What I've been learning from reading the nominees for Best Short Story (including “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” by
Ace Atkins, “Digby, Attorney at Law by”
Jim Fusilli, “Animal Rescue” by
Dennis Lehane, and “Amapola” by
Luis Alberto Urrea), in no particular order:
Gentleness and humor. Digby's the farthest thing from most mystery story heroes: when he's confronted with an angry husband with a mistaken idea and a reputation for using his hammer to sort misunderstandings, Digby takes refuge in the cinema. There's a lot of humor in the story and some familiar situations, but because because each moment is layered with emotions, nothing is facile. Anna, the daughter, is a good example: her precociousness is the lynch-pin for humor, but she's unexpectedly and truly treacherous. People are never only one thing; great characters aren't either.
The little things. One of the many descriptions I really love in “Animal Rescue” is of an old barfly who doesn't know she's in the middle of something deep. You could say she's old and cheap, or you could evoke Sputnik and a quarter tip, a hoarse voice that's “ten percent vocal chords and ninety percent Virginia Slims Ultra Lite 100s.” It's not just details about characters though, it's the little truths that are huge. How two months can see your life turned around, an act of kindness can change a person, or how you really can't control anything. Little things that we forget are true, until we're surprised by them.
Taking the reader, willingly, where she doesn't want to go. When I started reading “Amapola,” I knew something baaad was going to happen at the end. I kept hoping it would be a happy ending (I was supposed to, and besides, who doesn't?), but odds were well stacked against that happening. It wasn't morbidity or curiosity that kept me reading. I just couldn't put the book down. And the payoff was worth it. Yes, the ending wasn't what I wanted, but it wasn't what I expected either, and it left me breathless. If I could bottle that stuff...
Revelation. Okay, all of the above stories have a great twist at the end—most good crime stories do. The writer can steer the reader into expecting something commonplace and then swerves away. I'm not talking about mere manipulation—no one wants to see the puppet strings—because the thing that does happen makes perfect sense. There are two words that aren't in “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” that sank the hook, but good (it's the scene where we find out why Fats sold his saxophone). And that's just the first time in the story.
What I learned from writing “Femme Sole:”
Immersion. In getting so wrapped up in figuring out who Anna was and what few options she might have to save her bar (and her livelihood), I never saw some of the surprises coming. In my effort to remember how Anna was different from me, how her time was different from today, she slipped the leash and developed some on her own, free from my preconceptions. I'm not sure it works with every character (some are friends we know too well), but some of them demand so much concentration, they sneak around on you when your back is turned.
