A delicious slice of life: Short fiction

Over the past few months, I’ve been hard at work flexing my short fiction muscles. As I ready my books for sale and complete the website, I’ve been writing a number of shorter pieces to use as ‘reader magnets’ – free, promotional materials aimed to draw readers further into the worlds I am creating.  

Short fiction is not a form I usually write in. 

To be honest, I’m not a big reader of short stories. I’ve read Alice Munro, because a friend bought me a collection of her selected stories for my birthday a few years ago. I read and enjoyed each story, but the entire collection took me a long time to finish. This wasn’t because I didn’t like the writing. The writing was brilliant, and the stories Munro writes are delicately woven and unfold so effortlessly. But for some reason, I just couldn’t read more than one in a sitting. Although delicate, each experience was exceptionally intense. I dipped into the collection when I wanted to, for a taste of something rich and extreme like a decadent chocolate mousse. 

What’s more, I’ve only written one other short story before my current attempts.

A few years ago, my publisher asked me to write a short story to coincide with the launch of my second novel, The President’s Lunch. It was the trend at the time for authors to write short stories in conjunction with their new release novels. 

Before I began, she made me rather anxious by suggesting that short stories were a difficult art form to master. Consequently, I did loads of research around the conventions and discovered that readers expect a faster, more intense experience from a short story than they would receive from a novel. In other words, short stories are a delicious slice of life, one that can be consumed in one sitting. This made me feel better about abandoning Alice Munro so frequently. What a short story is not is a novel abridged to 3000 words. The author must choose language very carefully. In many ways a short story, in conventions at least, more closely resembles a poem than a novel. 

So that brings me to my current efforts. In total, I have completed four – a short story, an epilogue and two interquels (brief instalments in a series that fits chronologically between two books). Despite my concern at the beginning of the process, it has been incredibly enjoyable allowing myself to be immersed in the world of my novels once more from a slightly different angle. It is very cool considering what my characters got up to between instalments when they thought no one was watching. 

From a more writerly perspective, it gives me a chance to explore certain characters a little more deeply, develop further backstory which (will hopefully) makes for more nuanced characters.