When my first novel, a not-very-good spy thriller titled Dead Letter Drop, was published in 1981, my then publishing contract with WH Allen stipulated the book must be a minimum length of 50,000 words. My finished book was a hair’s whisker just over that minimum, clocking in at a skeletal—by today’s standards—203 pages.
At the WH Allen Christmas drinks party, the sales director came up to me and asked if I could please write a bigger book next time, as the fatter the book, the better perceived value it was to the consumer—as they were all the same price!
Twenty-five years later my publishing contracts for my Roy Grace and other novels require a minimum of 80,000 words.
When Adrian and Miles asked if I would write the foreword to this terrific anthology, with contributions by the A-list of crime writing, it set me thinking about two questions. First, does size matter? And second, how do we define a short story? Indeed, in today’s increasingly short-attention-span world, just how blurred are the boundaries defining fiction?
How short does a short story need to be before it becomes a novella? And when does a novella become a novel?
Ernest Hemingway is credited with writing the shortest story in all of fiction with his intensely powerful and moving six words: For sale, baby shoes, never worn. Another I love is the anonymously attributed: The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.
The origins of the short story are unclear, but what is certain is that they go back to the earliest roots of storytelling. Aesop’s fables, like ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’, written around 620 BC, are among the first examples. My favourite is the one about the wolf and the lamb:
The wolf, meeting a lamb that had strayed from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the lamb his right to eat him. So he addressed him by saying:
‘Lamb, last year you grossly insulted me.’
‘Indeed,’ bleated the lamb in mournful tone of voice. ‘I was not then born.’
‘Then,’ said the wolf, ‘you fed in my pasture.’
‘No, sir,’ replied the lamb. ‘I have not yet tasted grass.’
‘OK,’ the wolf said. ‘You’ve drunk from my well.’
‘No!’ protested the lamb. ‘I’ve never drunk water, because up until now my mother’s milk is both my food and drink.’
Immediately the wolf seized him and ate him, saying, ‘Well! I won’t remain hungry, even though you refute all my allegations.’
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
Aesop’s vast canon of fables were morality tales. Each one leaves us thinking, amused, shocked, pensive. There are few novelists, past or present, who have not written short stories. I love writing them, but I find them incredibly hard. It may sound an odd thing to say, but in many ways I find it easier to write a novel of 120,000 words than a short story of just 2,000. In a full-length novel you have the luxury to explore characters, set up dramatic scenes, and to put in diversion and even red herrings. In the short story you have, constantly, the memory of those six words of Hemingway around your neck, like an albatross.
Or the elephant in the room, perhaps?
In 1814 the Russian poet, Ivan Andreevich Krylov, wrote a fable—or short story, depending on your definition—called ‘The Inquisitive Man’. It was about a man who goes to a museum and notices all kinds of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant.
The true beauty of short stories is that they enable all of us to explore themes about the human condition in a sharp, succinct way, free of the constraints of the diktats of a novel. Dip into this anthology and pull out the nuggets of characters, situations, life in the raw. You’re going to have a rough ride, your eyes jerked wide open, and a good time, for sure!
Peter James
peterjames.com