Why Read Short Stories by Vanessa Couchman

I’ve always been an avid reader of novels, but I first became aware of the short story as a different but equally inspiring form when a teacher read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops to our class. The story is set in a far-off but credible future. People depend on the now failing Machine to survive, but they have discarded their humanity somewhere along the line.

I was hooked. I read more of Forster’s stories and then sought out other authors who had written them. The list is long and distinguished: Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Katharine Mansfield, Alice Munro and Helen Dunmore, to name a few in no particular order.

What was it that captivated me? I didn’t analyse it then but, having now written short stories myself, I can offer some thoughts.

A good short story sucks you in immediately, absorbs you and engages your emotions. It presents the main character with a dilemma that must be resolved by the end and tells you something about the human condition. A story can be particularly effective if it finishes with an unexpected twist.

Okay, but a novel does that too. Isn’t a short story an easy option?

Not in the least. I find short stories more difficult to write than novels, although they don’t require as much stamina! In a short story, every single word and your overriding premise have to count; in a novel you can elaborate and introduce more characters and ideas. You can afford to have weaker bits in a novel; you can’t in a short story.

Think of a novel as a treasure chest in which some of the jewels sparkle more than others. A short story is like a single gem that is cut and polished to perfection. 

 For readers, an advantage of a short story is that you can read it, or listen to it, at one sitting. They are perfect for relieving a tedious commute, taking your mind off work during a coffee break or whiling away an hour on a rainy day.

You can also try out other genres you might not normally read. For example, I don’t generally read sci-fi, but I’ve enjoyed short stories by John Wyndham and Ray Bradbury.

So, while the teetering TBR pile on my bedside table is largely composed of novels, short stories are usually lurking in there somewhere.

Vanessa Couchman is a British novelist and short story writer who has lived in Southwest France since 1997. She has written two novels, The House at Zaronza and The Corsican Widow, and is working on a third. Her short stories have been placed in competitions and published in anthologies. French Collection, her collection of short stories set in France, was published on 9th November.