Short story inspiration

Short of short story inspiration? Someone steered me towards Anthropology by Dan Rhodes the other day. It's a collection of 100-word short stories written in 1998. Here an interesting excerpt from the book with a description from Rhodes about what went into writing it.

Forgotten Skin

She prodded the rain-stained magazine with her stick and let the wind catch one of the pages, turning it over. It was full of young bodies – four all together. The shock was like cold hands on her stomach. She took a breath. Still, she could not take her eyes away. She had never seen it like that. Like a stranger watching. Curious, she tried to mimic the woman’s position – one leg straight, the other stretched out to her side. She placed her stick with both hands to support herself but the hip ground stiff almost immediately. Wincing, sucking in through clenched teeth, she began slowly working her hip backwards and forwards. The magazine flapped shut again. When the stiffness in her leg had eased she put her weight back on it. She pushed the cover again with her foot and let the wind flip the pages over, one at a time. They were indistinct at speed - stupid dirty collections of nakedness. She jabbed her stick in with unfamiliar keenness and it folded and ripped a soft wet buttock. Another scene. Just two men and a woman this time. Big thighs both of them. Disgusting. She turned and looked around. She should pick it up and put it in a bin somewhere, out of harm’s way. If young eyes saw this … If her youngest grandson, Ben… She felt ridiculous bending down. This was why she did not bend down any more – she was awkward, every movement threatened to throw her over.

It lay open on her table. She was panicking and it was silly to panic over such a stupid little thing. If she put it in the bin, Howard the volunteer might find it when he took it out on Tuesday. In the old days she could have burnt it on the fire. But she only had the two-bar electric thing now. She had it open on a new page, a new position. She had done that once. Never with Harry though. It was not something Harry would ever have approved of. But then that was the problem with Harry. She thought of the only two before him. Poor Ralph. He had died early on in the war. After that Jasper, an American GI. He had been black like the one on the table. This one looked stupid though and big chested. She shut it and breathed in, and tried to straighten her back even though osteoporosis saw to it that she could not. Then she breathed out and opened it again on another page. She would keep it in Harry’s old toolbox. No-one would look in there. Not until they came to clear out the house and then she would be dead. Her sons would think it had been Harry’s and forgive an old man his bad habits. She felt a pleasant flush in her cheeks and a relief, staring at their bodies. It was like remembering something that she had never thought she would forget.

Written by David Jackson

Submit your short stories for review

We are now accepting short stories at Shortfolio. Whether you've written something heartfelt and pure, or cynical and born out of despair; hammered out during a lunch hour, or perfected and sat on for weeks - we want to read your stories.

Accepted stories will be posted on the site for people to read and comment on.

N.B. Stories must be 500 words long or less.

If you have an questions contact us at shortfolio@gmail.com.

Happy writing!

Why write short stories?

Although the art of short story is admired by many, it is bought by relatively few so there aren't many serious avenues open to the short story writer. But, this should not put us off. Short stories may not be as lucrative as in Chekhov's time, when he wrote short stories to support himself and his family, but there is still a world of experimentation in fiction that is more alive in short story writing than anywhere.

A training ground for writers
Short stories are a great training ground to aspiring novelists and fiction writers of all types. The essential elements of fiction - beginning, middle and end - are condensed. In this frenetic environment writers are simultaneously freer to experiment and more pressured to resolve the ideas that they imagine. And in five minutes, a story might be written that has ten times more resonance than one that took the writer weeks to perfect.

Just write
Most importantly for writers, short stories service that impulse to produce works of fiction on a regular basis. Because they do not necessarily require planning, they are a great exercise in the artistic disciplines of fiction. Character, voice, plot and pace all can be afforded outings - separately or en force. They can be an insightful record of an actual event or a sketch of a fictional character that came to mind on the bus to work. This permission to produce is what makes good short story writing so exciting and fresh to read.

Getting feedback
Another benefit of writing short works is that it is easy to find readers to comment on your work. Longer works are harder to get people to read and take time for a potential critic to digest. An essential part of developing as a writer is to find out how what you write affects other people. Few of us writers, if any, start writing great works of fiction straight away - no matter how substantial the raw talent. The more you write and receive feedback the more you are likely to improve as a fiction writer.

So if you've written something and submitted it, read something from someone else and offer any comments you can think of.

The shorter the better...

'A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amount of hard work is too severe for it. '

- Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)