Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

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Thoughts on shorts: Danielle Evans

by Celeste Ng

“[T]he value of a short story is the same as the value of all literature—that it allows a person to confront the world in a new way, that at its best it has the power to act as a transformative experience, and to leave the reader changed—smarter and more empathetic. I think there’s something especially lovely about being able to have a complete, meaningful emotional experience in the time it takes to read ten to twenty pages.” ~ Danielle Evans Further Reading: Read more about Danielle Evans on Fiction Writers Review Looking for something to read? Check out the Stories […]


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Stories We Love: "The Showrunner"

by Celeste Ng

I’ll be totally honest: I really did not expect to like Frankie Thomas’s “The Showrunner” at all. It starts off at a casting session for a fictional Disney-esque tween series, and not only am I biased against stories that saturate themselves in current pop culture—I tend to like a little patina on my cultural references—I expected the story to be as flimsy as the TV show at its center. I was completely wrong. Within half a page, I was unable to put the piece down. (No joke: I was late to pick up my son from daycare, I was that […]


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Thoughts on shorts: Wells Tower

by Celeste Ng

“I think the best stories start from something tiny. […] A short story can easily destroy itself through metastasis. I think if you start a story with more than two scenes in mind, you may be doomed. At least you have a hell of a lot of work ahead of you. If I start off trying to get at this one little moment, that’s all I want to do. And then I have to build the world that makes that moment happen.” ~ Wells Tower Further Reading: Read more about Wells Tower on Fiction Writers Review Looking for something to […]


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Thoughts on Shorts: Valerie Laken

by Celeste Ng

“With short stories, you never really expect the World at Large to care one way or the other. It’s a labor of love, and no one disputes that, and I think the purity of that endeavor is very liberating.” ~ Valerie Laken Further Reading: Read more about Valerie Laken on Fiction Writers Review Looking for something to read? Check out the Stories We Love Need inspiration? Try our Get Writing exercises


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Stories We Love: "To Build a Fire"

by Erika Dreifus

Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” (1908) is one of those stories—paralleled by certain films—that I always return to with an odd yearning. Each time, despite myself, I hope that the story (or film) will somehow end differently. That Connie won’t leave with Arnold Friend. That Christopher Reeve won’t discover that penny from 1979. Or, in the case of London’s story, that “the man” won’t break through the ice—and that the fire won’t go out. Perhaps part of the story’s great appeal is how very different it is from my own lived experience and writerly tendencies. My version of the […]




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