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.
Table of Contents:
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-fiction of Etgar Keret
Marian Garvey
On Intuition: writing into the void
Elaine Chiew
Endings
Paul Magrs
Thoughts about writing fiction, 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 won’t talk to you?
Matthew Licht
Iceberg Lettuce: Why I write, and a little bit of `how’
Contributors’ notes
