{"id":11208,"date":"2024-09-24T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11208"},"modified":"2024-09-23T19:47:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T23:47:29","slug":"short-story-prowess-eqmm-sept-oct-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11208","title":{"rendered":"Short Story Prowess: EQMM Sept-Oct 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week\u2019s post about what to look for in a short story<\/a> received a lot of likes, and reading the current issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine<\/em> offers the opportunity to put those insights to the test. And, the competition was fierce. Here\u2019s what the panel of experts said they (and editors) look for in a good short story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. It needs a point<\/em> \u2013 Andrew Walsh-Huggins\u2019s story, \u201cThrough Thick and Thin\u201d is a testament to the wisdom in the old saying, \u201clet the dead past bury its dead.\u201d It\u2019s also a reminder of a point you can\u2019t help but notice nearly every time you watch a television mystery show: If people didn\u2019t keep secrets, they\u2019d have a lot fewer problems!<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. A strong ending<\/em> \u2013 Kai Lovelace\u2019s tale, \u201cHead Start,\u201d in the Department of First Stories, had a powerhouse ending because it was so unexpected. Based on the fourth-grade memories of the narrator, it focuses on his delight in Halloween, and, true to his age-appropriate sensibilities, the gorier the better. It\u2019s one of several spooky stories in this volume, a bow to the season.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Believability<\/em> \u2013Extra credit to Kate Hold for the mid-century Los Angeles she created in her delightful story \u201cRosabelle.\u201d You don\u2019t actually have to believe in ghosts to believe in her narrator and the venality of her landlady, a fortune-teller named Madame Zelda.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Strong characters, right from the get-go<\/em>. EQMM<\/em> offers numerous candidates, but I\u2019d choose the boy who narrates \u201cThe Phantom of the Concourse Plaza\u201d by Jerome Charyn, whose story starts, \u201cI was nine years old, and I lived at the Concourse Plaza with Nick Etten and eleven other New York Yankees, most of them scrubs like Hersh Martin and Don Savage, who would disappear from baseball once the war was over.\u201d A good example of how specific detail adds to believability. You can\u2019t fault the crime fiction awardee giving her acceptance speech in \u201c[The Applause Dies]\u201d by Lori Rader-Day, either.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Fact based? The facts have to be right<\/em>. This is one of those good-writing principles that you don\u2019t notice until it\u2019s violated, or some stray fact dings believability, and I have to say, from that perspective, all the stories I read were believable, or mostly so (allowances for the Halloween influence). Quite a lot of facts, fitted together so nicely that I believed them all, were in Pat Black\u2019s \u201cCadere ex Stellae.\u201d (\u201cFall from the Stars\u201d\u2014I looked it up).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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    The Milky Way (photo: Forest Wander, Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Last week\u2019s post about what to look for in a short story received a lot of likes, and reading the current issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine offers the opportunity to put those insights to the test. And, the competition … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"See last week's expert advice about writing a great short story in action in the current EQMM.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,120],"tags":[1840],"class_list":["post-11208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-short-story","tag-eqmm"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2UM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11210,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11208\/revisions\/11210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}