Robert Olen Butler advises on short stories

Robert Olen Butler won a Pulitzer Prize for his collection of short stories A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain and with only four days to go until the deadline for the Bristol Short Story Prize, he provides some insight  for Bristol24/7 readers about short stories and writing.

What makes for a good short story?

The critical thing, it seems to me, is the thing that makes for good narratives of any length: the presence of a dynamic goal or objective or yearning in the central character. Too many writers of short stories—encouraged, I suppose, by the brevity of the form—are content simply to give their characters problems. But that tends to make the characters passive in their center, defined by their victimhood. Fiction lives through the dynamic of desire. That’s one reason crime and thriller narratives are so compelling: the goals for the central character typically are clear and vigorous.

What do you find different about writing a short story rather than a novel?

With the short story you find yourself saying to the reader, “Look, I don’t have much time.  So sit down, let me tell you about a moment in this character’s life when, in pursuit of his goal, his yearning, something took a turn, or something intensified in a significant way.”  The short story will have, oftentimes, a brief sequence of causally linked events, but ultimately the story turns on the moment. In the novel you say to your reader, “Look, this is going to take some time.  Let’s go for a long walk. I want to tell you about all these things that happened in the life of this character who yearns; all these things that happened to him which somehow fit together, which are somehow causally linked.”  In a novel, there will be many revealing moments but ultimately the focus of a novel is on that chain of causally linked events.  That’s the focus of a novel.

How have you found the transition from being a short story writer to being a novelist?

It’s always been a natural for me. The form is dictated by the content and the content is dictated by character. The character in my deepest imagination who, at any given moment, insists on having his or her story told has, by the nature of that story, a clear preference for form and length. And often for me the one form leads to the other. Three of my novels began with short stories I published, including the first novel of the Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller series.

Bristol has quite a heritage of thriller / mystery writers and fictional characters. Is this something you’ve come across?

Well, there’s Julian Barnes’ lovely novel, The Sense of an Ending, which has something of a mystery at its centre and, as I recall, a Bristol connection. Does Angela Carter qualify? I love her Bristol trilogy. But for Bristol thrillers and mysteries, the one that vividly comes to mind is Fergus McNeill’s fascinating Eye Contact.  So the answer to your question is Yes indeed. Bristol seems to be a very inspiring place, and I’m looking forward to visiting soon, for CrimeFest 2015. Maybe I’ll get a novel out of it.

Robert Olen Butler’s latest novel is called The Star of Istanbul and published by No Exit Press, May 2015. He will be appearing at CrimeFest on Friday 15 and Sunday 17 May. Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, five other short story collections, sixteen novels, and a book on the creative process. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, he also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. Reminiscent of Christopher Marlowe Cobb, Butler trained as an actor, worked as a reporter, went to war, and engaged in intelligence collection. In 2013 he won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.