Nature of a short story
I saw another episode of Neil Gaiman's writing masterclass yesterday in which he talked about short stories.
A nice idea he brought up is that a short story can be seen as "the ending to a book you never wrote", or the beginning, or a snippet of something that happens somewhere in the middle. You go up to it, you experience it, and then you go on your way without needing to elaborate further.
This clicked with me because I've always considered myself a collector of what I call "vignettes". These are short scenes that I've always thought of as belonging to a larger story. I sometimes write them down somewhere and tell myself I'll leave them there until I have a story where they might fit in, but I don't ever really do anything with them.
I realized that all along I've the seeds for many potential short stories and I was letting them go stale! No need to feel bad about it though, as the inspiration behind most (all) of the ones I have kept has long been lost, and I didn't write them down in enough detail to be able to recreate what was it that excited me about that particular scene.
But still, it's a good thing. I'll keep an eye out for any new vignettes of this kind and see what comes up if I just let them free on the page!
Going back to the episode...
Neil Gaiman also answered a question I've always had about short stories: how long should they actually be.
It turns out that they can be anything from 10 words to 8k words. He gave a fantastic example of a short story he did in only 100 words called Nicholas Was.... I can't include it here because of copyright, but I strongly encourage you to read it by clicking the previous link.
His short story is good, and chilly, and I think it exemplifies really well his description of what a short story actually is:
a close up magic trick that leaves you asking yourself "wow, how did they do that?"