Where Have All the Stories Gone?

A short essay about the craft of short stories.

   I guess you can call this an essay, though informal it may be.  I want to ask you something that has bothered me for a while now.  Where have all the short stories gone?  It seems no one has the time to write a short story any more.  It seems they would rather work on their epic novels or poems. Ironic that they would rather invest time in something long and epic that takes months or even years to write than something that takes about a week or two.  This is excluding poetry, which only takes a few days, unless it is an epic poem, which can take as long or even longer than a short story, but I am starting to get off topic.

    Where have all the short stories gone?  Are they hiding, or have we just forgotten about them?  I think it is a bit of both, really.  Someone may start a story, intending for it to be a short story, but then the story begins to bloat and the author sees greater possibilities for it.  Why try keep something small when it can become big and epic?  This is the mind set of most people now a days, either go big or go home, don’t waste your time writing a short story, what’s the point?  Well, the point is, at least the way I see it, is to entertain.  

    There is a certain beauty in a short story.  In the words of Stephen King, the short story is like an affair, a short, but fun, time, where as the novel is more like a marriage.  Once again, quoting King, the short story is dying.  With all these epic fantasies and such coming out, no one really has the time to invest in short stories. It is sad, really, because most of the mainstream authors who we love and enjoy, like George R. R. Martin and Stephen King, originally broke through as short story writers.  It is becoming harder for aspiring writers to break in because of the fact that the short story market is dying.  Most aspiring writers do not even try to write short stories any more because of this fact.  There are very few magazines publishing stories any more.  At the moment I only know of two: Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog.

    It is because of this fact that I am challenging all aspiring writers to write short stories. Let us revive this dying art, so that we too may the chance to succeed as our predecessors.  Let’s face it, most mainstream writers are aging, their time is coming to an end.  It is time that we, the new generation of writers, pick up the torch, and the only way I feel we can do that is by getting the attention of the industry.  We need more sites like Writer’s Cafe, and more magazines like Asimov’s Science Fiction, to help us get our names out there.  We need to revive the pulps of yesterday, we need new Lovecrafts, new Howards, new Asimovs and Heinleins.  Help me revive the glory that is the short story.

Author's Note

Do you agree with me?

Reviews

[karmic]

I agree with you, most of my stories start out small but came to be longer, for example my new book was only going to be 3 page long but now ..... lets just say i'am already thinking about book 2.