The art of the short story
In an exclusive interview with BCBookLook, Shashi Bhat and Caroline Adderson dissect this literary form.
September 24th, 2024
Shashi Bhat (left) and Caroline Adderson are both award-winning, BC-based authors.
Bhat and Adderson cover topics such as their strategies for short story writing, exploring character development, emotional depth, and overcoming creative challenges.
Authors Shashi Bhat and Caroline Adderson are set to speak at the Vancouver Writer’s Fest event, Short Stories, Infinite Identities on October 23. Moderated by Shaena Lambert, these BC authors will be in conversation with Aaron Kreuter, delving into topics about what it means to find happiness and the everyday trials and impossible expectations that come with being a woman.
In the following interview, Bhat and Adderson share their strategies for writing short stories and exploring complex human emotions, character development and more.
BCBookLook: Short stories often convey deep emotional truths within a limited number of words. How do you approach character development in such a condensed form, ensuring readers connect with the characters as deeply as they might in a full-length novel?
Shashi Bhat: Rather than providing many details, I aim for potent details. With my creative writing students, I show them a clip of Walter White teaching a high-school science class in Breaking Bad, and I ask them to tell me what they learn about his character. They read into the graceful hand gestures he makes while demonstrating the use of lab equipment, the bitter death glare he gives a disrespectful student, the shift in his tone of voice. Within a minute and forty seconds, they’re able to form an accurate and thorough understanding of his character—without ever having seen the rest of the show. That’s the effect I’m going for. I might consider a character’s appearance, possessions, surroundings, actions, interactions, thoughts, and dialog, but I try to include only the details that leave an impression.
Caroline Adderson: I develop short story characters the same way as in a novel. Everyone has thoughts, feelings and a motivation. They have faces and bodies. Everyone changes by the ending of the story. What short stories show us is that you don’t need much to pass the imaginative baton to the reader. For example, if I write: the child sat on the curb picking gum out of her hair, everyone pictures that child. Their imagination provides, though provisionally, the child’s age and appearance and possible reasons for the disaster with the gum. As the reader continues to read and more information is given, the child slowly develops in the reader’s mind to better match the one in the writer’s mind, but she will still be unique to that reader. In a way, the reader and the writer create the story together.
BCBL: Both of your recent books explore complex human emotions and behaviors—finding happiness, expectations, societal pressures. How do you distill such intricate ideas into a few pages without losing their depth and nuance?
SB: A story is a path that leads from one moment to another. So, for me, the questions are often: what is the moment that evokes the emotion, and how can I complicate that emotion in a way that feels human?
I suppose this is where the classic advice to “show, don’t tell” becomes relevant. Realistically, stories require an interplay between showing and telling, but showing is the way to create nuance, to distill complicated ideas, to recreate real life—by using a scene or image to suggest ideas rather than explaining them.
I figure, if a guy comes up to us and says, “I’m an incredibly smart and successful person,” we probably don’t think, Wow, this guy is an incredibly smart and successful person. Perhaps we think, This guy is full of himself and also lacks self-awareness. We observe. We judge. We form our own impressions. And then, of course, there’s the possibility we’re wrong. Just that process involves layers of meaning and interpretation. I hope to recreate this in fiction.
CA: Very carefully! Writing is a drafting process. Whatever form I’m writing in, I do around ten drafts. The later drafts are on the language level. The story is there, I’m just tinkering with the wording. It’s at that stage that the story really deepens. You find the best word and its meanings, concrete and metaphorical, ripple out.
BCBL: Where do you draw inspiration for the characters and situations in your short stories, and how does that process differ from when you’re writing a novel? Do you find short fiction offers more freedom or constraints?
SB: I tend to write about things that bother me, that get under my skin or stick in my head. Sometimes that means inspiration comes from an uncomfortable interaction I have; sometimes it’s material I read. For example, my story, “Dealbreaker,” was partly inspired by the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, which explores how women tend to suppress their fear instinct out of politeness. That got into my head and under my skin, and it also suggested a trajectory for a story.
For me the process of finding inspiration is similar whether I’m writing a novel or a short story, but with a short story I focus on the immediate, compressed narrative arc, whereas with a novel it’s more like a series of mini arcs all in a row and/or overlapping. I like that with a short story, I can hold it all in my mind at once.
CA: I have about a hundred notebooks filled with random ideas and observations. Through time, years usually, a number of these disparate jottings find each other and a story begins to take shape. Short stories offer more freedom in form and language; that is, you can be experimental without testing the reader’s patience too much. The constraint is the brevity.
BCBL: Is it easier or more challenging to write a short story compared to a novel? Does the brevity of the form allow you to focus more sharply, or do you find it requires a different creative process altogether?
SB: I don’t find one necessarily easier than the other, but I do find writing short stories more satisfying. I’m drawn to the short story because of its shape, and how its ending can withhold resolution and instead deliver a gut-punch. There is a sharpness to a short story, a potential for devastation. When I’m writing novels, I try to capture some of that, but in a short story, it’s intrinsic to the form. In a novel, you can pull up a chair and stay for a while. In a short story, you’re always on your toes, on your way out the door.
CA: The challenge of a novel is the time commitment involved. It’s going to take years to get to the end of the project. But on the sentence level, a short story is harder. The fewer the words, the more important each one is. For me, the process is quite different. Novels are dramatic, stories poetic and language-driven.
BCBL: When writing a short-story, how do you overcome writer’s block or the challenge of getting stuck mid-writing? Are there specific techniques or approaches you use to push through and maintain the flow of the story?
SB: When I get stuck, I go on walks, I read, and I do research in hopes that it will prompt ideas. Sometimes I write stream-of-consciousness filler and then remove it in later drafts. For me, the key is to keep generating, to keep putting words down on the page until I land upon a moment of energy, and then the writing lifts and carries itself.
CA: I don’t suffer from writer’s block because I have a consistent writing practice. I want to write and feel miserable when I don’t. I certainly run into technical difficulties, most of which are solved by taking a walk, or even just going downstairs to make a cup of tea. (Repetitive physical activity frees the writer’s best friend, her subconscious mind.) If that doesn’t work, I read authors I admire. Lest you think writing is easy for me, I do suffer horrible bouts of self-doubt, which isn’t quite the same as being blocked. I keep writing, but it feels like the story is the worst thing ever written. First drafts are particularly agonizing.
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EVENT DETAILS
Date: October 23, 2024
Time: 5:30 pm
Location: Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3R8
This event is open to the public. Visit this link to purchase your tickets and reserve your spot.
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