What doesn't go into a short story

I learned a lot about short stories in the past month or two. Some of that was courtesy of my friends, fellow Femmes Fatales and writers Donna Andrews and Toni Kelner, who were kind enough to give me feedback on “The Lords of Misrule,” a short mystery set in 18th-century London at Christmastime.

Some I learned from Toni’s new short story in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, “Sleeping With The Plush.” Click here to see an excerpt, and then run to your nearest bookstore and get a copy for yourself. I was blown away. Toni’s writing is always great, but here she conveys the sense of a whole subculture—carny life—in a beautifully crafted short mystery. I keep trying to read it and really study it, pull it apart and see what makes it work so well, but I always get sucked into the fun of reading of it. That should tell you something about Toni's writing.

What I’m learning about short stories is probably pretty obvious, until you try to do it, which is how you learn about writing. You can’t explain too much, and yet it’s death if there isn’t enough information. You can’t have too many characters, and those have to work hard, conveying a lot, very economically. Every word has to do double and triple duty, there can be no slackers, and yet…the writing still has to be readable.

So I tried one draft, and put in as much as I wanted and thought I needed. It got pretty chunky right away, stuffed with all of Margaret’s siblings, a letter/epilogue, and a whole household of chatty servants. I realized that I was going to have to do some serious slash-and-burn, and things got shook up in my little corner of imaginary 1722 London. Margaret’s surplus brothers and sisters were banished to the country. The letter was excised altogether (there was no room for my tribute to the 18th-century epistolary novel). Toni suggested that two maids with dialogue weren’t necessary and Donna pointed out that one of the gentlemen needed to do more onstage—or be removed altogether.

Getting the details of historic life was tricky. How do I explain about courtship, meals, etiquette, law, family life, fashion, and holidays, ye gods, without footnotes? A bibliography? Illustrative comparisons? Having been an academic trained me well in a certain kind of writing; it’s been harder to learn to write concisely for an audience who might not be familiar with 18th-century England. I had to divorce myself from the urge to go into exhaustive detail and explanation, but incorporate just enough detail with dialogue, gestures, and description to get the sense of place and time across. Not easy. Like building a stone wall, all of the elements have to be carefully selected and fit well together, and then you add the extra detail and structure with the mortar.

So there’s no room for footnotes, extra characters, or recreational purple prose. No time to warm up and draw breath, no time to explain. You have to pick the right pieces and start moving them around until they fit, becoming more than the sum of their parts.