SMFS Member Guest Post: The Art of the Short Story by January Bain

Please welcome fellow SMFS list member and author January Bain to the blog today...

The Art of the Short Story by January Bain

 

Good day to you,

 

By way of introduction, I’m January Bain, a Canadian author obsessed with Story. Short ones, long ones, and all lengths in between, whatever serves the purpose. I have written so many books now, I’ve lost count. But I do have a special fondness for the short story form and have been known to pen a few in my time.

 

What makes the short story form so powerful? How can one hope to compare to someone like Hemmingway with his powerful themes, his renowned use of economy of language and understated intensity. His ability to convey deep emotion and complex human experiences in a few pages can be said to be unparalleled. But no, the same applies to other writers: Virginia Wolfe, Agatha Christie, Alice Monroe, Margaret Atwood, Edgar Allen Poe, William Faulkner, too many to mention in a short blog post.

 

What makes a story memorable, at any length, in my opinion, is the execution of a powerful idea drawing on human emotion, leading the reader through a labyrinth of a journey filled with conflict toward a destination that reveals something of the human experience. And hopefully the wisdom we discover as we read, we can draw on in our own time of need, seeing how others dealt with adversity and triumph. But it’s the powerful idea that first needs to be addressed.

 

Are there any original ideas left? Probably not very many, if any, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your own unique viewpoint to craft stories. Each person who is compelled to write and is willing to sit down for hours on end, alone, and does so, has something to say, something to offer others.

 

I sometimes ask myself this question: Why do we write, slave over each and every word, paragraph and scene, not happy until we have come close as possible to getting across our ideas to the world? At first light, it can be ego, thinking I can write a story as least as good as the one I’m reading, then later, it’s more focused as we mature, a celebration of all that is human.

 

The hero’s journey speaks to all of us in story form, providing a road map in how to deal with life’s inevitable difficulties. Whether you care most about injustice, truth, expressing love, good versus evil, identity and coming of age, fighting for human rights or the abuses of power and corruption, story can take you on an illuminating journey of discovery and bring you closer to others in the process. It helps one immensely to realize they are not alone in this world, that others have followed similar paths many, many times before. That they have lived to come out the other side, no doubt wiser and better able to cope after being tested, showing all of us how they managed the feat. And if they didn’t survive the journey, it also teaches us something. The short story does this so well. A short, intense glimpse of another world, another time, but always applicable to the present.

 

Of course, it’s assumed that one learns the structure of a short story, scintillating prose, making your characters as real as possible, with a plot and a hook that engages readers, no different than the longer novel form, except in brevity. Celebrated authors have taken all this onboard and more, to arrive at a diamond that others can relate to. A worthwhile enterprise celebrating the art of the short story.

 

I bid you adieu and happy reading.

 

January Bain/Storyteller 

 

January Bain ©2024 

January Bain firmly believes that stories unite us, that good stories help us to discover the commonality of the human experience by supporting values, empathy and understanding. January writes with her heart, mind, and soul, hoping that her novels will touch your life, giving you moments of freedom as you fly with her to other worlds. January and her husband live in rural Canada on peaceful acreage where a variety of wildlife comes to visit regularly and expects to be fed and paid attention to.