal life, of grief. Breath from the Depths is an absolute masterpiece, heart wrenching with a sense of dread and melancholy that, honestly I still can’t quite shake.
Yōko Ogawa’s Revenge is just a perfect collection of interconnected stories, with a touch of surreal and a brooding sense of unease. They’re the sort of stories that are satisfying but don’t necessarily feel the need to fill all the gaps. They weave together in a really subtle way, all quiet parts of a whole that feels so pertinent to the lives we lead – we’re separate, but share the same space in ways we might not see. This is a beautiful collection, and I’m forever thinking about the lady with the carrots in Old Mrs J, and it’s well overdue a re-read. If you’re interested in longer reads from Ogawa, then The Memory Police is up there with my all time favourite novels.
This might be a debateable pick, but I’m also going to mention Sequoia Nagamatsu’s science fiction book How High we go in the Dark. I think this was marketed for the most part as a novel, but I’d consider it another collection of interconnected short stories, all tied together through the timeline and fallout of a pandemic. Following the Covid pandemic, this feels like an even more uncomfortable read than maybe it would have been years before, but tells the very human stories in a tender and careful way, and for me expertly balances the horrors and the grief with hope.
Next up on my short story reading lists are two collections I’m excited about. Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons and Other Stories is something I’ve been wanting to read since I first heard he was releasing a collection, having come across his work in the likes of Clarkesworld Magazine, and I’m fully expecting dark, weird, surreal and emotionally charged tales to dig into. Then there’s Mouthful of Birds, another outing for Samanta Schweblin, and I’m looking forward to more quietly surreal tales that will likely leave me, well, slightly traumatised.
So if you enjoy short stories and are looking for your next read, I highly recommend all of the above, and I’d love to hear your favourites reads and recommendations too 🖤
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