Sam Shelstad, "Notes on the Craft of Fiction"
It’s December 1. To officially kick off the 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar, here are some iron-clad rules for writing your own short story by the author of Cop House.
How would you describe your story?
SAM SHELSTAD: The story is excerpted from my novel The Cobra and the Key, which came out this October with Touchwood Editions. The novel takes the form of a creative-writing guide, where the guide's fictional author can't help but reference his personal life and autobiographical works while dispensing misguided writing advice, which is how the narrative breaks through. The excerpt takes sections from the first few chapters and, while these sections are more focused on the misguided writing advice side of things, a sense of the narrator and his various delusions begins to emerge.
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
SS: I wrote the first draft of the novel while my wife was pregnant, hoping to write as much as possible while I still had the time before the baby came. That baby turned two this summer, and he’s the best! But I was right: I don't write as often or as productively as I did pre-fatherhood. This book was a lot of fun to work on, because part of the process was trying to make myself laugh every page and as I built up this character and his world, I had more and more material to craft jokes from. It was also a bit like solving a puzzle, because I had to figure out how to fit a narrative into a creative guide and organize the story elements so that they followed along with the writing guide’s chapters on plot and style, etc.
What kind of research went into this story?
SS: I read through a number of creative-writing guides: artful, celebrated works from beloved authors and hacky, by-the-numbers instructional tools by unknown writers like myself. Both types were equally influential. The more artful guides were helpful to think of as what my narrator would aspire to create, and I borrowed many stylistic and formal elements from these. And the hacky, conventional ones were more in line with what my narrator was actually creating and much of the writing advice that he mangles came from this type of book.
What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?
SS: While all kinds of people read novels, only writers read short stories. I looked into this, and it's true. So short stories are a wonderful sort of insider's art form where writers can try out new things and blow off steam, without the finicky demands of the novel-reading public souring the whole process.
Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?
SS: Well, if you enjoyed the story, check out the novel! And then you can visit samshelstad.com for all your Sam Shelstad information. It’s one of the best Sam Shelstad resources on the web.
What's the best gift you've ever been given?
SS: Mortal Kombat for Super Nintendo, by my parents, Christmas 1992.
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What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2023 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians.