Hee. KristinT and I were just discussing ExLibris on Monday!

Namedropper.

Yes! I think but am not positive that it came up in a discussion about What Makes A Mary Sue A Mary Sue

Okay, so I'm not crazy! I'll try searching the old thread. Thanks, Java cat!

Hey, anyone want to give me some good manga recs? I just read Fullmetal Alchemist (for my Young Adult Literature class, which is pretty much the awesomest class ever) and now I want to explore further.

So, any short story fans? What makes a short story good? Is a mysterious/ambiguous/unresolved ending desireable?

I like short stories from time to time, and I wouldn't say that desireable is the term I'd use for mysterious/unresolved/ambiguous ending. I think that a short story can support such an ending much better than a longer work can; in a longer work, that kind of ending can feel like a cheat, given the investment we've put into reading the story. Conversely, a resolved ending to a short story can seem pat and contrived, especially if the events leading to the resolution have to be crammed in to a too-short space.

I'm going to have to think about why I like the short stories I do and come back to this one.

Is a mysterious/ambiguous/unresolved ending desireable?

That sounds way too much like formula for me. It can work, in good hands. But it doesn't need to be there.

I agree with Anne that those endings work better in short stories. A novel, unless mightily well done, will leave me thinking "I've been here how long, and I don't know what happened!"

I agree with Anne. The m/u/a/ ending can work very well in a short story. Especially since the short story doesn't have to say what happened next. Examples:

"When I was a child, something happened that changed everything." The story is "what happened," the consequences left for the reader to decipher.

In the SF area, "Scientist makes discovery." While it's obvious that the discovery will change things, we don't see what those changes are. You might want to check out Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past" as an example.

I was just thinking "Well, I finished Son of a Witch, but that conversation's already happened." and then this opening showed up.

OMG, incomplete ending that blows a lot. I've seen it work a few times in longer works, but there needs to be a sense of an ending, if not the ending, although I think that that holds for short stories, too. I can deal with and even like the ambiguity of an open ending, but there does need to be an "ending" with the "open"

ITA, DebetEsse.

I can deal with and even like the ambiguity of an open ending, but there does need to be an "ending" with the "open"

Ah, well put.

I was just thinking that two of the first short stories I really loved were "The Sound of Thunder" and "The Lottery" (fairy tales excluded here) which resolve, although the ending note is brief and not sustained.

I've since read about a billion short stories - I really like the form, and some of the best genre work is done in short story format, and it seems to me that the ending is the crucial part. Some stories stop just short of resolution, some deliberately stop at an ambiguous place, and very few seem to fully define ending events.

I guess it's a spectrum, and I'm wondering what the point along the spectrum is that meets with the widest reader appreciation. I seem to like resolutions, but only just.

Aimee, re-reading old comments. I really wanted to sit Liir down and have a talk about his mother (and what the Hell was the point of putting the alleged disclaimer all the time?) and himself. "Kid. You make the broom fly. You're a witch."

The thing that I really like about short stories is that you can go places with them that you can't with longer works: explore interesting ideas that just can't hold the weight of a bigger plotline, but are more than worth poking a little, or, even if they can hold the weight, there's no need for it. The flip side of that is that I hate having a story feel like it's a longer work trying to get out.