Click on image to purchase Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters.
Great teachers have always shown up for me. When I first became serious about writing short fiction, a true master teacher showed up at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. His workshop required me to make the 2 hour drive from the little town in which I lived (El Dorado) to his weekly fiction workshop. His own work was and is stellar; I learned very quickly that he had the capacity to help me know how to make my own stories communicate what I wanted them to.
After the first semester, I requested and received, from him, a list of the most important stories from the ‘greats.’ There were about 10 of these stories and I spent the summer break trying to read them like a writer, with attention to craft.
Chekhov, my teacher advised, is the master, even today. So I began a lifelong quest to understand what I could of Chekhov and his work, including a wonderful compilation of his letters edited by Rosamund Bartlett, entitled Anton Chekhov: a Life in Letters (see the above image and link).
Below is a quote* from the WordPress blog called One Wild World, but I believe the advice is most likely from that book of Chekhov’s letters. I’ve kept the following in my story journal since I began the hyper-short stories I am interested in producing. I hope this ‘bellwether’ is as helpful to you, Dear Reader and Writer, as it has been for me.
“In letters Chekhov sent to his writing contemporaries, as well as his family, Chekhov often discussed his work and ideas about story craft. His advice is as relevant now as it was in the 1800s. In a May 10, 1886, letter to his brother Alexander, also a writer, Chekhov noted six principles of a good story:
1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature
2. Total objectivity
3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects
4. Extreme brevity
5. Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype
6. Compassion”
*The above quote is excerpted from “Anton Chekhov’s Six Writing Principles” by Carly Sandifer on November 14, 2011
Cynthia C Sample is the Author of Forms of Defiance,
a powerful and unique collection of flash fiction stories.