![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyMirrorthaw likes the new novella! *small happy dance*
Now to tidy it up and send it out and see if anybody else likes it.
We are both uncertain of what to do about one particular issue. This novella--like the other eight stories I've written with this narrator--are very much, and very deliberately, in the school of M. R. James. Not pastiches, because James wasn't interested in sex and psychology, and I am, but old-fashioned and decorous horror stories. Very much in that Jamesian mode--which is rather at odds with current trends in short-story writing.
In particular, this style of narrative does not feature an opening hook. I can make it do so, and am torn between my knowledge that that would very likely make it more appealing to editors, and my personal feeling that that's not how that type of story--and this story in particular--works. I think the slow build is worth it (it's a 10k novella, I do have space), but I am well aware I am in the minority.
And so I'm wondering what other people think. Do you have to have a hook in a short story, or are you willing to give the author enough rope to hang herself with?
Now to tidy it up and send it out and see if anybody else likes it.
We are both uncertain of what to do about one particular issue. This novella--like the other eight stories I've written with this narrator--are very much, and very deliberately, in the school of M. R. James. Not pastiches, because James wasn't interested in sex and psychology, and I am, but old-fashioned and decorous horror stories. Very much in that Jamesian mode--which is rather at odds with current trends in short-story writing.
In particular, this style of narrative does not feature an opening hook. I can make it do so, and am torn between my knowledge that that would very likely make it more appealing to editors, and my personal feeling that that's not how that type of story--and this story in particular--works. I think the slow build is worth it (it's a 10k novella, I do have space), but I am well aware I am in the minority.
And so I'm wondering what other people think. Do you have to have a hook in a short story, or are you willing to give the author enough rope to hang herself with?
