Can short stories change the way you think?
3 short fiction tales that will turn your world upside down
A great short story can feel like a punch in the gut.
It manages to take you on the emotional journey of a novel in just a few pages and has intense and lasting impact.
The brevity of short stories mean that they often convey ideas that go beyond the page and leave you thinking for days. Heck!, sometimes a short story can be so powerful - it may even change your life!
Now that we are stuck inside or at least in a very small bubble, more people are turning to literature. People who are not normally ‘readers’ but fancy a bit of literary escapism. A novel seems like too much of a commitment, but a short story? Perfect! This is why we think there is likely to be another spike in short story readers & writers over quarantine.
Whether you’re a die hard short story fan or new to the literary world, welcome. Quench your thirst for impeccable short stories by reading our 3 top picks, then get inspired to pen your own with our 3 short story writing tips below…
HEY! - Why not enter it into Hi2020.co.uk - you never know… you might end up as a published author yourself!
3 of our favourite timeless short stories:
There is no short story round-up without Poe. While many praise “The Tell-Tale Heart,” we decided to opt for a slightly lesser known tale - a macabre short story about a man being buried alive - cheery right? Remind me never to insult my friend and follow them into a wine cellar…
This story is a confessional with a difference, it’s penned by a narrator admitting a crime, however the reader is encouraged to get into their psyche to understand the motive, causing a very troubling read indeed:
“How long have you had that cough?”
“Ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!”
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
“It is nothing,” he said, at last.
“Come,” I said, with a decision, “we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it doesn't matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi—”
“Enough,” he said; “the cough's a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough.”
“True—true,” I replied; “and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily—but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps.”
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
“Drink,” I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.
“I drink,” he said, “to the buried that repose around us.”
Poe is the king of foreboding. Breadcrumbs are laid throughout the short tale that lead the reader to expect the worst. We know something bad is about to happen, but why and what are to be deciphered as we read on.
Here’s a hot tip to get you penning your own short story...
Short story writing tip #1: Use “Foreshadowing”...a warning about what’s to come...
Take inspiration from Poe and use hints throughout the text to raise the reader's heart rate and cause an ever increasing feeling of dread. Signposting like this is important in short stories since it helps to set the emotional tone and increase anticip……...ation.
⭐ Go on - give us a taster of ‘Foreshadowing’ your short story! ⭐
Could you be sitting on a classic tale? Maybe you could be the next author in our roundup! Time to put those ideas down on paper and see what greatness you could achieve...
...you just might be the overall winner of the
Hi2020.co.uk Short Story Competition!
Hurry !!! COUNT DOWN just 23 days to get your story entered
So what are you waiting for…. get writing!
20 lucky winners get published in a beautifully illustrated coffee-table book that will be available to purchase in renowned London bookstores.
And that’s not all! We’ll also create a professionally read podcast of the winning stories! Winners will also receive extensive coverage across our social media channels with a combined following of over 2000 engaged readers and writers and radio air time - the perfect package to kick-start your writing career.
Log onto Hi2020.co.uk and enter your best story for a chance to win this incredible literary prize bundle!
Your story should be original and between 1000 and 1500 words, written in English
from among the following given topics：
Adventure/travel
Thriller/Dark
Romance
Science/Fantasy
Here are the three location categories:
Three County Challenge (Bucks, Herts & London)
UK Challenge (British Isles and Northern Ireland)
11yrs - 18 yrs Challenge (UK- British isles and Northern Ireland)
So don’t wait - grab that inspiration and start writing!
We even have more to help you conquer the wheres and what fors...
Help is at hand with this downloadable supportive guide:
‘How To Write Short Stories’ Bookazine
...including writers’ aids to help you unravel the plot intricacies and character development.
<<< Purchase your entry form here >>>
⭐⭐HURRY!... ENTRIES DUE BY 20TH JULY⭐⭐
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Revered as one of the best short stories ever written, “The Yellow Wallpaper” imprints in the reader’s mind and lingers there. The eerie short story archives a young woman’s decline into madness as she is confined to the bedroom of a vacation home. Her husband won’t believe her when she tells him she feels unwell and wants to leave - her cries for help in fact cause him to increasingly suppress her. In this confessional tale, the yellow wallpaper mimics her internal struggles as she becomes increasingly fixated with and troubled by it:
“There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.
When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.
I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind,—that dim sub-pattern,—but now I am quite sure it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.
I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.
It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for, you see, I don’t sleep.
And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake,—oh, no!
The fact is, I am getting a little afraid of John.”
The text swirls in and out of the twisted perceptions of the wallpaper and ‘real life’, merging the two worlds as they are merged in her mind - an incredibly clever literary device.
Short story writing tip #2: Use surrounding objects and settings to help depict the protagonist’s feelings. You don’t have to go as far as to confuse the two, although this is incredibly effective when discussing themes of psychosis, you might just use pathetic fallacy or colour to emphasise the emotions of the piece.
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Another short tale about madness,“Symbols and Signs” is a subtle, mind-bending story about an old Russian couple who try to visit their son in a sanatorium. The son suffers from referential mania (a term invented by Nabokov) and tried to commit suicide so the couple aren’t able to see him. They receive a series of phone calls later that evening leaving the state of the son uncertain.
Describing the events of the story does not do it justice, so we will show you an excerpt instead:
““Referential mania,” the article had called it. In these very rare cases, the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy, because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes.
Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing, in some awful way, messages that he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme. All around him, there are spies. Some of them are detached observers, like glass surfaces and still pools; others, such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses, lynchers at heart; others, again (running water, storms), are hysterical to the point of insanity, have a distorted opinion of him, and grotesquely misinterpret his actions. He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being.”
Nabokov leads the reader down a cryptic path of subtle signs and symbols about the lives of the characters that overlay the main crux of the story. This causes the reader to start to read into everything and try to decipher meaning in all things… sound familiar? Sounds to us like a bit of ‘referential mania’!
And this is precisely the point. Nabokov reflects the psychosis of the son in the reader’s experience. It’s like watching Inception, only better. How wonderfully meta?!
Short story writing tip #3: Consider the reader’s experience of the work when drafting your story, is there something you want to say in the form of the text, rather than just with your words? Using this literary device can make for some extremely interesting results when done right.
And so concludes our flying foray through short stories and short story authors. If you fancy yourself the next infamous author on the list, check out our Instagram channel @happylondonpress for some short story prompts over the next week to get you started!
Happy writing everyone x
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