Last week, I wrote about essays, and how they differed from short stories. I brought all this up because I’ve recently judged for several contests involving both essays and short stories, and sometimes the entries simply weren’t  appropriate.

A few of the essays had either no real connection to the subject of the contest, or left me feeling that the author stuck one sentence into something he already had written in a struggle to find a connection.  They weren’t ABOUT the subject.

Many of the issues with entries for the short story contest involved plotting. The characters were affable. They were interesting. They talked to one another. But they didn’t DO anything.  At best, these were descriptive essays of the people in a town or in a family.  At the end I found myself asking so what?

The Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary says a short story usually presents a single significant episode or scene involving a limited number of characters…A short story may concentrate on the creation of mood rather than the telling of a story.

The definition above refers to “creating a mood” as an option.  I disagree.  Modern literary magazines are full of short stories that only set the mood – leaving the reader wondering what he just spent half an hour reading about. I’m wondering if they aren’t trying to merge short stories and essays into a totally new genre.

I think the word ‘episode’ is the defining one when talking about the difference between stories and essays.  A short story has to have a plot, moving a character from point A at least to point B, (that ‘single significant episode’) – preferably to point C THROUGH point B – and have some problem or question resolved, usually with a pivotal moment of discovery(at point B).

The main character is usually a living thing but I’ve seen a few that personified an object, and admit it’s an interesting concept. I’ve even written a couple. However, what or whoever the main character is, he/she/it must have some sort of issue or crisis to overcome..

Short stories can be fiction or non-fiction but, unlike essays, do not HAVE to have a basis in reality. For the most part, short stories aren’t about the author’s opinion or what’s in his head.  The thing is, if you are telling someone else’s story (your character), his opinion or experience shouldn’t be the same as yours. Isn’t that the point?  If not, we would be writing memoirs all the time.

Ah, a memoir. Isn’t it a short story?  Yes.  A non-fiction one.  But usually a short memoir is a classification all its own. The line does get a bit blurry there… the reader should be aware that he is reading a memoir.  Then we can blur the lines a bit more, and, well, write about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as if we were Alice, in which case it would be a fictional memoir…

Oh dear.  Opening different doors now, aren’t we?

All that stuff comes under style and genre, which are more subjects to explore….another day.