Short Stories and Magic Tricks by Savita Kalhan

I’ve been reading short stories for years. I fell in love with them when I discovered Italo Calvino when I was a student, but I think my love for short stories started much earlier, from when I was a child reading fairy tales, folk tales, and myths and legends from around the world.

I’ve been writing short stories for several years too. Aladdin’s Lamp is published in Stories from The Edge, a collection of short stories for teens.

Recently I decided to embark on a short story writing course. It’s something I’ve never done, but I’m hoping it will be fun as well as developing my writing, opening my mind to new ways of thinking and approaching short story writing.

Not every writer is interested in short story writing. Cormac McCarthy once said: “I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” Not surprisingly, he only ever wrote two short stories, whilst at college, before turning to writing novels.

For Neil Gaiman, a “short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.” That’s how I feel about short stories too. They can be as poignant and resonate with a reader as much as a novel, and in a far more accessible form. The impact of a short story does not differ from that of a novel; its brevity is only in its length, not in the emotional response it might elicit from the reader. “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” – Kurt Vonnegut. It’s good advice when every word counts.

But a short story should be as long or as short as it needs to be. F Scott Fitzgerald refused to cut The Women in the House down to fit the remit of magazines and newspapers, and only very reluctantly revised it a little after it had been rejected many times. Most submissions for short story anthologies will specify a maximum word count, and keeping within it can be tough. When a story I’ve written just won’t fit the specs, I’ve often had to sit down and write another story instead. Easier said than done. 

Unlike a novel, where there is time and space to explore themes, short stories necessarily have a different arc. "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail," in the words of Alice Munro.

Two of the short story anthologies I’m really looking forward to reading are – A Change is Gonna Come, written by a collection of BAME, teen, and YA authors, and published by Stripes on 10th August.

The second is A Spot of Folly by Ruth Rendell, which is a collection of nine short stories published in magazines dating back to the 1970s. (There may be a Barbara Vine story in there too). There is a page still missing from one of her short stories – Digby Lives – I really hope the editor manages to find it!

“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row,” Ray Bradbury once said. I have never been brave enough to attempt to write one short story a week, but it does pose a real challenge! It may not have been possible for Rad Bradbury to write 52 bad short stories in a row, so it’s easy for him to say that it’s not possible for other people to achieve it! Still, it is a challenge...

Over the next month I hope to be working some magic with short stories and if I manage to write four, I'll be happy!

Savita's Website

So … dystopia is dead? – David Hofmeyr on MAD MAX – Guest Post

‘There’s no way I could sell a dystopian project … as a debut.’

These were the cataclysmic words of my first agent when I submitted Stone Rider. ‘What’s the story about?’ they asked. ‘Well it’s like Mad Max,’ I told them. ‘No, no, no,’ they said. ‘No one is looking for Mad Max. Dystopia is dead. The Hunger Games, Blood Red Road, Divergent, The Maze Runner. The market is saturated.’

Well, thank you Mad Max: Fury Road for putting that argument to bed.

Heart-stopping, pulse-racing, flat-out crazy dystopian madness. That’s the pure joy of Mad Max. The first was a cult classic. It was raw and pounding. I can still hear the sound and fury of those machines ripping across the desert wasteland. A blasted landscape. A world in crisis. A world where water, oil and ammunition are currency. Where people live hand-to-mouth, and in fear of berserk motorcycle gangs.

What’s not to love?

Mel Gibson – back when he was still credible and more-or-less sane – exploded onto the screen as the eponymous ‘mad’ Max Rockatanski. When his wife and young son are killed, Max takes up his iconic – and vaguely Village People – black leathers and his Pursuit Bike and he lays into the bad guys with a furious vengeance.

Fast-forward thirty odd years and we have an adrenalin-filled reboot to the brutal series. This time, monosyllabic Tom Hardy fits into the role of Max, chased and imprisoned by the vampiric War Boys of Immortan Joe. But this is Furiosa’s story. Renegade War Rig trucker Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron with Alien-style cropped hair) carries you through the mind-blowing onslaught of a film. And it’s a film that’s a worthy, kick-ass successor to the Mad Max franchise. Introducing a new feminist approach that delivers a fresh angle to a tried-and-tested genre.

This robust feminist angle of the story is one of the biggest reasons for the success of Mad Max: Fury Road. What better publicity than to have misogynists the world over outraged, calling men to avoid the film? But what I love about Fury Road is that it doesn’t just depict women as warriors, physically equal to men in every way, but it succeeds in portraying them as unbroken, full of hope and courage. This evolution of dystopia into an exploration of courageous and intelligent female leads has rejuvenated and re-inspired the genre, both in books and in film.

As writers we’re informed and inspired by so many things. For me, it was the films I consumed as a teenage boy. The Dollars Trilogy, Star Wars, Alien and Mad Max. They all had a massive impact on me. And the books. Stephen King, especially The Bachman Books. Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. The Road. Blood Meridian. I’d like to say it was McCarthy who inspired me to write Stone Rider. His Old Testament biblical style – the way he cuts you to the bone with his prose. His wide landscapes – blazing-harsh and vivid. Or maybe it was S.E. Hinton. Outsiders and loners, trying to find a place for themselves. But it’s the nerve-shredding world of Mad Max that perhaps has a more obvious association with my story.

Stone Rider – my debut novel – is a gritty coming-of-age story in which a boy who has lost everything joins a brutal race to win the chance to escape his dying world. Stone Rider is set in the dustbowl town of Blackwater, where rival Tribes of teenagers ride semi-sentient mechanical bykes. There are nods to Mad Max all over the place. And like Fury Road my lead character is male, but there is a strong female character that carries much of the action. Both stories offer a cornucopia of dust, blood and adrenalin. And both revel in the tropes of dystopia. And why not?

Bring on the cataclysm, I say. It’s entertaining. Dystopia isn’t dead. It will never die. It will just evolve. A peak. Then a trough. Or, like Mad Max: Fury Road, maybe dystopia will just carry on peaking until we all explode. Suits me just fine.


DAVID HOFMEYR is the author of Stone Rider, published by Penguin, July 2015.

His lovely new agent is Stephanie Thwaites of Curtis Brown.

Follow David on twitter: @dhofmeyr 

Catch the latest news on his website: www.davidhofmeyr.com
Or watch this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-5XKrJSds