Short lists of short stories by a shortlist

How does writing short stories differ from writing full-length fiction, and what do you enjoy about writing in the genre?

Mark Haddon (MH): I'm not sure the question has much meaning. the short story is such an elastic and eclectic form that short stories differ from one another more than they different as a whole from many forms of writing.

Ali Smith (AS): It's generally faster, it generally takes less time. So there's a lot of short-term relief involved. It's also the most giving of the forms - it will let you do anything with it - and among readers it's a beloved form with good reason, it's hugely rewarding. But it's generally very tough, because the concentration it asks, both of readers and writers, is immense and consuming, and the short story, even at its lightest, is a form very close to the bone. These things give it its unique power, though I'd say all really good writing shares the distillation and the tight edit associated with the short story.

Cynan Jones (CJ): I like the rules that short fiction sets. The choice as to what you can tell is harder and that can bring an economy and power to writing.

Toby Litt (TL): Stories are less dutiful than novels. You don't have to be so calculating when starting out on them. The reader will tolerate weirder and more intense stuff in stories, because they won't have to dwell with it for so long. I find this freeing. I am fairly at home with weird and intense stuff.

Junot Diaz (JD): I love both stories and novels but each form certainly has its vexations and its strengths. As I always say: the vexation and strength of the short story is that it can be perfect; the vexation and strength of the novel is that it never can. (A novel draws part of its power from resembling the human subjectivity that produces it: imperfect, inconsistent, contradictory.) In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us profoundly into their characters' lifeworld-and by lifeworld I mean the emotional, social, historical, material time-space that the story is set in. The best novels imbed us deeply into these lifeworlds, make them nearly our own. Part of that happens because we spend quite a long time in that lifeworld and that week or two or three or four we spend spending reading the novel, that immersion, helps to build a longitudinal relationship between the reader and the world. Short stories alas are short and therefore can't do lifeworlds and longitudinal cathexis like the novel can. But what short stories-- at least the traditional ones I'm familiar with-- do better than novels is to capture what is so difficult about being human-the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability, how quickly everything we are, everything we call our lives can change, can be upended, can disappear.  Never to return. In novels the end always comes at the end of the long process of reading. What a false consolation! That's not really how life works. We all know that the novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one. By their very brevity, by the force with which they create their mini-worlds and then eject us from them, short stories in my opinion better capture what it feels like to be alive and to have to deal with the way our world never stays the same, we're always having to wrestle with change and loss. In short, the novel is about the lifeworld; the short story (as I practice it) is about the end of a particular lifeworld.  (Which is different from the end of a life.)

Do you write by hand first or straight onto screen?

MH: All of my writing begins by spending a long time as a chaotic, shifting mess both in my head and in notebooks before I start typing it up (and most ideas never get anywhere near this stage). I then toggle repeatedly between scribbling over print-outs, typing up the new draft, rinsing and repeating many times.

AS: I start with a pencil. Then I move to machine. There's a fruitful shift between instinct and edit.

CJ: I always write by hand. I like the physical proximity of that.

TL: I wrote this story in a small notebook. I usually write by hand. I like to keep my means as simple as possible, and I like to be able to write whilst travelling. Especially on trains.

SH: I write on the page or on screen, depending what I can get my hands on when I want to write! First drafts require no magic method - it's the editing that is important.

JD: I write on paper, longhand. My brain doesn't seem to work as fast as I type. We all got our rhythms.  This happens to be mine.

Which short story collection by another author would you recommend?

MH: Apart form Dubliners? I think that collection which had the greatest effect on me was Assorted Fire Events by David Means. the darkness, the violence, the presence of actual, gritty stuff after reading so many allusive, minimal carveresque collections.

AS: That question's just made my mind pixellate. Loads of collections. Okay, the first two writers that come to mind are Grace Paley and Katherine Mansfield - at either end of the last century writers who knew how to let the form change and develop in a way that understands and opens the possibilities for both the life of the time and the timelessness in the form.

CJ: If I had to pick one short story collection, The Long Valley by John Steinbeck

TL: The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel

SH: I wouldn't limit myself to recommending one collection only, so here are a few - Dusk by James Salter, Dark Lies The Island by Kevin Barry, Sunstroke by Tessa Hadley. 

JD: I've just read Sarah Hall's blistering The Beautiful Indifference.  Can't recommend it enough.  So agonizingly achingly real.  And then there's Tania James Aerogrammes (here, here, let's hope it's released in the UK soon - ed.), which I think is just a startling gem of a book. Neither of these books will steer you wrong.

The winner of The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award will be announced this Friday (22 March 2013). To find out the winner as it happens, follow @shortstoryaward and the hashtag #stefg13.

Remember, you can also buy an ebook of all the shortlisted stories and vote for your own winner here