OMEER

Omeer is a character in a published story, not my story , but it won a prize and is excellent writing. I thought it was going to be under 5,000 words long but it was not. It seemed more like 10,000 words or even longer. I tried to read it several times but the story didn't grab me, as a short story is to do immediately, even in the first sentence, even the first line, and dare I say even first word? Yes! That would be good. I laid Omeer aside all those times, and finally got his story read weeks after getting the magazine in the mail. I kept waiting for it to show the Inciting Moment so that the plot could get on the road. It never really did that. There is no Climax in the plotting either and perhaps only a week Culmination. 

The rules for a short story have not changed. They are more like the rules for poetry rather than like those for a novel where almost anything can happen at any time and with many words. A short story needs every word it takes to tell it, with none wasted. It covers a short period of time, such as a month (and that is stretching it a bit), two weeks, one day, or even just fifteen minutes. It portrays one impression and all hangs on that. This is the skeleton of a short story: a short period of time with the Inciting Moment (the cause of the story's being written), the Climax (the highest point of interest in the story, near the end), and the Culmination (the ending). It does not cover a character's entire life; that belongs in a novel. Omeer's story lacked all of these requirements and if it had been part one of a novel, I could praise it, but not as it is.