Lesson 9

Question 1

Brevity

Answer 1

The urgency here is to be brief. Say the most you can in the fewest possible words. Close to poetry, the best short story work compresses thought and language, and each word works double-time. The common word count is between 500 and 750 words.

Question 2

Depth

Answer 2

Judith Kitchen, in her anthology, In Short, says, “…density and depth [is] essential to the Short. It is a matter of proportion – how much the piece does for how long it is.” It’s about significance. James Thomas asks if the reader can “recognize in them the real stuff of real life.”

Question 3

Wholeness

Answer 3

Because of the need for brevity, the writer can’t include the entire picture, but must find one small thing, a focal aspect, that underscores the larger story trying to be told. As did Hemingway’s small shoes, the central idea should suggest a larger meaning.

Question 4

Resonance

Answer 4

Does the work cause an eruption in the reader? A sense of ah-ha? Do the words reverberate inside the reader after the last line is finished? Does the story continue to unwind even though the text has ended? That’s resonance. That’s the goal.