Sandscript

This week is National Short Story Week. Short stories come in and out of fashion and perhaps are regarded as the poor relations of novels - by readers and writers. Avid readers of novels might say they like to have something to 'get into'. Writers often regard short story writing as a learning experience on their way to the best selling novel they hope to write.
Of course the best short story writers make every word count, write something that stays with the reader for a long time and create something many novelists could not.
But who is to define a short story? Does the length matter? You can say something deep in 75 words. At www.paragraphplanet.com you can read a new story every day of exactly 75 words.
A longer story allows the characters to develop, the reader to become attached and perhaps infuriated if their fate is left hanging in the air. Should tales be rounded off neatly or is it the writer's privilege to cause an event and not worry about the long term consequences! My novel 'Brief Encounters of the Third Kind' evolved to find out what did happen to the heroine, but in my anthology 'Dark and Milk' there are stories with the hero literally left hanging in the air or in....but I won't tell you any more!