September 2006 Issue The Horror Library, your Haunted Home for Horror Fiction, Dark Art, Horror Games, Movie Reviews, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction, Alternative Music, Horror Authors, Horror Short Fiction and featuring The Terrible Twelve - RJ Cavender, Bailey Hunter, Boyd E Harris, Megg Roper, Jason Beirens, CJ Hurtt, Eric Stark, Cordelia Snow, Chris Perridas, Curt Mahr, Stephen Sommerville, M Louis Dixon, Kerry Drummond
Telling stories, no matter what the genre or length, is a lot like playing chess. The difference between novels and short stories then, is comparable to playing chess with an old friend while enjoying drinks and a pleasant chat, versus playing competitive, tournament-level chess. Novels are a much more forgiving format. But with short stories, you'd better be prepared to make your best move – quickly - and never take your eyes off the endgame. Get distracted and you're dead.
I've heard any number of established, full-time writers say they think short stories are harder than novels to write well. This isn't to say that writing short stories can't be fun. Only that constructing a tale requires the author to have laser-like focus on the point of the story – as well as on the effect you want your tale to have on the reader.
Personally, I can't write a story without knowing what the ending is going to be - before I start. For me, it all begins with the end.
If you're one of those writers who likes to start with a character or concept and see where it leads, I say great, have fun. But once you've figured out where you're going, you had better make darned sure everything you discovered along the way is used to good effect, or else deleted in subsequent drafts. There's a reason Chekhov is famous for saying, "If there's a gun on the stage in Act One, it had better go off by the end of Act Three." And the corollary is true, too: if a gun goes off at the end, it better have been seen earlier.
This means that you've got to have a plan. Not necessarily a written outline - that's overkill when it comes to short stories - but ask yourself this: if you don't know what the ending is going to be, how can you possibly know that your story is moving inexorably toward it? In chess, everything that is done – every piece that's moved, every feint and counter-feint – is done with one thought in mind: capture your opponent's king while protecting your own. This kind of focus is equally vital in short-story telling. Everything that is done must be done in service and support of the story. 'Story' is king.
However, just as in chess, if you go after your reader in an unsubtle fashion, most readers are going to see your play coming and wipe you out. They'll do this by getting to the end of your tale and tossing the book or magazine aside with a contemptuous snort, or worse yet, never get to the end at all.
Actually, the flaw in that analogy is that the story will never get into a book or magazine in the first place; the person tossing your manuscript aside will be the assistant editor wading through the slush pile. And what you'll have to show for you efforts will be a form rejection letter.
So you need not just a plan, but a plan that will keep you one step ahead. And you've got to do so fairly. No cheating. I read a story once where the main character went into a used-car lot run by the devil and got into a heavy bit of negotiating with the Prince of Darkness. Things were not looking good for this character and I was intrigued. How was he going to get out of this disastrous situation? Just when it looked like things couldn't possibly get any worse, it was revealed that the character (who up until that point had never been portrayed as anything but an Average Joe) was, in fact, the Archangel Gabriel, and suddenly everything turned out All Right.
That's the equivalent of picking up your queen, a bishop, and two pawns off the chess board and arranging them around the other player's king. Checkmate!
That's not checkmate, it's cheating; which is exactly how I felt at the end of that story – cheated.
On the other end of the spectrum is the movie "The Sixth Sense." I don't know anyone who can honestly claim to have seen that ending coming, nor have I met anyone who didn't think that it was one of the best surprise endings they'd ever seen. Why? Because we were given all of the clues. We were just led very artfully to put the pieces together into a picture that fit one view of the facts, when another, completely different picture was actually the truth. Watching "The Sixth Sense" for the second time is like watching a whole new movie. Regardless of how you feel about ghost stories in general, there is no denying that the writer of "The Sixth Sense" played fair, yet still managed to surprise us.
Going back to my original point though, "The Sixth Sense" could never have been successfully done if, at some point, the writer didn't sit down to write a draft of that story with full knowledge of what the ending was going to be. That other story, the Lucifer-as-a-used-car-salesman story, I can imagine that author writing himself into trouble as the plot got thicker and thicker, then saying, Hey, I know how to get out of this! The guy is actually an angel. No, not just an angel. The angel – the Archangel Gabriel. That'll fix everything.
The only thing that fixed was my interest in reading any more of that author's stories.
Obviously there's more to a successful short story than just plot. I'd say 'Character' is the queen of the chess match. You can win without one, it's just twenty times harder to do. But if character is queen, a well thought-out plot is like a good pair of rooks. They are the ideal tool to sweep in and deliver a knock-out ending.
But in order to do that, first you have to set the pieces up properly. Like it or not, that requires a plan.
