Some things about short stories

Last night I went to What’s The Story? at the Mill Theatre in Dundrum, an event focusing on short fiction. Katy Hayes, current Writer-in-Residence for Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown county, chaired; guests were Martina Devlin, Declan Meade, and Éilís Ni Dhuibhne.

Some points of interest (there were many, and I rather diligently had a little notebook out to scribble down the wisdom):

Martina spoke about family stories, and hearing them in long car journeys as a child, but also that “families are highly selective about the stories they pass on”. The short story she read from was based on a real-life family incident, and she’s also delved into the family history for her novel Ship of Dreams. The issue of the creativity involved in this, even though working from real life events, came up later; the fact that there’s selecting and arranging and choosing the whole way through the writing.
Martina also noted that objects served as “a shortcut to memory” for her; having certain objects in front of her when writing was useful in terms of evoking a place or time.
Declan spoke about selecting stories as an editor, and approaching the submissions pile not necessarily expecting any specific things apart from “stories which deserve to be read”. In the opening paragraphs/pages you’re looking at a piece seeing what the writer is trying to do, and then seeing if they actually achieve this. In terms of picking what goes in, it’s mostly a yes or no; the maybe pile is really “a polite no” and a sense that you might want something else from this writer but not that particular piece.
Éilís spoke about judging short story competitions and the importance of having a very strong first page. It has to be striking, and most especially have an “imaginative use of language” alongside all the story, characterisation, content stuff.
Questions raised about the short story as a form – for many writers it’s a warm-up of sorts, the first thing they write. It’s manageable, and you can see the other side of it, as Katy noted in her introduction. But for others it’s what they keep writing their whole lives. Éilís suggested that most fiction writers, even if they write both novels and short stories, are more naturally suited to one or the other.