Review
An essential read. Short Circuit is a collection of essays from writers who are passionate (and successfully!) about short fiction. A real gold mine of insights and ideas for aspiring writers and for those seeking a refresher. (The Bridport Prize )
Product Description
Short Circuit is a unique and indispensable guide to writing the short story. A collection of 24 specially commissioned essays from well-published short story writers, many of them prize winners in some of the toughest short story competitions in the English language. The writers are also experienced and successful teachers of their craft.
Each essay picks up on one or more craft or process issues and explores them in context, within the creative practice of the writer. Each writer has given of themselves very generously, exploring what it is that helps them produce strong short fiction, looking at their sources of inspiration, revealing more than a little of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’. They share favourite writing exercises, and suggest lists of published stories they find inspirational. Much of the guidance can equally be applied to writing longer fiction.
Contributions include five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall – winner of The National Short Story Award – and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Other prize-winning writers in this book include winners of The Asham Award for New Women Writers, The Fish Histories Prize, The Fish Short Story Prize, The BBC Short Story Prize, The Commonwealth Award, Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, The Willesden Herald Prize, NAWG Millennium Award for Radio Short Story and the Per Contra Prize.
Each essay picks up on one or more craft or process issues and explores them in context, within the creative practice of the writer. Each writer has given of themselves very generously, exploring what it is that helps them produce strong short fiction, looking at their sources of inspiration, revealing more than a little of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’. They share favourite writing exercises, and suggest lists of published stories they find inspirational. Much of the guidance can equally be applied to writing longer fiction.
Contributions include five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall – winner of The National Short Story Award – and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Other prize-winning writers in this book include winners of The Asham Award for New Women Writers, The Fish Histories Prize, The Fish Short Story Prize, The BBC Short Story Prize, The Commonwealth Award, Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, The Willesden Herald Prize, NAWG Millennium Award for Radio Short Story and the Per Contra Prize.
About the Author
Vanessa Gebbie is Welsh. She is author of ‘Words from a Glass Bubble’ (Salt, 2008), a collection of her award winning fiction from prizes including Bridport and the Daily Telegraph. She is contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt, 2009), and contributor to The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (Rose Metal Press, 2009). She teaches widely; in 2010 she was Writer in Residence at Stockholm University.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Welcome to Short Circuit, a collection of essays and interviews from winners of some of the most challenging competitions for short fiction — the UK’s National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Fish Short Histories Prize, the Asham Award, the Commonwealth Prize and many more. Writers who also teach writing.
Short Circuit is either a very good title for this book or a very bad one. It depends how you look at it. I see surprising connections, sparks and flares – more than a modicum of the unexpected. However, those who know about electricity tell me it is a bad title. Because you only get short circuits if there has been a mistake in the wiring. Something unplanned.
I’ll stick with it and hope they don’t mind. And by the end of the book, I hope you’ll see why it works well. So many of the writers here will tell you of the elusive and magical ‘thing’ that happens when story takes off and all your planning and plotting and learning of craft fades into the background. When your characters take over and use your fingers to tell their stories.
Here, you have craft issues discussed in context by twenty three writers. If you are reading this book you are probably already writing short stories, and want to do it better. So do I. So do we all. We share with each other our love of the short story form, and talk about what it is that we find challenging. Sure, we talk craft — about opening and ending a story. About characterisation, voice, dialogue, and shaping a story. About theme. Creating a world, settings. But we also share with you our creative processes, the strategies we employ to unlock these little bits of magic that are stories. We share ideas for further exploration of the processes described, and give you lists of inspirational stories.
I will leave you with two thoughts. Firstly, from the chief shortlister of the Bridport prize, Jon Wyatt. When I asked him what he was looking for in stories that made the shortlist, he said he gave his team of readers a simple instruction. ‘I want to see those stories that make you forget you are reading.’
And secondly, this, from an interview with William Faulkner in The Paris Review, Issue 12, 1952.
With those wise words in mind, I hope you may find some inspiration in this collection of essays. I hope too that you may find the stuff of debate, enabling you to get a little closer to your own creativity — no-one else’s. But more than that, I hope it liberates you and challenges you to join us in our love of writing one of the most difficult, annoying, powerful fiction forms in existence.
Welcome to Short Circuit, a collection of essays and interviews from winners of some of the most challenging competitions for short fiction — the UK’s National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Fish Short Histories Prize, the Asham Award, the Commonwealth Prize and many more. Writers who also teach writing.
Short Circuit is either a very good title for this book or a very bad one. It depends how you look at it. I see surprising connections, sparks and flares – more than a modicum of the unexpected. However, those who know about electricity tell me it is a bad title. Because you only get short circuits if there has been a mistake in the wiring. Something unplanned.
I’ll stick with it and hope they don’t mind. And by the end of the book, I hope you’ll see why it works well. So many of the writers here will tell you of the elusive and magical ‘thing’ that happens when story takes off and all your planning and plotting and learning of craft fades into the background. When your characters take over and use your fingers to tell their stories.
Here, you have craft issues discussed in context by twenty three writers. If you are reading this book you are probably already writing short stories, and want to do it better. So do I. So do we all. We share with each other our love of the short story form, and talk about what it is that we find challenging. Sure, we talk craft — about opening and ending a story. About characterisation, voice, dialogue, and shaping a story. About theme. Creating a world, settings. But we also share with you our creative processes, the strategies we employ to unlock these little bits of magic that are stories. We share ideas for further exploration of the processes described, and give you lists of inspirational stories.
I will leave you with two thoughts. Firstly, from the chief shortlister of the Bridport prize, Jon Wyatt. When I asked him what he was looking for in stories that made the shortlist, he said he gave his team of readers a simple instruction. ‘I want to see those stories that make you forget you are reading.’
And secondly, this, from an interview with William Faulkner in The Paris Review, Issue 12, 1952.
‘Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.’
With those wise words in mind, I hope you may find some inspiration in this collection of essays. I hope too that you may find the stuff of debate, enabling you to get a little closer to your own creativity — no-one else’s. But more than that, I hope it liberates you and challenges you to join us in our love of writing one of the most difficult, annoying, powerful fiction forms in existence.
