Why Short Stories Deserve More Love

Short stories get no respect. Novels get all the attention. That is unfair.

A great short story does everything a novel does in a fraction of the space. Character, setting, conflict, resolution. All compressed into a few pages. That takes immense skill.

Short stories are perfect for busy lives. You can read one during lunch. You do not need to commit to five hundred pages. A collection gives you variety.

The best short story writers are masters of the form. Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize. George Saunders writes stories that break your heart and make you laugh in the same paragraph.

Short stories take risks. Because they are short, they can experiment. Unreliable narrators, unconventional structures, ambiguous endings. Novels play it safe. Stories take chances.

If you have not read short stories since school, try again. You were probably assigned the wrong ones. Start with Saunders or Munro or Lorrie Moore.