This story is a great example of a short story that doesn’t follow a narrative structure but succeeds anyway.
Its full title is Theories of the Point of View Shifts In AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”
This story captures the intensity of pre-teen life in all its aching glory and vibrating physicality. If you’re looking for a story that’s an example of how to create a strong voice for your first-person character, read this one!
This story won the 2018 2018 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize and was performed as part of the Selected Shorts series at Symphony Space in NYC. (Be still my heart. Can you imagine?!)
I love stories like this. It’s an excellent example of what short stories can do.
There is no need to explain how Joan of Arc (and it does seem like it is the Joan of Arc) is somehow inhabiting a modern American university or college. In a short story, you can trust your readers to come along for the ride, no matter how surreal, as long as everything makes sense within the story world you create.
And in this story, it does.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] Joan of Arc Sits Naked In Her Dorm Room by Rachel Engelman”Since we’re all about Flash Fiction here at StoryADay during February, I’m going to be highlighting some flash stories here in the Reading Room. This story comes from 100WordStory.com, a project from NaNoWriMo’s Grant Faulker, and partners.
Useless Things by Ariel Berry caught my eye because of its mix of big ideas and mundane moments in life. It does what short fiction is supposed to do: make us stop, figure out what’s happening, and think about how we might deal with a similar situation in our life.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] Useless Things by Ariel Berry”The Reading Room is a series of posts analyzing short stories I have read, with a writer’s eye.
This Christmas story was first published in the UK’s The Telegraph newspaper in 2007.
It’s six in the morning, and Santa’s on the blink.
This certainly fulfills my need for an opening line to be intriguing. (The phrase ‘on the blink’, means ‘malfunctioning’ for those not raised in the UK!)
Of course, the story very quickly delivers on the line. The Santa in question is a light-up decoration (hooray, for a double-meaning for the phrase ‘on the blink’! I’m seeing blinking lights now). Continue reading “[Reading Room] There’s No Such Place As Bedford Falls by Joanne Harris”
Nightmare Town is the title story in this collection by the Noir master. Having mostly watched movies adapted from Raymond Chandler stories, and pastiches of Noir by others, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I was, however, preparing for a reading at a Noir night, and thought I ought to do some research before I wrote a story to fit the theme.
Wow.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammet”
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
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Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts Jan 3, 2025
