Short Circuit is a unique and indispensable guide to writing the short story. A collection of 24 specially commissioned essays from well-published short story writers, many of them prize winners in some of the toughest short story competitions in the English language. The writers are also experienced and successful teachers of their craft.
Each essay picks up on one or more craft or process issues and explores them in context, within the creative practice of the writer. Each writer has given of themselves very generously, exploring what it is that helps them produce strong short fiction, looking at their sources of inspiration, revealing more than a little of what goes on `behind the scenes. They share favourite writing exercises, and suggest lists of published stories they find inspirational. Much of the guidance can equally be applied to writing longer fiction.
Contributions include five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall winner of The National Short Story Award and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Other prize-winning writers in this book include winners of The Asham Award for New Women Writers, The Fish Histories Prize, The Fish Short Story Prize, The BBC Short Story Prize, The Commonwealth Award, Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, The Willesden Herald Prize, NAWG Millennium Award for Radio Short Story and the Per Contra Prize.
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An essential read. "Short Circuit" is a collection of essays from writers who are passionate (and successfully!) about short fiction. A real gold mine of insights and ideas for aspiring writers and for those seeking a refresher. The Bridport Prize This is a generous book, rich in ideas. It's a practical book, giving a kick start to the imagination with its suggestions for overcoming the tyranny of the blank page, and it's also a realistic book. Short Circuit updates Chaucer's advice about life being short and the craft long to learn, without ever losing sight of why it's worth the effort. As a teacher of creative writing, I recommend it to students. I believe in the apprenticeship system and this is an excellent manual. As a writer, it reminds me why I write, and why there's nothing else I would rather do. -- Bridget Whelan, Lecturer in Creative Writing, Goldsmith's College, University of London At last! The definitive guide to writing short stories, put together by a team of experts who are passionate about this most elusive, maddening, beguiling and ultimately satisfying of art forms. Cleverly constructed -- a book which you will want to dip into for years to come. And a book which will do much to raise the status of the short story in contemporary fiction. -- Carole Bucham, The Asham Trust As full of inspiration as it is of sound advice. An invaluable tool kit of a book for practitioners and scholars of the short story. -- Mike McCormack, lecturer, MA in Creative Writing, NUI Galway. This is rich book -- full of insight and interest. 'Short Circuit' will be a essential addition to my undergraduate book list -- it is written by those who have first hand understanding of the problems, as well as invaluable knowledge of the craft of writing short fiction. -- Gill Lowe, Senior lecturer, University Campus Suffolk Once a lover of the short story opens 'Short Circuit', one quickly realises it is indispensable -- to a degree that has one asking, why hasn't it been done before? Like all the best story anthologies, the essays and interviews are varied in style and structure and possess all the attractiveness and excitement of good gossip. -- Patrick Cotter, Director, Munster Literature Centre, home of the Frank O'Connor Prize Here is a 'How To' book that is hard to put down. If there is anything you still need to know after reading the varied authors here, you probably haven't read it properly. Read it again. Not that you'd need to, wisdom and insight hop off the page like light on water. This book lacks the aridity of a textbook. The writers give of themselves and their experience, and information, advice and insight is fortified with example. Respect is given to the process and to the reader. In a scintillating and provocative series of chapters the art of writing is explored with excitement and passion. If Alex Keegan's essay on 'Theme' doesn't inspire you, check your pulse. You may be dead. There is a mystery at the heart of writing. It's the experience of characters and stories developing lives of their own; of characters arguing with their author and creator, of stories going places the writer did not know about. It is the marriage of this mystical, that a writer must learn to listen to, and the craft that a writer must learn, that makes fiction sing and dance on the page, and one of the joys of this book is the illumination given to this vital process. -- Clem Cairns, Founder, The Fish Short Story Prize How refreshing to have a book on creative writing that is neither abstract theory nor banal 'how to'. What we have instead are insights into the short story from a marvellous variety of accomplished writers; an invaluable resource for anyone tackling this tricky but highly rewarding literary form. -- Paul Munden, Director, National Association of Writers in Education Vanessa Gebbie has compiled an indispensable guide to crafting the short story. The subjects represented here -- all written by contemporary authors -- will stimulate advanced writers and instruct newcomers. There's nothing like hearing from people who have learned a technique or a way of approaching a problem through experience. These authors are generous with what they know, to our benefit. -- Alice Elliott Dark, Writer in Residence at Rutgers-Newark University author of 'In the Gloaming' and 'Naked to the Waist'
Vanessa Gebbie
Introduction
Graham Mort
Finding Form in Short Fiction
Clare Wigfall
`I Hear Voices Narrative voice, creating a fictive world,
characterisation, openings and leaving room for the reader: An interview
Alison Macleod
Writing and Risk-Taking
Nuala Ni Chonchuir
Language and Style for short story writers and poets
Chika Unigwe
Setting
Alex Keegan
`24: The Importance of Theme
Lane Ashfeldt
Building a world
Catherine Smith
Myth and magic: beyond `realism in the short story
Adam Marek
What my gland wants originality in the short story
Tobias Hill
Character, characterisation, dialogue and language: An interview
Sarah Salway
Stealing Stories
Elizabeth Baines
True story real story good Fiction?
Tania Hershman
Art Breathes from Containment: The Delights of the Shortest Fiction or
The Very Short Story That Could
David Gaffney
Get shorty: the micro-ction of Etgar Keret
Marian Garvey
On Intuition: writing into the void
Elaine Chiew
Endings
Paul Magrs
Thoughts about writing ction, at the end of term
Vanessa Gebbie
Leaving the door ajar on short story openings ...
Vanessa Gebbie
Short story competitions: Hard work, persistence, luck and a bowl of
fruit
Linda Cracknell
Balancing Act
Jay Merill
Supercharged Words
Carys Davies
`... before it disappears ...
David Grubb
Dancing on glass
Zoe King
But what if your character wont talk to you?
Matthew Licht
Iceberg Lettuce: Why I write, and a little bit of `how
Contributors notes
Vanessa Gebbie is a novelist and award-winning short story writer. Author of two collections: Words from a Glass Bubble and Storm Warning (Salt), her novel The Cowards Tale (Bloomsbury UK/US) was selected as a UK Financial Times Book of the Year and Guardian readers book of the year. Her stories have been commissioned by literary journals, the British Council, for BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4, and are widely anthologised. www.vanessagebbie.com
Elizabeth Baines was born in South Wales and lives in Manchester. She has been a teacher and is an occasional actor as well as the prize-winning author of plays for radio and stage, and of two novels, The Birth Machine and Body Cuts. Her award-winning short stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies. Her first story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, was published by Salt in 2007. A novel, Too Many Magpies, will come from Salt in November 2009.
Linda Cracknell has been a teacher of English in Zanzibar, worked for environmental charity WWF, and was writer-in-residence at Hugh MacDiarmids last home near Biggar. She now lives in Highland Perthshire. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and journals, been broadcast on BBC Radio, and was previously collected in Life Drawing, published in 2000. She writes drama for BBC Radio Four and is now writing essays about walks which follow human stories in `wild places.
Carys Davies was the winner of the the 2010 Society of Authors Olive Cook Short Story Award, the 2011 Royal Society of Literatures V S Pritchett Memorial Prize, and a 2013 Northern Writers Award. She has been shortlisted and longlisted for many other prizes including the Calvino Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize, the Roland Mathias Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Wales Book of the Year and the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen Prize. Born in Wales, she now lives in Lancaster.
David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is the author of several books including Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has written articles for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Prospect, and his new novel, All The Places Ive Ever Lived, is due out in spring 2017. See www.davidgaffney.org.
David Grubb writes novels, short stories and poems. His most recent poetry collection, Box, was published by Like This Press in 2012. Previous poetry collections have been published by Salt, Shearsman, and Stride. He was a winner in the 2012/13 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition with a sequence, `Ways of Looking.
Tania Hershman was born in London in 1970 and in 1994 moved to Jerusalem, Israel, where she worked as a science journalist. She now lives in Bristol with her partner. Her award-winning short stories combine her two loves: fiction and science. Many of Tania Hershmans stories, which have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in print and online, are inspired by articles from popular science magazines. In November 2007, she founded The Short Review, a unique online journal dedicated to reviewing short story collections. Concerned about the environmental impact of her book, Tania is partnering with Eco-Libris, who will plant a tree for every copy. For further information, visit Tanias websites: www.taniahershman.com and www.thewhiteroadandotherstories.com.
Selected as one of the countrys Next Generation poets, shortlisted for the 2004 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and named by the TLS as one of the best young writers in the country, Tobias Hill is one of the leading British writers of his generation. His award-winning collections of poetry are Year of the Dog, Midnight in the City of Clocks, and Zoo. His fiction has been published to acclaim in many countries. AS Byatt has observed that There is no other voice today quite like this.
Alex Keegan began writing seriously in 1992, publishing 5 mystery novels before switching to serious short fiction. He has been published widely in print and on the web and been awarded more than a dozen first prizes for his fiction as well as three Bridport Prizes. Born in Wales with an Irish mother, he now lives and writes in Newbury, England where he lives with his second wife and two teenage children. He runs a tough internet writing school, "Boot Camp Keegan".
Matthew Licht learned to write before two extremely tough audiences: the readership of a magazine popular among the incarcerated and/or mentally handicapped, and the 4th and 5th grades of a New York Public School.
Alison Macleod is the author of two novels, The Changeling and The Wave Theory of Angels, and a short story collection, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. She lives in Brighton and teaches creative writing at the University of Chichester.
Paul Magrs was born in 1969 in the North East of England. He has published fiction for adults, teens and children. He lectures in Creative Writing at the Manchester Metropolitan University.
Adam Marek won the 2011 Arts Foundation Fellowship in short story writing. His collection, Instruction Manual for Swallowing, was long-listed for the Frank OConnor Prize, and in 2010 he was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. He lives in Bedfordshire with his wife and sons.
Jay has just moved to a tree house in the centre of the centre and she has the feeling this will lead to a lot of creative output, because before, she was at the side of the centre and that's when she wrote the stories in this collection whereas before that, when she was in the outer crust, she went out compulsively every night and hardly wrote a thing.
Graham Mort, poet and short fiction writer, is Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University. He specialises in literature development work and recent projects have taken him to South Africa, Kurdistan, Vietnam and China. His first book of stories, Touch (Seren), won the Edge Hill Prize in 2011 and his latest book of stories, Terroir (Seren), is currently long-listed for the same prize. A new book of poems, Black Shiver Moss, will appear from Seren in 2017.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir is an Irish short fiction writer and poet, born Dublin 1970. Her short fiction collections The Wind Across the Grass (2004) and To the World of Men, Welcome (2005) were published by Arlen House. Her poetry collections Tattoo:Tatú (2007) and Mollys Daughter (2003) appeared from the same publisher. She has won many literary prizes, including RTÉ Radios Francis MacManus Award and the Cecil Day-Lewis Award. Nuala lives in Galway with her partner and children.
