Quotes & Sayings About Writing Short Stories

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry. — Evangeline Lilly

The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done. — Flannery O'Connor

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock. — William H Gass

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life. — Raymond Carver

He's a hot bath, a short breath, five days of summer pressed into five fingers writing stories on my body. — Tahereh Mafi

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart ... — Haruki Murakami

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels. — Ben Lerner

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss? — Mary Papas

When you banish me, you who are maryadapurushottham will be writing a law which will render innocent women of coming generations homeless and destitute. — Gita V. Reddy

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency - a chaos - , an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers. — Richard Ford

I think most fiction writers naturally start by writing short stories, but some of us don't. When I first started writing, I just started writing a novel. It's a hard way to learn to write. I don't recommend it to my students, but it just happens that way for some of us. — Andrea Barrett

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I'll watch for that book. — J.D. Salinger

While he sweated out a story she bled put a poem. (Dark City Lights) — S.J. Rozan

It's been suggested that most women fail to write significantly because the female mind is viscerotonic, and occupied almost exclusively with the moment-to-moment reality of emotions. If this is true, literature's loss is science fiction's gain, for Out of Bounds, Judith Merril's collection of short stories, is a warm and colorful rendering of the minutiae of the future. — Alfred Bester

I regret that there aren't more short stories in other magazines. But in a certain way, I think the disappearance of the short-story template from everyone's head can be freeing. Partly because there's no mass market for stories, the form is up for grabs. It can be many, many things. So the anthology is very much intended for students, but I think we're all in the position of writing students now. Very few people are going around with a day-to-day engagement with the short story. — Lorin Stein

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do. — Frank Deford

When you are falling short in vocabulary to explain the emotion in your story.Than you are writing the right story — Tushar Upreti

I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do. — Meghan Daum

I started writing about New York as soon as I arrived. I was 19. I used to write short stories and send them out. — Candace Bushnell

In the course of this story, and very soon now, it will be necessary to make some disclosures about Mr. Krupper of a nature too coarse to be dealt with very directly in a work of such brevity. The grossly naturalistic details of a life, contained in the enormously wide context of that life, are softened and qualified by it, but when you attempt to set those details down in a tale, some measure of obscurity or indirection is called for to provide the same, or even approximate, softening effect that existence in time gives to those gross elements in the life itself. When I say that there was a certain mystery in the life of Mr. Krupper, I am beginning to approach those things in the only way possible without a head-on violence that would disgust and destroy and which would actually falsify the story.
("Hard Candy") — Tennessee Williams

Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories ... cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful. — G.K. Chesterton

If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you
are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap — Dean Koontz

You are in love with my husband. You need some acting lessons to learn to hide it better. — Mary Papas

Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what they do, but reading them gives me hope that I'll learn something from them. — Nell Freudenberger

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels. — Conor Oberst

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification. — Jami Attenberg

Around 1980, I'd been writing short stories, all to no success; so I wrote a fan letter to Stephen King and asked "How long should it take an aspiring writer to either get published or know when to give up?" Lo and behold, King wrote back to me in long hand with blue flair pen on 14-inch paper, purveying a very nice, helpful note; in it he said my letter proved a "command of the language," that I should never give up, and that it would take years to succeed, not months. "That's cold comfort but it's the truth." This was the ultimate encouragement for a young writer to be who didn't know shit about the market. I took Mr. King's advice and actually sold my first novel little more than a year later. I'll always be copiously grateful for this advice, and it's the same advice I give aspiring writers now (along with the story of King's reply!). — Edward Lee

Inspiration for my short stories grows from a psychic kernel, a vision of some sort or an eccentric, colorful dream. — Lawren Leo

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda's, "My creatures are born of a long denial," seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge ... It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. — Julio Cortazar

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better. — V.S. Pritchett

I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one ... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money ... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it. — James Clavell

Well, as a short-story writer, I don't think there are any weaknesses to the genre itself. I guess I would say that the difficulty of the form is that one must create an entire world in five to 30 pages, as opposed to 300. There is very little room for fat - you must be economical. And you must begin as close to the end as you possibly can. — ZZ Packer

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2. — O. Henry

I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling. — Peter Robinson

Though this child came in with nothing but excess baby fat, chemical brain waves, and mother and son bodily toxins on his legs, he had a fate fit for a modern day demigod. — David Scheier

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story. — Julia Child

I am drawn to writing books about magic and the supernatural because those are the types of books I like to read. I've written many short stories with realistic settings, and I certainly wouldn't rule out realistic novels in the future! — Cassandra Clare

All stories are the sin of their weaver. — Miyuki Miyabe

If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing. — Ray Bradbury

When I started writing short stories, I thought I was writing a novel. I had like 60 or 70 pages. And what I realized was that I don't write inner monologue. I don't want to talk about what somebody is thinking or feeling. I wanted to try to show it in an interesting way. And so what I realized was that I was really writing a screenplay. — Shane Carruth

I am content when writing short stories. — Sarah Mazucci

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist
ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage. — Jonathan Carroll

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information. — Orson Scott Card

When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most famous and honored names in present-day writing-and it's not going to be accepted unless it's as good as theirs. (And it'll probably have to be better.) — Daniel Quinn

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on. I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board. I think the equivalent of balance is tone, so I think tone gives birth to the story. — Etgar Keret

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe

Don't wait for success, but for the respect and interest of those who read you. At the start it could be a classmate, someone who shares your interests. Before sending off the manuscript for a novel to a publishing house, it would be a good idea to try writing short stories, and publishing them in a local magazine. — Dacia Maraini

I love short stories - reading and writing them. The best short stories distill all the potency of a novel into a small but heady draught. They are perfect reading material for the bus or train or for a lunchtime break. Everything extraneous has been strained off by the author. The best short stories pack the heft of any novel, yet resonate like poetry. — Ian Rankin

[Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables. — Sandra Cisneros

I'm always writing across the same themes. But with short stories, I'm doing something different than with novels. In some ways, they're coming from a much deeper place. — Lynn Coady

The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else. — James A. Michener

I enjoy writing plays most. I haven't written a radio play in a while and I don't write short stories anymore because the process of submitting them depressed me. I really enjoy revising novels, but drafting them can be a pain. — Sefi Atta

I had been writing for the 'Late Show' for about four years when I started writing short stories. I had a blast writing the stories because I was writing in a voice more my own, as opposed to a man's. HBO ended up buying four of them. I think that had a direct impact on my decision to write a book. — Jill Davis

I've written short stories in first person, but you have so much more control writing in third person. Third person, you know what everybody's thinking. First person is very limiting, and I could never sustain a first person novel before. — Tamora Pierce

My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene. — Roger Zelazny

I've always been ambidextrous, writing short stories and novels, and I pretty much have been writing a novel and a handful of short stories every year since '91. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists. — V.S. Pritchett

When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was. — Elizabeth McCracken

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes complement each other, creating a complete landscape that I treasure. The green foliage of the trees casts a pleasant shade over the earth, and the wind rustles the leaves, which are sometimes dyed a brilliant gold. Meanwhile, in the garden, buds appear on the flowers, and colorful petals attract bees and butterflies, reminding us of the subtle transition from one season to the next. — Haruki Murakami

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns. — Kurt Vonnegut

Ideas come at any moment
except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper.
My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done. — Chuck Palahniuk

Writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend. It didn't have to be successful to be thrilling. — Ann Patchett

She would keep playing the role of the winner as long as the audience believed her. — Mary Papas

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays. — Sherman Alexie

One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily. In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be. That's why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed
he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog. — Graham Greene

The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon - as well as all of the short stories that writers studied for the inner trick of them. But there was no trickery: only the plain words put there as if they had always been there - like pebbles cooled in a river. — Naomi Wood

Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that were not as noticeable to the woman, and yet were noticeable enough to at least bear mention, a fake man.
"I hope you don't mind me asking," said the woman who lived in the room, but then while in her chair she nodded off. — Justin Dobbs

I usually have about four books on the go - a bedside book, a lavatory book, a downstairs book, and the book in my study that I read sneakily while I should be writing. Short stories for the lavatory, obviously. — Mal Peet

My father became a mythical figure, more force than man ... he was a force my mother would use as a threat of wrath and punishment." In "Father Close, Father Far" New California Writing — Dagoberto Gilb

Take lots of time for yourself, discovering yourself-pursue not only a profession but other life passions, I always make time to rock climb or hike or write a few short stories. Also, find good people and surround yourself with them. Most importantly, always believe you will, unequivocally. — Sarah Silverman

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film. — Lorrie Moore

Like many writers, I started by writing short stories. I needed to learn how to write and stories are the most practical way to do this, and less soul-destroying than working your way through a lengthy novel and then discovering it's rubbish. — Kate Atkinson

That woman must have been a husky in a previous life. — Mary Papas

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write! — Ray Bradbury

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans. — Mario Batali

Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one. — Dan Bern

I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder, writing short stories, novels, memoir, travelogue, critical biography. He lived to be almost 100, and he never stopped, and his work is unified by a great generosity of spirit. — Kevin Barry

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public. — O. Henry

When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start. — Ian McEwan

On the other hand, now that I'm not dependent on fiction for my income, I've been writing more short stories despite the fact that there's no real paying market for short horror other than Cemetery Dance. — George Stephen

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me. — Bruce Coville

I started by writing short stories, but they weren't very good; I tried them on various magazines, and none of them was published. People were nicer then about turning you down, and so I didn't lose heart - I kept on writing and wrote a lot of books, one or two of which I finished, and others I didn't. — Ruth Rendell

I tell writers not to think about writing short stories or novels. Just write one good scene. And then a novel becomes a bunch of good scenes stacked on top of each other. — Joe Hill

When I first started 'Humans of New York,' I was writing short stories. There were about 50 of them. And, you know, they were a great part of the site, but the photography just started growing so fast that I didn't have time to make them anymore. — Brandon Stanton

I read your diary. I KNOW. — Mary Papas

Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman. — Leni Zumas

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed. — Larry Niven

Writers need restrictions. If somebody just says, "Hey, do you want to write a novel, or an article, or a movie, or a short story, you get shut down." — Mitchell Hurwitz

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them. — Natalie Goldberg

If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer? — Jennifer Weiner

Yes?' he asked, looking at me over the sheet.
'I'm a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.'
'Oh, a writer, eh?'
'Yes.'
'Are you sure?'
'No, I'm not.'
'What do you write?'
'Short stories mostly. And I'm halfway through a novel.'
'A novel, eh?'
'Yes.'
'What's the name of it?'
'"The Leaky Faucet of My Doom."'
'Oh, I like that. What's it about?'
'Everything.'
'Everything? You mean, for instance, it's about cancer?'
'Yes.'
'How about my wife?'
'She's in there too. — Charles Bukowski

I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels. — Jasper Fforde

I've been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper. — Jerry Spinelli

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a small space. — Debra Dean

The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she - the author - should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Short stories always seem to cost me blood, and I envy the people who do them for fun. — Terry Pratchett

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories. — Tom T. Hall

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that. — Samantha Morton