The difference between an adequate short story and a damn good one

If you read my private blog, you can skip this one, since it's a rehash of what I posted over there this morning.

What is it that makes a good short story? P.J. Thompson got me thinking about this last night. In a novel, you have to give the protagonist a problem to solve, or otherwise you're going to have a very pissed-off reader. For instance, in the novel I'm currently reading, China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, Isaac has to solve the problem of how to give flight back to a garuda, and Lin has to solve the problem of how to do a commissioned sculpture for a monstrous gangster. Two clear problems, and by the end of the novel, I as the reader expect those problems to be resolved in one form or another.

But does a short story have to hew to this pattern in order to be successful? There has to be conflict of some sort, but I don't think there has to be a problem and a resolution. For instance, one of my favorite short stories is Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing."

This situation is a conflict, but not a problem. If it is a problem, it is only the antagonist's problem, and that problem is never resolved. Someone once said that a short story is about the most important event in the protagonist's life. I'm not certain I agree with it having to be the most important, but certainly it should rank in the protagonist's top ten life-changing events. These events can include coming of age, a confrontation with death, a confrontation with one's own demons, the pursuit of a goal (such as marriage). Only with that last category do I believe that there has to be a clear and unambiguous resolution to the story -- either the protag achieves his goal or he fails. In the other types of conflicts, it is enough for me to see the protagonist struggle with the event; I don't need to know how it turns out, if the story is well-written. But of course, therein lies the rub. You have to be really damn good to write a short story with an ambiguous ending and not leave the reader cursing your name. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't try!

I'm speaking more as a reader, now, than as a writer. I don't want trite stories that step out the pattern A-B-C, as if the author were playing connect the dots. I don't want to know by page two where the author is going to take me. I want to be held in suspense, and if the story starts with a pretty princess alone in a tower, I know that by the end she will be rescued by a handsome young man. So what? Why should I care?

Okay, that's probably not fair, since I earlier stated that goal stories should be allowed a resolution. However, the writing has to be really, really good for me to held by a tale like this.

Ha! Hoist by my own petard! The mail lady just arrived with a YFOP from Realms of Fantasy with the hand-written note below stating, "This was really funny, but the story offers no resolution." Ah, well. I shall take that as a sign to leave off my rant.

Adieu, dear readers!