Short Stories yeah

I started out with searching "famous short story writers" and I immediately clicked on this..

10 Greatest American Short Story Writers

..because, as usual, I´m a sucker for those "10 Best/Worst Blah" sites. The only thing that piqued my interest on that list was the fact that many of Chuck Palahniuk´s novels had previously been short stories and than compiled into a book. But that´s just because he is the only author there I have ever read anything by, I´m sure that the other nine are great as well.

Then in my random browsing I stumbled on to this.

Tips for Writing a Short Story

It gives you a structure for an effective short story writing. Skimming over this, I suddenly had like a mini epiphany about short stories. Okay, maybe calling it an epiphany is a little dramatic, lets just say that few random facts accumulated in my mind and formed a simple conclusion. A short story is like a condensed novel, with all the bullshit fill ups, and random characters that don´t really matter in the end., cut out. It gets right to the point of the idea or theme it´s trying to convey.

I see that most people probably think of short stories just in this way, and my rather stupid rambling is common knowledge, but I had really never thought about the essence of the short story format. And why would I, not like I read short stories in my spare time, but maybe reading a short story can accomplish as much as reading a whole novel.

Anyhow, I decided to find a short story to read, so I googled and found this random story by Edgar Allan Poe, and read it.

The Tell Tale Heart

This piece of story is quite captivating. Really interesting take on storytelling. The writers gives us a chance to observe the mind chatter of a truly twisted mind, and how it rationalizes it´s actions up until the climax of the story. Edgar gives us a little understanding of how a psychotic mind functions, especially with the final paragraphs where the narrators paranoia becomes his downfall.

After all this reading I wanted to break it up, so I found this video for all you would-be writers out there.



Here Ray Bradbury gives us a little insight into how most short story writers struggle to get recognition for their work. It´s probably a harsh world for writers, and the most valuable virtues a writer can have are patience and perseverance, and a good blend between a dreamer and practical mentality.