Anne Leinonen: Recipe for a Bad Short Story – how to spoil a 20 page short story; including suggestions for remedies
(Translated by Liisa Rantalaiho)
 (Cosmos Pen 2/2003)


NOVA is a short story contest for novice writers; its idea is to bring up new writers, and at the same time, to give feedback to them. All who request it will receive a short personal feedback of their text, and in addition general comments about each year’s stories are published on the NOVA www-pages.

In 2003, the contest was held the fourth time; the organizers were the Turku Science Fiction Society (TSFS, Turun Science Fiction Seura) and The Finnish Science Fiction Writers Association (Suomen Tieteiskirjoittajat ry). The contest has a preliminary jury, this year it included Tytti Paananen, Tuukka Urpi and Anne Leinonen; and the jury proper: Petri Salin, Markku Soikkeli, Hannu T.T. Pajunen and Anne Leinonen. Kirsi Pajari served as secretary.

Altogether 193 short stories participated in the contest; eight were disqualified as incompatible with the rules. The number of participants had increased from last year with some thirty persons. Of the stories, 24 passed the qualifying process of the preliminary jury and the best ten were rewarded. The best stories will be published in the Spin fanzine of TSFS.

”The recipe for a bad short story” has been combined from the typical mistakes in the contest stories as a general feedback. A skilful writer is able to use the recipe ingredients without spoiling the story, but for a novice writer, it’s good to check that the story doesn’t stumble on some easily remedied fault.

NOVA 2003
Recipe for a bad short story

Size: maximum 20 page short story
Time of preparation: before deadline
Language: Finnish (dialects and slang allowed)

The crust:

Double prologue plus epilogue
Dull protagonist
Breath-taking changes of viewpoint
Red thread lost
Trite atmosphere description


The filling:

I’ve done that in role-playing!
Clichés
Worn-out theme
Misses


Spices:

Extra flavour (violence, porn, swear words)
Wisecracks
Name monstrosities


Double prologue plus epilogue

Knead the dough with care: to start, write two pages about what happened before the protagonist was born. After that, write another two pages of the prophesies of some witch in the north. Then you get to the actual business. There is not too much space for that, for you still must get in a two-page epilogue of how the story events affected world history.

A suggestion for remedy:

Compactness is an asset! Start directly from where the events of the plot begin, do not prepare the ground from too far off with inessentials. Likewise, cut off the story in time. In movies and novels you can cool off the plot after the climax, but in short stories that’s unnecessary. Do not waste time explaining to the reader what you meant, s/he can construct the narrative her/himself. The surest way to go amiss is to take a novel manuscript from your desk drawer and summarize its content in twenty pages.


Dull protagonist

Peel and grate a dull protagonist: ”The main character of this here story is one of them
kung-fu assassins, he’s a real good assassin, and then he takes on one real hard job but he’s real good in it and then he gets his own guild.”

Why is the protagonist in this situation? What’s his goal? What kind of conflict follows from that? If the protagonist remains anonymous, faceless and genderless, without even a name, the reader will find it hard to identify with and care about what happens to the protagonist.
Anonymity should be a considered stylistic device, not a result of the writer’s laziness!

A short story is not the place to tell the whole life-story of the protagonist, but the reader needs some kind of background. That can be done with implicit clues, with the manner the protagonist speaks, or with the reactions of other characters. A first-person narrative gives a chance to throw light on the protagonist’s feelings and thoughts during the events. An all-knowing narrator may also tell about the protagonist’s feelings and describe her/him in relation to the milieu. Think about what might be the stereotypic solution to construct the character, and try to avoid that.


Breath-taking changes of viewpoint

Mix in plenty of different viewpoints. ”Let the reader wonder how the characters c and d are connected to the characters a and b, and who after all is the main character. Serves the reader(s) right, they ought to understand what I’ve meant!”

Consider carefully who is the protagonist in the story. Whether it’s told in first or third person, the structure of the story benefits from strict choices. A skilful writer may play with perspectives and even make a phenomenon or an idea the main ‘character’, but if you are the least bit unsure, rather choose one clear protagonist.

One viewpoint character gives a clear basis for the plot structure; there is someone in the story to see or experience the events and that helps to portion out the story to the reader. Several viewpoints may disperse the narrative plot and make the sequence of events obscure. If you are using an all-knowing narrator who can see into the thoughts of all persons and follow each one in turn, keep that line throughout. Changing viewpoints in the middle of a paragraph is a stylistic fault.


Red thread lost

Add as many as possible turns of the plot, new characters in the middle of the story, changes of style, and hey presto! The dough starts to look nicely cloddy.

The number of available pages proves to be surprisingly small in practice: once you get the story going, it has to end. Instead of a wide ranged plot, it’s better to choose one plot line and to work that into a compact whole.

Consider what is the message of your story, what is the conflict it presents, and through what kind of events the conflict is resolved (or is not resolved, but something related to the conflict has to take place in the story). Complex, multileveled plot structures should be saved for longer stories. Prune off all the extra runners, keep the character set to the minimum, construct no by-plots.

You can also lose the red thread by too many explanations or by leaving too many things open. A vigilant commentator is helpful: if your first reader does not understand the turns of your plot, probably other readers won’t understand them either.


Trite atmosphere description

Dilute the clods, until all the dough is one watery atmosphere description: ”There was a village by the seashore (–describe the village, one page–) and in the village lived vampires (–description of vampires, one page–). They may still live there.”

A short story is not a lyrical atmosphere description, nor a prattling anecdote. A short story describes a matter, moment or episode that is significant for the protagonist/s. A short story has a beginning, a climax and a solution. The ending may be open or closed, but usually the story’s ending gives some kind of an answer to the conflict presented in the beginning.

This year’s contest included several pieces of momentary atmosphere descriptions where in a direct speech, only the milieu or a momentary and static situation were described, but nothing happened. ”There was a village by the seashore and vampires lived in the village” is not enough for a short story; it’s only the beginning of one. ”A vampire slayer came to the village” would include some conflict and suspense, where also the reader may start imagining how the story would go on. The vampires might kill the hunter, the hunter might fall in love with a vampire or all vampires might be transformed into humans when a curse lifts – that kind of choice is what the writer should construct in the text.

It also usually effective to present the high points of the story by episodes, instead of just explaining what happened then and what happened thereafter.


I’ve done that in role-playing!

”In last week’s role-playing session my character had a grand fight, I could write about that.”

A role-playing story suggests a big team of (anti)heroes wandering about in the woods or in a village in the middle of the woods, hearts beating with enthusiasm and noble mind. Role-playing stories also suggest assassins who proceed from room to room, avoiding traps and deathly accurate ninjas. Often these stories may present an interesting protagonist with her/his internal conflicts, but the events seem to imitate some role-playing session too directly, and in the worst case the reader can actually identify the world where the story takes place.

There are also problems of demarcation: there are too many characters in the whole, there is a big main plot where it’s difficult to cut out a single episode for a short story, there are references to the group’s earlier adventures and tasks in the fantasy world. It may all become an insider thing.


Clichés

Chop in some safe familiar clichés: ”There’s a threat from space, and the Earth gets destroyed, but one girl and one boy are saved, and they are actually Adam and Eve.”

Certainly you can write about clichés, but to make the whole enjoyable you need to find a fresh perspective to them. Some very worn-out clichés are for instance a waiting room after death, noble or fallen elves, a cyborg’s human relations, aliens conquering the Earth, destruction of Earth, time travel stories etc.

Generally you think you’ve invented something quite by yourself, while actually many others have invented the very same thing ages ago already. You should not get depressed, however. You can learn to go deeper into the theme, in an unexplored direction, for instance by changing the style or combining it with unexpected things. That’s difficult even for an experienced writer, but a successful outcome rewards both the reader and the writer.

How can you smell out clichés, then? It’s worthwhile to read a lot of the genre literature and to remember that it’s too easy to borrow from movies or sf tv-series. You can also hunt for ideas, for instance by reading science magazines or having exciting dreams.


A worn-out theme

Choose a popular theme, one that’s been successful in the earlier contests, and choose the most familiar way to handle it.

Ideas have been found many times over and even themes are often the same, but an original perspective into the subject often helps. Make yourself familiar with the subject matter; find out what has been written about it before. Try to avoid copying your model directly. Try to find a new, surprising way to handle the theme.

Even the story characters may be worn-out: dragons, elves and fairies seem to be the permanent fantasy favourites from year to year. Fortunately, this year some Finnish figures, trolls and goblins have also appeared in the stories.

Read Diana Wynne Jones’ book ”Tough guide to Fantasyland”.


Misses

”A contest, eh. Seems to have some theme, fantasy or science fiction text. OK, here’s the human relations drama I sent to the Tombstone short story contest last year that didn’t make it there. I’ll send it in this one, too. ”

The subject selection or the treatment of the short story may go amiss. In practice, any subject can offer the basis of a science fiction/fantasy/horror story, but there has to be something specific in it to make it representative of the genre. That can be some supernatural phenomenon, a fantastic or scifistic milieu, daring dimensions and surprises in the plot, the questions the story awakens – an idea with a sense of wonder. But if there is none of that in the text, the story doesn’t belong to the genre.

Examples of misses:


Extra flavour (Violence, porn, swear words)

Season with extra flavour: ”Since I can’t think of anything else here, let’s put them into bed! And in that too quiet place some blood and intestines.”

Abundant violence may disturb the feeling of the story. Especially so when blind violence comes from the protagonist the reader ought to identify with. If the end result is anyway just the death of the monster, consider how much of valuable space you can waste in detailed splatter. Usually that doesn’t take the story forward anyway.

Vulgar style expressions do not make a story better, however many swear words and sex scenes you manage to include. A swear word in a right place and at a right moment doesn’t spoil the story, but a constantly swearing protagonist is a pain in the neck.

The protagonist may love and make love, but send actual sex stories into their own genre magazines, please!


Wisecracks

Flavour the dish with wisecracks: ” This stupid armour bearer could crack a dirty joke to the maiden, and then the knight could hit him with fist…”

Humour in short stories may either hit the reader’s sense of humour or go badly amiss. Shit-and-piss stories, black humour, knights telling grotesque jokes, or sarcastic comments by the protagonist do not necessarily all please the same group. The more transparent and unnoticeable humour is, the better it usually works.

Humour based on action is always more effective than situations where the characters tell jokes to each other. All elements in the story should make it move forward; wisecracks seldom do. If something seems terribly funny to the writer, it should probably be removed from the text… Kill your darlings.


Name monstrosities

Glaze the story with name monstrosities. There are lots of special signs on the keyboard, use them to create funny letter combinations. If you cannot find new ones, there are nice readymade names in the fantasy literature. Crown the story with a name to blow everyone’s consciousness: reveal the end surprise to the reader!

With the names of your characters you can either create just the right atmosphere in the story or spoil the whole thing. Deirdre Pancake doesn’t sound like trimmed astronaut, and the name of elf F´alagh´thaul is unpronounceable even to himself. Do not take a random fantasy book off your shelf and pick names for your characters, not even to honour your favourites: the names will be familiar to many readers and sound strange on new hero(in)es.

It is sometimes hard to invent a name for the story. Sometimes the result is a name everybody else has used. Star, life, way, light, journey and death are quite popular parts of names. Avoid general concepts and pompous words.

If it feels very hard to find a name for your story, make a list on paper about the thoughts and words in it and test whether any of them might be tempting enough but not too revealing. You might also use for instance song lyrics or poetry for your inspiration. An average name doesn’t ruin the story’s chances, but a name with a spoiler irritates the reader.

Poor titles would be for instance: The attack of werewolves; How I became a wizard; Eternal love and sunshine; Shadows in the darkness.


In conclusion

Compared with last year, NOVA 2003 had a higher quality level. The best stories were original, fluently told, and there were several interesting and creditable stories. Creating different worlds and milieus went fine for most writers; they had clearly thought about the places and events and they didn’t mix different writing styles.

The most popular theme of the contest was death in its different forms: experience of death, events after death, pursuing eternal life. Necessarily these short stories with the same kind of themes were compared with each other, and the most original stood out. Actual world events were reflected in some direct details in the stories: SARS, the WTC towers, US presidential elections and the Iraq war were mentioned, and suicide attacks were found in several stories. These phenomena often had a story plot around them where a few chosen representatives of humankind tried to change the development towards a better direction.

The permanent fantasy favourites seem to be descriptions of dragons and stories about the lives of elves or fairies. Time travel, cloning and exploring new planets interested the science fiction writers.

In general, shortcomings were on the level of constructing suspense: the story didn’t go forward; the start didn’t suck you in, or the turns of the plot were easy to foresee. Originality is always an asset. This year, too, the contest produced short stories that were verbally downright poetic and had a charming structure, but where the story or the milieu was so worn-out that the whole just couldn’t rouse the readers’ interest.

As a whole, NOVA has developed enormously: the popularity of the contest has been growing and every year new fresh writer names come up. Hopefully this popularity will last and we may continue to read exciting speculative fiction. Thanks to all this year’s participants, and enjoy your writing!

Anne Leinonen
Member of the NOVA 2003 jury and preliminary jury


Originally published in Cosmos Pen 2/2003. All rights reserved.