What Makes a Great Short Story?

The best short stories take a seemingly small moment and reveal something much bigger.”

I read a lot of short stories in July — more than 30 of them, good, bad, and ugly — and thought a lot about what makes a good short story.  In grad school, 20 years ago now, this was something I thought, talked, and wrote about often, but in more recent years I’ve focused more on long-form fiction.

Next month, Industry Books, the publishing arm of the Book Shop of Beverly Farms, will be launching a literary magazine called Six Stories a Semester, in which we’ll be publishing six short works of fiction by New England authors every six months. Submissions rolled in during the spring and in July, my co-editor (and brother, Sam) and I read these submissions for selection.  What to take?  It’s just as hard as you might think.

So, what am I looking for when I read?  First and foremost, it has to be a story.  Does it have a beginning, a middle, and an end?  Is there some sort of character arc (i.e., does the character undergo some sort of change)?  They cannot be the same as they started, but if they are, they must have decided to revert to that.

If the entry meets the (or maybe “my”) definition of a short story, then I start to look at what makes it compelling.  There are a number of different elements to consider.  I’m looking at the writing itself — varied sentence structure and word choice both come into play.  Sense of place (we want these stories to feel like they’re from New England), character development, the element of surprise.  A first sentence that draws the reader in.  An ending that makes the reader think.  What is the theme of the story?  Was there tension, or something that made me want to keep reading?

For submissions, we set a 5,000-word limit, and many stories we received were 4,000 words or more, but a handful were under 1,500 and I must admit to having a fondness for this short short-form, sometimes called flash fiction.  I discovered it through the stories of Amy Hempel and Lydia Davis and am delighted in the challenge of brevity. How much can you convey in such a small space?  The flash fiction piece we chose for Six Stories a Semester used dialogue to great effect in order to convey the depths and limitations of a relationship and family entanglements.

Flash fiction forces a writer to think small.  Flash is often about a moment in time.  I think, in general, good short stories use seemingly small moments to be representative of something bigger.  This is what all the stories in the first issue of Six Stories a Semester do.  Even if many years pass, the focus is on one relationship and its evolution. 

What’s really exciting is when a short story breaks all of these rules and still works.  It surprises in approach, content, and execution.  We have one of those in our first issue, too.  It’s been refreshing and rewarding to see the breadth of local talent we have both right here on the North Shore and in the greater New England area.  We can’t wait to share it with you.

Hannah Harlow is owner of The Book Shop, an independent bookstore in Beverly Farms.  Harlow writes biweekly recommendations for us.  See more of what she recommends reading at thecricket.com.