My Writer’s Quote Wednesday for this week is in honor of the Short Story. Wendell Harris says:
“…the short story is a ….presentation of a moment whose intensity makes it seem outside the ordinary stream of time, or the significance is outside the ordinary range of experience.” —Wendell Harris
I really like how Harris spoke about, “the presentation of a moment” because it is what I think about when I think of short stories. It’s like a sampling of the authors writing, pulling as much life from the story as is possible and then storing it into as few pages as possible, which is my goal for my current short story trilogy. To fit as much information as possible in just a few pages, while simultaneously providing for that bit of mystery that I think is important for the short story. I think Stella relates to this quote because it is the presentation of a single moment in history. It tackles the ongoing racial intensity of the past and brings it into our present day so that we are experiencing, in a unique way, the co-existing of past, present, and future.
I wanted to include an Author Bio from the quote but I read this as part of a list of short story quotes and saved them to my drive awhile back so I’m not sure who this particular Wendell Harris is, but what a great quote!
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And that’s it for this week’s episode of Writer’s Quote Wednesday, as hosted by Colleen of Silver Threading.
The PBS Blog 