Short Stories
Written by Ink2Quill
www.ink2quill.com

Of course there’s still a place for short stories and anthologies in literature. Some say that people don’t read anymore and that anything that requires more than 10 minutes of a person’s time will most likely not be read if it is on paper. I talked to someone who was just starting college and she admitted to me that she could not read cursive writing. So, if someone left a post-it in cursive for her on her computer she’d have to call them and get the message directly from the person’s mouth. I could not believe what I was hearing. I wanted to teach her how to read cursive myself so she would be able to communicate better but ultimately she was fine and I was in a hurry. My point is that there is a place for short stories and collections of short stories in entertainment today. There are even advantages to bringing short stories to the masses as opposed to novel and such.

How often has someone gone to see a film that was taken from a book and remarked at how different the film was from the book? This happens with almost every single adaptation there has ever been. The film makers have constraints like budget, time and talent. So they must do the best they can with what they have and if this sounds like an excuse, well, it is. Especially in the Scifi/ Fantasy genre the worldbuilding is very rich and so recreating it can be costly, even with the technologies of today. Beautiful films like “Avatar”, “Blade Runner” and “Blade Runner 2049” as just a few examples of beautiful worldbuilding and there are many more across all genres, but these films were costly to make. And that’s just it. Short stories, especially in the Scifi genre, offer a wider degree of freedom to interpret the worlds and make changes and tapper down budgets. Scripts from short stories can limit the number of sets to make too.

A short story can also be stretched out to a longer mini-series with the right budget and will of the talent involved. Either way it is, in many cases, cheaper than lengthy novels. This is a universal advantage though.

There is also something to be said about finishing a or several short stories while waiting for a bus or plane. And good short stories can leave us thinking just like novels can long after we have finished them. I still ponder some of the ideas and themes in Philip K. Dick’s short stories to this day. Like his short story called “The Hanging Stranger” where the story goes from a strange and horrible mystery to an alien invasion with a messed up twist. The short story of “Praxis” by Karen Joy Fowler is another example of a great short story with great themes that would translate so well to the silver screen or online streaming. Reading stories with minimum character development works sometimes and they take you right to the point.

So, in a nutshell, short stories are a great part of the storytelling world and they should not be discounted.

John Ink2Quill

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