Whether it's the result of our collective interest in being terrified or maybe our increasing short attention spans, there's something undeniably enticing about the short story.
My family loves Stephen King. We do. And while I've always been aware of this fact on some conscious level, it was a lengthy discussion about his novels and career that cemented my suspicions about his impact on us. Both of my parents started reading his work in middle school (probably before they were equipped to handle some of the heavy material he discusses); I was given my father's copy of Misery in seventh grade (after declaring The Eyes of the Dragon to be the worst book I had ever read and demanding a taste of King that matched my palette); my younger sister, an avid reader, is currently plowing through my collection of King at a rate of one book a week. I love his novels, but there is something about his short stories--and the concept of short stories as a whole--that captivates me. Now, as a writer who specializes in short fiction, I look to his short work for inspiration, as well as to the largest creative source in the world--the Internet.
Anyone who has done a bit of online spelunking for horror has doubtlessly crossed paths with the world of short horror. These stories, written by people and published on sites like reddit (often tagged with the appropriate label "nosleep") and creepypasta forums (where one is sure to come across volumes of Slenderman nightmare fuel), are evidence of how the expansion of media and literature in our world has impacted young people. Internet users, some not even partial to writing, are composing surprisingly terrifying stories that can err on the side of disturbing realism or embrace unbridled horror. Where did this trend come from? How are these people crafting excellent little stories without extensive writing experience?
Well, let's use my favorite excuse for acts of violence in this country and blame the media. We are perpetually being exposed to creativity, from the television shows we watch at night to the billboards we see on our commutes to the movie trailers that play before our YouTube videos. Our lives are flooded with companies and franchises vying for our attention and employing every possible tactic to earn it. One of these recent tactics is the use of the short format: a rattling one-minute commercial, a pre-video ad so interesting we aren't tempted to press "Skip Ad", a teaser trailer that makes our skin crawl. With this constant bombardment of perimeter-altering media (as well as the proliferation of horror into mainstream media and the rampant success of recent horror movies like It Follows and the excellent Insidious franchise), it's no surprise that more and more people are learning how to craft their own tiny masterpieces and create disturbing imagery.
But why use the Internet as a vessel when authors like King make big bucks off publishing their short stories? Well, when people share their work in an online environment like reddit where they can receive feedback and actually see the immediate effect their work had on readers, they reach a wider audience than books and magazines could ever dream of. Not every person has the resources to obtain these physical publications, especially with the cosmic inflation in book prices, but the Internet remains a non-exclusive club for people in search of entertainment. These short stories are the same media we consume when we read books, just served up differently. And they're often a lot less self-conscious than professionally published work, as well as more universal and more in-touch with what truly frightens us as people.
So why, you might ask, hasn't someone taken advantage of this short story success and tried to write a book on one of these forums? This all relates back to the media that dominates our creative lives. Advertisement has become a proverbial Hunger Games, where the victor is determined by how can do the most in the shortest amount of time. We are a society on a collective time-crunch, always searching for a way to expedite the mundane aspects of our lives. Aren't we more likely to read or watch something if it doesn't take up our precious time? Don't we skip the longer articles in favor of the ones that trim away the extraneous material and present only the essential details? When we stumble across a piece of fiction online, aren't we tempted to read what someone managed to convey in only a few paragraphs?
That's the beauty of the short story. We've all read those long, sprawling novels that have bountiful page space to wax poetic about this character and that setting (and then there's The Grapes of Wrath, which found the time to write a think-piece about a turtle crossing the road. And people wonder why I hate how romanticized these "classics" are.) And while these lengthy stories have the advantage of exploring every facet of their theme and inspecting each character element at its own leisure, their impact on the reader is often softened by extensive exposition and occasionally clunky foreshadowing. With a short story, there is nary a moment to breathe before the gut-punch lands.
Take the short story Autopilot, written by reddit user Skarjo (warning: major spoilers ahead. If you can handle disconcerting fiction and death, go ahead and read the story before continuing). It opens with an innocuous mediation on how easy it is to leave one's phone or keys at home when the object has been moved due to the brain's commitment to routine. The contemplative element of this story is what instigates unease in the reader, as there is no discernible thread to prematurely follow (this thread is present in most stories and the people who can see it in a story's early stages are the ones who ruin the movie by accurately predicting the big twist). The reader will find the reflection on the brain's ability to go on autopilot familiar as they read about this man's morning routine. He gets showered, gives his daughter her breakfast, and puts her in the car to drive her to nursery school--after forgetting his phone because it was on the counter charging and not with him. His routine is so set that when his daughter moves out of the scope of the rearview mirror and falls asleep, he keeps driving to work and gets out of the car and goes inside. It's a sweltering day. His daughter is still in the backseat. One can deduce the tragic ending.
It's these sort of unsettling stories that truly get under our skin. If this had been part of a larger story, there would have been extensive set-up of the events, heavier foreshadowing (the story has almost no foreshadowing, aside from the repetition of the phrase "autopilot engaged" in reference to his routine-bound brain), and some sort of follow-up to the event that would have made the impact of his discovery less chilling. With this format, we are lured in by the elucidation of the concept of our body's autopilot system and then blindsided by the horrific consequences this can have. Children dying in hot cars is the sort of horrifying concept that is horrifying because it has happened, can happen, and will inevitably happen again--and, as evidenced by the short story, could happen to anyone at any time. The story, like others of its kind, weaponizes adult fear.
Okay, you might be thinking, so short stories are changing the way we read fiction and inspiring more writers: But why should I write one? The answer is simple. We all have ideas, some of which are decent and deserve to be expressed. If those ideas can be expressed through writing, then you want to communicate them as clearly as possible. And sometimes, the best way is simple presentation. It is quite easy to bog down good concepts with unnecessary writing: there is nothing worse than watching a writer mangle their own interesting idea with excessive set-up and fluff. Besides, so much of today's writing universe depends on brevity: write a short article about this big event. Write about why people should see this movie. Write a hundred and forty words about why you should go to the school of your dreams. Keeping your writing uncluttered is an essential skill and it is the people who have sharpened this skill that are able to terrify their readers in three paragraphs or less. Look out Stephen King, because there are new kids on the block and they've got the art of short fiction mastered.
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