How To Read And Understand Short Stories Properly

Hello Everyone and a happy New year to you all!

2017 was a good year for me in terms of improving my reading habit. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Twitter Read Club for indirectly pushing me to read more as well as learning many many things.

One of the books we read last year was What It Means For A Man To Fall From The Sky, a wonderful debut collection of short stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah yet there was a problem with most readers who felt they could not connect with the story. Most felt they did not see how title of the book correlated with any of the stories. Another group argued that the writing was indeed too sophisticated for their liking and they were finding it hard to gain any meaning from it.

Personally, I found each story compelling for me and yes maybe the writing was of course different, it still did not take my eyes away from what the writer was giving to her readers.

So I decided to help out in explaining how you want to react when you read a short story.

Keep in mind that you don't want to divide carelessly into it. That could only result to you hitting rocks or drowning and you will never know what it was meant to tell you at all

Here a few tips I whipped up for you guys

Research On The Book Before You Start Reading

First of all, you want to know what you’re getting into and that is why it’s important to research on the book. It might seem like spoilers but it really isn’t. I do it all the time and not just for books but for medicated drugs, drinks, and many other things I putting myself into.

It is important to find out if indeed this book interest you or not.

One of my personal beliefs is that not every book is for everyone. I might like horrors or romantic novels while my friend might be more inclined to Afro futurisms or fantasy novels and they will get what they want from it but if we decide to switch and read book lacking our interests we might end up never getting anything which is why it's important to get the clues from the book you're about to expose your entire being to.

Identify The Themes.

Most readers particularly a few of my friends and acquaintances are guilty of this. They just read through without knowing where the writer is coming from or what it is they are trying to say through their words.

You need to be able to visualize the imagery so as to gain a deeper understanding and purpose to the book.

Popular short stories do have more than one or more themes cutting across various topics we discuss in our modern day society.

Case in point a story titled Windfalls in Lesley’s book is themed at the manipulative actions of a mother who uses her daughter’s misfortunes to gain money for herself over and over again (my personal conjecture).

Black vodka, a ten story collection by Deborah Levy explores many themes such as sadness, love, loneliness and bitterness which you would agree is a regular occurrence in our everyday lives.

Men without Women by Haruki Murakami, a favourite of mine in 2017. Here he explores a theme which includes men and women and how both genders differ from each other and yet they are cohesive and flawed in their own ways.

These are just a few short story collections that bear different themes.

Always look for the themes. They will not let you down.

Identify The "Meat and Potatoes" Of The Story

This is really important. There will always exist an essence, a decisive moment in many short stories in which readers should eagerly anticipate. This in turn will help them get high on the characters while finding purpose to what the story really talks about. There is always that moment of awe where the story hits you and leaves an imprint you might not shake off for a long while.

Learn To Analyse Each story

After reading each story, don't just flip to the next one. You're doing yourself no favours. You will need to go deep into analysis as well as possible daydreaming (which I do sometimes) and try to discover a few things like;

• What really happened in the story?
• Who were the characters in the story?
• What was their role?
• Was the role important or not?
• Why was this story worthy to be part of this collection?
• What was the reader trying to say to me?

Try asking a few of this F.A.Qs to yourself and see what you can come up with.

And finally, if you can read the short story collection a second time, please do. It would be very helpful.

If you do not get the imagery or the theme at first, there's a high likelihood you will get it the second time.

Do enjoy your reading in 2018 and try to at least read 30-50 books this year.

Trust me. It's worth it.