The Short Story: How to End It.

Lately I’ve been reading a bunch of short stories. Mostly free, I confess. I’ve been tackling shorts as a way to unwind in between massive editing forays into my own full length novel. Reading while in ‘editing’ mode, has perhaps made me more critical, but I like to think that I understand WHY I don’t like something, not just WHAT I don’t like.

So in a few blog posts hopefully. I’m going to explain some of the pitfalls I see in short stories and some advice on what to do with it.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional editor, I’m a writer. I prefer to read full length novels, but the same rules can apply to writing shorts. Honestly, I think shorts are especially hard to write in a satisfactory way because of the decreased length. As Jim Butcher once said, “It’s like trying to have a knife fight in a phone booth”. You lack room to expand the tale.

But it CAN be done, for example, look a Junior Reader series book. Their larger font usually means their half as long as the page length suggests (compared to adult fiction) yet they find a way to tell a complete story, beginning to end. If you have time, think about picking up a few to look at writing in its simplest form, they’re quick reads, and often fun.

Common crits/bad reviews: “Too Short.”

This phrase can puzzle writers because they’re writing a short, so the length is expected. What the reader in this case usually means is that something about the ending didn’t satisfy. Every story, no matter how short, needs an arc. You have to have a beginning, middle and end. In a short story, it can be too easy to rush to finish, you reach a point then, “andallthisstuffhappenedokayTheEnd.” This isn’t a school essay hastily written the night before. It’s a piece you want people to understand.

To work on endings you need to focus on several key areas:

1.      Did I answer all the questions?

If your story is a serial, SOME floating questions are okay, but you STILL have to get the character to an END, a safe place, a haven, a point to catch your breath. IF you are writing more to it then YES leave a hook, but that cannot be ALL you leave.

Some famous short stories end on a twist, or a sudden question, then that’s it, the author doesn’t write more. I hate that. It’s a cheap trick. Don’t be cheap. If you can’t figure out a good ending without resorting to “and it was all a dream” then your story isn’t done.  (Note: You CAN write dream stories, but you have to leave allusions to the fact that things do not add up. They must be done WELL. All rules can be broken if things are done amazingly well. This is NEVER easy.)

So re-read, if you go on for a paragraph about the glass rose on her desk, and then the rose is NOT important at all, remove it. If you put emphasis on something, make sure it matters, don’t waste the readers time with the extraneous. ANSWER the questions. “Hattie wondered if she’d ever make peace with her mothers passing.” Is this relevant? Does she make peace? Don’t leave the reader wondering.

2. Make your endings satisfy! 

Is your ending: “Hurry! Rush! keep reading! go go! STOP! Where’s the next page? WHAT THE HELL?” Be not the season finale to Game of Thrones on HBO. 

If people are buying a short story, give them resolution. Hooray! Bob survived his death defying injury when he jumped from the flaming helicopter to rescue the baby seal! He lost his limb, but Annie still loves him! People want CLOSURE. If your character is a skeptic, kidnapped by aliens, probed, then dumped in a cornfield, does he drink himself sick and convince himself it was a dream? Or arm himself with tinfoil to PROVE THE TRUTH? 

We want a peek at what will happen, along with what HAS happened. Don’t just say, Bob was a skeptic, then he got taken by aliens, the end. That’s a beginning and a middle, give us an END. Give us a REASON for spending 5 thousand or 20 thousand words with Bob.

3. Is THIS THE END??? Okay, no one wants to hear question marks when they finish a book. They want to know, either a) I’m done with you. or b) Ha, gotcha! There’s a 2^nd half to this coming out later. Decide BEFORE you write/publish/sell what you are going to DO with this story. Many authors who’ve written great novels either get asked, or get motivated, and wind up writing short stories that feature characters from their novels. This is great! It allows people a quick glance at characters that are fully fleshed, have whole histories, and yet come together in a short piece.

Did I say this is great? Let me clarify, this is great when it’s DONE RIGHT. Even some incredible long fiction authors find themselves flailing at a short piece. You have to balance the fact that Thor the Weasel Farmer, has an entire SAGA devoted to his feud with the evil ermine-mongering Pikipsie clan. There’s only so much back story you need, or even WANT to put into a short story. Give readers a taste, a thin veneer, not enough to confuse them, but enough that they can sense the greater depth.

““I knew we’d meet again!” Growled my arch nemesis Ermine Jill.” Just looking at that sentence tells you, they know each other, and if people are curious about their OTHER adventures, you can mention them on the last page in the bio. You don’t need to recap other books.

Okay, what about the new guy. Bob has a great story, Bob is going to tell you his story in five short stories in a series. Okay… Well, here’s my first question, Why did you choose to present a fiction with that much content as a serial short? In some cases, you might do it as a publishing agreement. You get 5 short pieces in a magazine anthology or something. That gives you range to present your work.

But consider the possibility of saying, ‘Gee, I have five 20K word shorts in a series. I could just do some editing, and make it a 100K Novel.’ What you have to determine is if you have individual arcs for each story. Some things just WORK as a Serial. My favorite is Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire. Each chapter has a rise and fall and flows as its own little story playing into a greater whole.

Here’s what you don’t do: DO NOT take a novel that you are finished with /partway finished /uncertain of chop it into pieces, and then sell it as a series of shorts. Unless you are willing to chop, rewrite, and edit the hell out of that work to make sure each arc reads like a short. Do not lie to the reader and market it as a ‘short work’ when really it’s a Part 1 of 4 of your novel. Or god have mercy on that poor unsuspecting reader who pays for part 2, 3, or 4, and winds up stuck in the middle of a confusing half finished story.  You may know it’s the middle piece. You might even put it all over the description. It doesn’t change the fact that it will alienate the reader.

(I am violently opposed to anyone publishing unfinished work. It’s a lazy shortcut. You finish, you edit, you polish, and you do it right, or you stop trying to sell me crappy e-books. That’s all.)

So if you want to write a serial short, because you wrote one, and loved those characters so much you want to give us more, just make sure your endings feel like endings. There may be things we are left to discover, but give us a place where the action slows, the reader breaths, and we get a little closure. “And Thor wept over Pete’s tiny weasel grave, knowing even as he laid his tiny buddy to rest, he would surely seek vengeance on that conniving Ermine Jill.”

There is an end, and a hint of foreshadowing. They do it all the time in comics. (Not to be confused with TV Cartoons made from comics where they do ‘to be continued’ all the damn time!) Uncertain how to imply continuation while giving an ending? Read a comic. Look at how even as Eric Banner is always trying to avoid conflict, you just KNOW conflict will find him for another issue. Look for allusions to the future, and hints of continuation in the theme.

If you ARE writing a serial? It helps to imply it in the title, “Ambers Honey Pot Adventures: The Tale of the Pygmy King” She has more than one adventure, and the colon implies that the title may be on more than one piece.

So that’s my advice on endings. Answer the lingering questions, Make sure your story arc includes an ending, and do not neglect the arc for a series. If short goes right into another short with no pause, no stopping for breath, no end in sight, then you’re writing a novel, (or novella) not a short.

Tune in next time when I rant about other short story thrills and woes. From plotting to speed, I hope to keep your shorts trim, fitted, and roomy enough to breathe.