Is the short story the answer to our shorter attention-spans?
I recently attended a very interesting talk at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature on the topic of Short Stories. Cleverly titled The Gravity of Brevity, the three speakers had a lively discussion about how the short story was making a comeback.
Here are some golden nuggets from that discussion:
*a short story leaves a punch
*short stories are for introspection
* a short story has its own physics, its own trajectory
* a short story has to be true to the reality the writer has created, and (my favorite)
*In the social media age, the short story is the golden medium.
For writers, a short story takes just as much out of a writer as writing a full-length novel. Within that limited space, every single word, every sentence, every comma and colon is important.
Having said all this, I wonder then why it is so hard to get publishers interested in short story collections?
Readers, writers, I’d love to hear your view of the short story.
Until next time….
Minnie
Padmini Sankar Author 