Short Fiction

Short fiction is a tricky subject that seems simpler than it is. Telling a story and writing a short story are two very different tasks. The stories from within the collection, Maps to Anywhere, show a few handy tricks for writing a better short story, tricks like; showing your audience what has occurred  instead of telling them whats happening. A sentence like John murdered Jane with the knife is much less enthralling than something along the lines of "John thrust into Jane, letting the dripping knife fall to the floor clanking moments before Jane herself struck." Another new pattern I've seen within these works is that the story does not need to start at the start or end at the end. There's a tendency of short stories to start with little background and reach the climax faster than most find appealing. And likewise many end on ambiguous unsatisfying notes. This technique makes the reader delve far deeper into the story. They must base a whole person with intentions and a background from only a few measly pages. but when mixed these two tricks force the reader to become far more active while reading it giving them something to think about. Not so shockingly this makes reading the story a lot more fun.these techniques can be applied to all story writing.