Sean O’ Reilly
is the author of the short story collection, ‘Curfew’, and the novels ‘Love and Sleep’, ‘The Swing of Things’, ‘Watermark’, and most recently, ‘Levitation’. Born in Derry in Northern Ireland, He currently lives in Dublin where he leads the innovative creative writing workshop with the Stinging Fly Literary Magazine. He spoke on the art of writing short stories in a solo session at the
Times
LitFest.
He spoke on the differences between short stories and novels, emphasizing the different effects they have in the same amount of words.
"It's effect is felt in one go" he explained, "Unlike the novel where you might be reading it for a while, closing it and coming back to it". He went on to say, "The impact of of it should be in one reading, like a good poem" and gave tips on how to write it as such.
He expressed on the importance of choosing words carefully in short stories and making sure they don't get too long. Stories had to be, "short compact and concise", he said. Short stories should only contain "what you treasure" he advised, gave an interesting analogy. If your house was burning and you only has time to rescue 1 thing, you would take what you treasure and writers must do the same with short stories.
Irish short stories are often described as lyrical and he explained that trend came from old Gaelic stories. When the story or the character or storyteller reached an important part of a story, the language went up a register. Without losing it's simplicity, it went poetic.
He also advised to be simple, joking that though the Irish usually like to show off, when writing their language rarely displayed that.
At the end of the session he took a questions from the enthusiastic audience, telling them what his favourite story is and answering how to write in the new age. Some a memorable bit of advice was when he said,
"There is no such thing as 'we as writers'. That doesn't exist. I think that is just talk because it's only ever going to be you, alone, with a pen."
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