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Short but Sweet
***Send us your short story today***
Shorts Awards submissions close at the End of August!
H.G. Wells once described the purpose of a short story to be “The jolly art, of making something very bright and moving; it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or profoundly illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen to fifty minutes to read aloud.”
A Story doesn’t need a long winding plot to get it’s point made. Compelling characters and plot twists in 5 pages can have much the same effect as 100.
In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay called The Philosophy of Composition. In it he described his theories on writing Short Stories, using The Raven as the example. He had 3 theories for writing – Length, Method and ‘Unity of Effect.’
According to Poe, the limits on the length of a short story is what makes them so good.
In his words “For it is clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect.” On length, Poe said for one of his stories: “[W]hat I conceived the proper length for my intended poem – a length of about one hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight.”
In terms of method, He states that a writer should first think of how they want a story to end. Of course, that’s just how he wrote, you can start from the beginning, or the end, or maybe the middle. His last theory is everything together. Emotion, Length, Tone, and making them all work together.
The Shorts Awards launched just a few years ago and is already one of our most competitive divisions!
Your Short Fiction and Non-Fiction deserve to be discovered!
There are several options when submitting to the Shorts Awards to match your type of writing:
- Single Story or Essay – also great for Novellas and Novelettes!
- Short Story Collection
- Novelette Collection
- Novella Collection
- Essay Collection
You can also submit anthologies to any of the collection options! Just pick the one that best describes the type of work found in the anthology! This includes anthologies with a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and even poetry!
Let’s dive into some wonderful short work that we’ve reviewed recently!
THE GARDEN PLOT DIARIES
By Endy Wright
Shorts Finalist
Endy Wright’s The Garden Plot Diaries is a delightful collection of four short stories about life, relationships, and consequences.
Wright captures the gossip and rivalries between factious groups of town folk, all between sixty and ninety-something, who have known each other since childhood and carry the grudges to prove it. Our delightful narrator professes, “I am a rambling old man with a tale to tell and in no hurry to tell it.” So, settle in.
A WILD REGION: Tales and Stories from the Heartland
By Robin Lee Lovelace
“Savonne, not Vonny” won the Shorts Grand Prize!
A Wild Region: Tales and Stories from the Heartland by Robin Lee Lovelace is a wonderful collection of Weird fiction (emphasis on Weird), showcasing the oddities and fantastic adventures which hide among the everyday people of the midwestern United States.
Lovelace opens with ‘Virgie’s Headless Chicken’, setting the tone for the full collection as Virgie attempts to reproduce a circus sideshow act. Lovelace shares her familial inspiration for this story in a fascinating preface.
NEW YORK: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst
By Elizabeth Crowens
Shorts Grand Prize Winner
Prepare to be carried away to bustling, vivacious streets as you read Elizabeth Crowens’ New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst.
This captivating literary anthology is a love letter to the great city from a group of brilliant artists and authors, which delves into the multifaceted lives of New Yorkers.
Short fiction and a few poems describe the ins and outs of New York living. Murder mysteries, revenge, family struggles, family sagas, and, of course, the most important questions regarding real estate. Finding the perfect place to live in the city may be difficult, but this story brings into vivid relief the heart of what makes New York special: the people.
A WEEK at SURFSIDE BEACH
By Pierce Koslosky, Jr.
Shorts Grand Prize Winner
Vacationers from all walks of life converge on Portofino II-317C, South Carolina, a quaint blue beach house, in Pierce Koslosky Jr.’s short story collection, A Week at Surfside Beach.
From May 30th-December 26th each group of people comes to stay one week at a time, to forget their cares of the big city, to work, to celebrate, or to simply get away. Surfside Beach has much to show them, including temperamental weather.
The small town itself offers a charming supermarket where fishing supplies, whoopie pies, and local southern favorites can be found. The Christmas vacationers, the final of the thirteen beach house renters, struggle to find a tree in time; a real tree simply wouldn’t allow enough space for the family to sleep, and the fake tree would cost too much. But they find arts and crafts supplies in town, to fashion a paper Christmas tree during a day of rainy weather.
WISHES, SINS, and the WISSAHICKON CREEK
By PJ Devlin
Somerset First Place Winner
Wishes, Sins, and the Wissahickon Creek by PJ Devlin emulates the lives of fictional characters brimming with hope and promise yet living a truthful life of existence in the gorgeous setting of Pennsylvania’s Wissahickon Creek.
The book encompasses ten short stories making it a complete work of fiction. Devlin creates characters which are rich in both experience and struggle. Not only do they live in a real world created by Devlin, but her characters, a mix of children and adults, both struggle with daily, real-world issues most Americans deal with. The stories are all relatable in this sense, which makes the text come alive, page after page.
Thank you to everyone who submitted to the 2024 Shorts Awards! We can’t believe that the whole adventure starts again when the Shorts Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards close on August 31st, 2024.
This is the journey from beginning to end for the CIBAs Levels of Achievement is so worthwhile! Every list you make means more promotion for you and your work as each list is posted right here on our website, on our social media, and also out in our newsletter! Your book deserves to be discovered.
You know you want it…
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