The Sunday Times yesterday announced the short list for the short story competition and in the Culture section AS Byatt wrote a piece about what makes a short story.
The short story is defined and redefined year on year.
What makes a good short story for you? And can you name an author and a short story that has made a difference to you, or at least an impression on you?
And thirdly, a challenge.
A short short story. You have 150 words: post as a comment in the thread. Subject or theme, ‘Envy’. To include the word ‘audacious.’
Boadicea's Chariot 
I50 words, Nym? Even I can do that!
Oh, good! A taker.
Link to the article corrected – Ed.
I noticed. Thank you.
Interesting. Will take a look. 150 words is hard Araminta! You are brave.
First short story that springs to mind – The Zoo at Christmas by Penelope Lively (I think), beautifully paced, humourous, sweet without being sentimental, Christmas story from a different angle, moving, thought-provoking.
It really works because it is such a self-contained little piece. And PL is a writer who doesn’t waste words, so her style can be perfect for the short story that punches above its size. I think I’m waffling. can someone else translate what I’m trying to say please. Time for bed.
Hard, Claire: you are joking! Before I joined MyT, I had never written anything for years, other than a shopping list. My two entries to the creative writing short story competition were, very short!
Isobel.
My name is Isobel. Same number of letters as Claire and divided into the same number of vowels and consonants as Claire, but not Claire. I-S-O-B-E-L.
Okay?
… Seconds out …
Agh; mea culpa and hell’s teeth. Will you ever forgive me? Sorry, and what can I do to make amends, ISOBEL. Yours in extreme and utter mortification, with bells on.
Isobel, thanks for the suggestion – I’ve heard of this story, but never read it.
A starter for 10…
“From the outside no one would know. The observers sympathies are with us. Two motherless girls and a father who is grieving. Poor girls. Poor man.
That I’m the ‘favourite daughter’ is not hidden, though my sister adopts an audacious manner in an attempt to usurp me from this role. She is envious of the perks as she sees them. I am allowed to stay up later. I have been given my own room. I accompany him on business trips, missing school. What she would give for such favours.
Little does she suspect that the favourite suffers too, in a different way, that I hold onto this position as a matter of survival. Her survival. To protect her innocence from his expectations of me, of the role I have to play now that Mummy has gone.” 136
My competition offering –
150 words, exactly. 😕
Excellent, Mr Bear. (Smarter than the average bear)
(p.s. I didn’t find the word ‘audacious’…)
Try the last three words…. 😉
Oh Pseu, I even emboldened it/them. 😥
Groan! (I don’t have a ‘crossword’ mind this early in the morning…)
OK Nym,
Mostly because it’s you and partly because I was bored. :0)
Here goes, 150 woyds on da button.
………………
I checked the light. It was green, I know it was.
How can it be red now?
Stabilizers, check.
Telemetry, check.
Gyros, check.
So many times, I know it by heart but I used the card, they always tell us to use the fucking card. I checked the light, it was green.
They’ll be buzzing about like flies on shit now, trying to figure out how to fix it. What they’re really doing is covering their own arse, the pricks. The umbrellas will be popping up like zits all over mission control. “Not me flight”, “All systems ‘Go’ flight”. Lucky little shits, they get to go home.
Did I screw up? Was it me? It can’t be, I used the fucking card. I marked the box but did I see a green light? Gung Ho, audacious, cock sure, plain fucking stupid, does it matter anymore?
That bastard light was green.
Love it Ferret, I can relate to that.
Here’s mine:
He had woken up in the dark yet again, despite his fear, he was determined that this would be the day he would escape this torture. He had committed no crime that he could fathom. He was behind bars and submitted to daily indignities the nature of which were still fresh in his mind. He was starving, terrified and helpless, whilst his brother was allowed to visit freely and his smug smile was more than his could bear.
His screams grew more piercing until at last his brother fled.
He listened: footsteps on the stairs. Had his audacious bid for freedom worked? An anxious moment until his mother lifted him gently out of the cot.
Drat: could you edit out the title please, Bearsy? I didn’t mean to include it.
Done! 😀
Thanks Bearsy,
Same right back atcha.
Is it me but are all these tales just a smidge on the noir side? Must be the pre-spring blues or something. 🙂
It’s a bit hard to be cheerful, or up beat about “envy”, Furry !
Minty MBE,
Thats a bit more like it, but still has an underlying theme of lost liberty and Cane/Abel tendencies. 🙂
Nice One.
Liked your too, Furry. Bearsy’s was very amusing. I was copying Nym’s lead with mine.
Au contraire mon petit fur clad clouseau.
I remember a Roald Dahl once about a Mrs Bixby, a colonel and the gift of a fur coat. It was all about greed, infidelity and envy and the ‘unwitting’ victim at the heart was the boring, dentist cuckold of a husband. That one always puts a smile on my face.
Just a tad more than 150 words mind you, I guess it would be more like 1500.
Hee hee, he was a professional. 🙂
Oops spotted another error: please read “indignities” not indignations!
Bit of a rushed job.
Done again. 😀
I like yours, Araminta – I didn’t see the twist until it came.
Thank you, dear Antipodean Spell-checker! I’m glad it worked. I thought the title rather gave the game away though: hence plea for removal.
Just rushed in, rushing out again but i wrote this on the bus. Thanks, it made a slow journey enjoyable. I make it 132 words.
She sees the brooch the moment Elspeth walks through the door, and knows she wants it.
Cue the kissing and cooing when a group of young women meet up for tea and barely nibbled pastries. Conversation ebbs and flows through boyfriends, no boyfriends, secrets, scandals, work, films and fashions.She steals a covetous look.
No brooch.
Smiling and nodding she sips her tea. She leans back. There it is, on the floor. Face down in the carpet. Inconspicuous.
She bends down, her fingers slide around the brooch. She cups it in her hand, protecting it from view until it reaches her lap.
She feels, exhilarated; audacious; guilty.
‘Elspeth, here, your brooch, the catch must be loose.’
Elspeth, turning, smiles. ‘Tanya thank-you. But it’s not my brooch. I bought it for you. Happy Birthday.’
Afternoon all.
A good bunch of entries. Nice to come home to these.
Any more?
I’m always 30 minutes behind, that can’t change. But I so wanted to be first. In childhood, I made audacious plans to be noticed; mother always knew that a call from school would be about my misbehaviour.
I waved them all goodbye, only I was left. But when Julie came home, wealthy successful and beautiful, I was once more second-best until she left again.
And so the years went by, I found happiness, success and wealth. Mother died, our sisters died, and only Julie and I are now left.
We’re both nearly ninety and both alone. I phone Julie every few days, she has no one else. The last time was an important occasion, and she surprised me. ‘You are so, so lucky’ she said, ‘You’ve always had so many friends and I have none, I envy you’.
I gulped as we wished each other ‘Happy Birthday’.
Thank you, Boa.
Interesting how we see ourselves and how other see us does not always tally.
Oh, but just look at her. Do you see those elegant, sweeping curves, that slender neck? She’s always centre stage. She’s audacious; utterly shameless, really.
What? Am I in love with her? God, don’t be ridiculous! Still, she is…mesmerising. And he certainly thinks so, doesn’t he? Look; here he is, eyes glinting like a fool. Anticipation flutters through the room as he strides towards her. He sits behind, cradling her – God how I wish it were me. Then as he strikes; she releases a deep, agonising groan, swaying ecstatically, as if someone has opened her soul and let it fly….
Suddenly, I can’t cope. Enough! I screech; jarring brutally with the Elgar. A moment’s silence; faces turn and there is a ripple of consternation. The solo cellist frowns questioningly at me; I stare mutinously back. Well, what does he expect? I’m still vintage Stradivarius, even if I’m only a second fiddle.
(150 words)
Oh wow: lovely. Claire!
Thank you, Claire. 150 on the button. I can see I was being a bit slack producing only 136 woirds for my story. Maybe I should have another go?
I don’t think I hit the limit, Nym: but I never do.:)
Hey Ara; Pseu! Sorry, I was doing the post and run trick, and probably will be for a while; I’m knee deep in job forms…( ;. Ara, I like it! My little Rosie could probably identify with yours when she’s in one of her ‘you’re the worst mummy in the world’ moods…Pseu, very neat and deft. Word limit shouldn’t matter though, should it, as long as you don’t exceed…? Interesting/good too to have a competition that gets a few blokes on board…; )
Whew that was tricky, Pseu. Good exercise though. I started with 225 and got it to 149. I’m much too wordy!! 😉
Susie was the prettiest girl in the home, which made it all the more poignant that she didn’t talk. Well, she did but only if her rag-doll Sasha was with her. Visitors felt sorry for her and gave her toys and treats.
“Susie says ‘Thank you for your kindness,” Sasha told them in a sing-song voice.
Ryan watched jealously. Being Susie’s little helper, he quietly helped himself to a lot of her gifts.
The night staff didn’t notice when he staged his audacious raid, fuelled by hot hatred. A pillow would put a stop to that sweet weedy voice. In the end, he used scissors.
In the laundry basket of the bathroom next door lay Sasha, cut to ribbons. Back in in bed, Ryan’s triumphant sniggers ceased when he heard, through the wall, a familiar sing-song voice “Susie will know, Ryan. You’d better take me back now.”
Creepy, Janh1!
Yup Jan,
I like it. 🙂
Do you read Jane Gardam’s short stories Pseu? I think she’s really good at them. I never get the feeling, as I do with some collections of short stories, that they were novels that never got off the ground and grew to length and breadth.
No Isobel, I haven’t, but will put her on my list!
I think she’s published a new collection.
I’ve just noticed various typos in my story. Not really worth posting it again though.
I wish that I could write like them, ridiculous isn’t it?
I can sit at the bar in my local rugby club and talk for an hour or so, Super 14,the log, league positions, selection, the Bulls are still top having played one game less than all the rest, Tri-nations, the Currie Cup starts immediately after, why the heck do we have an Argentinean side playing in our domestic competition?
The World Cup will be here before we know it, the IPL starts on Friday, it clashes with our own domestic 20twenty final, my home team is in the final, first time ever, it’s a full house at St Georges Park, the ‘sold out signs’ went up yesterday, how audacious is that?
We might even win the bloody thing!
🙂 Soutie!
Very clever, Soutie!
Any one else?
Pseu – congratulations!
You have enticed so many people to join in the fun! For what it’s worth, that’s the very first bit of creative writing I’ve let anyone read since I gave up Eng. Lit. at 14…. a long, long time ago (No it wasn’t autobiographical!) 🙂
Aha, Boadicea: I know what you mean, but it’s the thin end of the wedge; you’ll be writing poetry next! 😉
And how do you know I haven’t already, Araminta? The question is whether I’d let anyone read it – and the answer to that is definitely not!
This is true, Boadicea: you could have been scribbling poetry furiously for years. I wrote a play once when I was about eight or nine. One semi-public performance for parents and er privileged relatives ; then never saw the light of day again. Probably a good job.
Maybe a poetry post is in order so, then, Boa?
Or a mini-drama?
Boadicea very interesting Melvin Bragg program on radio 4 this morning a bout Boaicea: can you get BBC iplayer?