This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to to pick up a copy. You can buy copies in ebook. Here’s a link to the ebook on the WMG Books site, but you can get the ebook anywhere. The paper will be available soon.

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post is from September of 2025, and is in the first section of  the book.

SHORT STORY CRAFT

From 2025

I’ve been working with a handful of wonderful writers on their craft. I offered a few mentorships last year to keep myself focused on craft while our personal business world was so fraught. I work with scenes and short stories, because I don’t read other people’s novels.

Occasionally, one of the writers I’m working with will comment that they forced the story they were writing into some arbitrary length (3500 words or 7500 words) because they’d been told that short fiction had to be short.

At first, I thought this was a problem that just one writer had, but no. I saw it more than once from writers who should know better.

The story you tell should be the length it takes to tell the story. Period.

If you have to turn in a short story for an anthology deadline or you are doing something crafty (like working with me), and the story you started runs long, either finish that story or set it aside. Then write a new story. Rinse, repeat, until you find a story that hits the proper length.

Do not ever shorten a story because you think someone won’t read it if it is too long. No. Not ever. Just don’t do it.

Especially now with indie publishing. A story is the length it needs to be to tell the tale. And nothing more.

That experience, plus heading back to the University of Las Vegas, Nevada this fall has storytelling in my front brain.

The class I’m taking is Theatre History, from the dawn of the theatre through the Reformation. (Next semester takes us past that.) It’s a survey class, focused on the developments and changes in the theatre from the ancient Greeks (more or less) onward. (Yes, we’re dealing with non-Western traditions as well. But mostly Western stuff, which begins with the Greeks.)

A history of theatre is a history of storytelling. The tools that we’re studying are tools to improve storytelling and make sure it holds the audience’s attention.

After class on Monday, I went to the Union for a late lunch and pulled out a paper edition of The Mysterious Bookshop Presents The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2024, edited by Anthony Horowitz. I don’t want to study at lunch and I don’t want to scroll through my phone. So I bring short stories which usually gets me through a half an hour or so.

I read the Jeffrey Deaver short story, “The Lady in My Life.” I’m a fan of his work, buying the latest novel new each time one appears. I like his short fiction as well, with a caveat that I will get to below.

The structure that this particular volume of the Best Mystery Stories uses is this: A bio of the author, the story, followed about an “about the story,” written by the author.

In Deaver’s case, he wrote that “The Lady in My Life” was based on a song, so that he could contribute to an anthology edited by Don Bruns. Deaver said that was all he could tell us about the story because, like the previous 100 stories he wrote, this one has a “big twist” at the end.

Then he went on to say this:

A short story…exists for one reason only.

A breathtaking shock.

They’re like an illusionist’s tricks. Setup, shocking reveal, and the thought: How the hell did the author do that?

No character studies, no important messages.

 Just an unexpected blow to the gut.

Anyway, that’s what I strive for.

I sat at the table in the Union, conversations flowing around me, sunlight pouring in the big windows, and thought about that for a few minutes.

I had two simultaneous reactions:

1. 1. 1. 1. Um…no. That’s not the only reason that a short story exists.

And

1. 1. 1. 2. Well, that explains my reactions to his short stories then.

Let’s deal with #2 first.

When I read “The Lady in My Life,” I actually stopped in the middle and went back to the opening scene. I knew I was missing something, because that first scene seemed tacked on—too character-focused for a Deaver story. I knew the twist was somewhere in those opening pages.

In other words, I wasn’t lost in that piece of fiction: I was looking for the surprise.

The first time I ever read that way was in my twelfth year. I binge-read Agatha Christie. I was sprawled on my very 1970s brown and orange bedspread in my bedroom in our 1920s farmhouse on a Sunday afternoon. Tattered paperback library books were scattered around me. I was staring at them as if they held a message because I realized in that moment the Christie books had a pattern.

The person whodunnit was the person you least expected.

A few weeks later, I was in the same position on the same ugly bedspread, frowning at Murder on the Orient Express. I thought I had figured out Christie’s pattern, but…

SPOILER ALERT FOR A 91-YEAR-OLD NOVEL

…everyone had a motive. No one was the person you could least expect. Not a single character.

Because, you see, it turns out they all  did it. Every last one of the passengers on that train. (Except the mighty Hercule Poirot, detective extraordinaire, of course.)

I actually felt cheated, and a little stupid. These days, when I miss something, I’m excited by it. I got fooled and it’s hard to fool me, at least in fiction. Then I want to know how the author did it.

But my discovery about Christie was so new, so profound (to me), that I couldn’t believe she had played that trick on me. Personally. Because, you know, writers only write for one person. The single reader on her ugly orange-and-brown bedspread in the quiet of her room.

(Cue peals of laughter here.)

Deaver’s short stories feel like Christie’s novels to me. That’s probably half of a compliment. I like them enough to read them, but I don’t get lost in them, and my goal, as a reader and a writer, is to get lost in fiction.

Instead, Deaver’s stories are an intellectual exercise for me. Can I see through them on one reading with no reread?

This surprise I got half of, but that’s all that was available to me. He actually withheld information, which irritates the piss out of me as a reader. Give me the information in such a way that I won’t see it. Don’t hide it from me.

Grump.

I’m not here to tear apart Deaver’s short stories. He’s a master writer. He’s created iconic characters in his novels (Lincoln Rhyme, Kathryn Dance, Colter Shaw), and he’s written some short stories that I think are among the best I’ve ever read.

But the only reason a short story exists is to shock the reader?

No. And God, no.

My reaction to that is profoundly visceral and not just because I can predict what he’s going to do with 90% of his short stories.

It’s the way he denies things that I adore about short fiction.

I love a good character sketch, one that puts me in someone else’s brain for a while, one that reveals rather than tells.

I love a good political rant, even if I disagree with it.

I love a good romance, although I know that the ending will probably be a happily-for-now. (It’s almost impossible to do a happily ever after in a short story, although I have seen it done successfully.)

I love a good historical exploration of a time I will never see.

I love a good adventure—be it in space or in the near future, in a made-up fantasy world, or a world slightly askew from ours. Or heck, in our world in places I will never get to.

His little note dismisses almost everything I love about short stories and boils them down to one thing. One predictable thing.

Because if you always write big twist endings, the readers stop reading for enjoyment. They want to beat you at your game. Sure, it’s fun, but I’d rather not know how the story is going to end going in. Unless, of course, it’s a romance, and even then, I like to be surprised by the journey to get to that happily for now.

That heck-no feeling I had when I read Deaver’s author note was not just from me the reader. It was also from me the author.

I don’t want to be limited to one way and one way only of writing anything, let alone short fiction. I can’t think of anything duller than writing the same story over and over and over again.

To be fair to Deaver, he doesn’t do that in his long-form fiction. He writes something different most of the time, although he does rely on the big reveal or the surprise twist a lot. In this too, he reminds me of Christie. He’s writing in the same genre most of the time (all of the time?), but he researches or experiences new places or new tech to explore in his fiction.

Christie traveled, and wrote about “exotic” locales, at least from the British reading public’s point of view. So many readers read her books to experience vistas they would never normally see, particularly in the Poirot books.

I have too much of a hummingbird brain to focus on just one thing. I like dipping in and out of different genres. I like writing standalone books and short stories. I like exploring different topics.

Yes, that has a downside too. It means I’m slower than most writers in getting to the next book in a series, but it also means that I bring fresh perspective to that series when I return.

I can’t tell you how many writer friends have complained to me about writing in the same series over and over again, and feeling like they can’t write anything else “because their readers don’t want it.”

That last quote is a quote that someone in traditional publishing (an editor, the head of the sales force) told the poor writer. Because traditional publishers and editors told me that about my work too, and I ignored them. I ended up with a lot of pen names instead, knowing that I couldn’t limit myself to one series, one topic, one genre…or one big twist.

I don’t believe in closing the door to any kind of storytelling. The story is what it wants to be. It might not end up as science fiction by the end. It might not be a crime story, even though it started that way. It might not be a romance after all.

There might be a big reveal or a breathtakingly small moment. And yes, there might be a big twist—if that’s what the story dictates.

But stories exist for many reasons.

And always have.

So, writers, write what you want to write, at the length the story itself dictates, and don’t worry about what some cranky writer tells you.

Even if that cranky writer is me.

“Short Story Craft” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

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