Naomi Wood: 'In a short story, each moment and each sentence has to do a lot of heavy lifting'
Naomi Wood is the award-winning author of three novels, The Godless Boys (2011), Mrs. Hemingway (2015) and The Hiding Game (2019), and the short story collection, This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (2024). Her stories have been published in the Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, Joyland and Stylist, and have been shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize, the London Magazine Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Story Prize. ‘Comorbidities’ won the 2023 BBC National Short Story Award. The Hiding Game, set in the Bauhaus in the 1920s, was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and shortlisted for an HWA Gold Crown.
We’re thrilled to welcome Naomi to the CBC tutor team on our new nine-week online course Writing Short Stories – Advanced.
Naomi shares her advice for writers submitting their short stories to journals and writing competitions, discusses the inspiration behind her short story collection This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, and tells us what she loves about teaching creative writing.
Your short story ‘Comorbidities’ won the 2023 BBC National Short Story Award. It marries humour and contemporary anxieties in a delightfully sardonic way. It can be difficult to be funny on the page – how do you approach balancing humour and serious topics?
The most important thing I’ve learned when writing comically is that you have to write the story ‘straight’ initially. If I set out trying to be funny right off the bat it just doesn’t work, because the story and the structure has to be stronger. All the jokes are layered into the last draft once the ‘armature’ of the story is solid. Otherwise your reader might laugh a little but put it down quite soon, because the tension of the story just hasn’t grabbed them.
As well as being an award-winning short story writer, you are also a celebrated novelist. How does your approach to a project vary depending on the format you’re writing in?
In both forms I get quite obsessive, reading everything about a topic, listening to podcasts, reading theory. My approach differs with the story because I tend to work on one for about three months, then I’ll let it rest for many months, sometimes even a year, before coming back to rework, rewrite, edit. With a novel I’m more constantly immersed. I would never abandon a novel for that long!
Your debut short story collection This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things publishes this April. The stories cover a wide-ranging variety of female relationships and the complexities of womanhood – and you don’t shy away from characters with a dark side. When you were building this collection, was it important for you to have an overarching theme?
I had so much fun writing this collection. I think it coincided with a time in my life (midlife) where I started to see how much of myself I had buried in order to be liked, or in order to care for others, or in order to succeed. I became aware, as the character does in ‘Wedding Day’, of my own ‘bad’ energy, and where that might take me... Though I don’t necessarily act on it, in the stories the characters do – Lesley throws a missile at her therapist; Claire oppresses her foster daughter with toxic positivity. I think we all have these ‘bad’ impulses, and I wanted to be transparent about them. This collection feels cohesive, and I do think it offers the reader a specific question – What would happen if you really did that thing? The answer – this. The characters are grotesques, in some ways, but also fantasies. So yes – a theme is important!
When you’re planning a new piece of short fiction, do you start from a character, a scenario, or something else entirely?
I start from very little; I often wish it were more! Often it’s an experience, but it’s no more than an anecdote. ‘Lesley in Therapy’ began because I had done a corporate therapy session for parents (mothers) coming back from parental leave, and the experience was weird enough that I wanted to explore it. Same with ‘Flatten the Curve’, when I caught myself munching the children’s vitamins during Lockdown. So it doesn’t usually come out of a character, but a scenario odd enough that the dissonance gives it instant story appeal.
Short stories traverse a full narrative arc in a restrained wordcount. Do you have any editing tricks to help make sure every word counts?
I think often about George Saunders’ advice about seasoning the text with tiny little beats. Every sentence can propel: that can be in terms of wit, but also in terms of plot. In a short story, each moment and each sentence has to do a lot of heavy lifting. If there isn’t a beat inside a paragraph – a pivot, change in direction, a wrong-stepping of the readers’ expectations – then you need to start questioning whether it needs to be there.
Which short story or collection do you always recommend to others?
I have a clutch of books I always, always, always recommend: Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart; ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere; Deborah Eisenberg’s Your Duck is My Duck; Sarah Hall’s The Beautiful Indifference; and Danielle Evans’ The Office of Historical Collections. All women!
Do you have any advice for writers who are thinking of submitting their short stories to journals and writing competitions for the first time?
The default response you have to expect is rejection. ‘Comorbidities’ was rejected five or six times from various journals before it won the BBC Prize. I think my success rate at getting into journals or listing in competitions is about 2-5%. Also, if you’re newer to the ‘game’, submit to more regional rather than national competitions; the numbers are more favourable.
We’re so excited about your new Writing Short Stories – Advanced course. What do you enjoy about teaching creative writing?
I love the lightbulb moments. I love that you can suggest something – a technical tweak, for example – and it lifts the author’s writing so much – and often it can be a small thing they weren’t even aware of. I do believe 80% of it is totally teachable. I’ve never met a student of writing who doesn’t leave the classroom with a clearer, cleaner communication of their vision. And that’s very satisfying.
This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things publishes on 4 Apr.
Write innovative short fiction with expert teaching, workshops and tutorials from award-winning short story writer Naomi Wood. Apply for our Writing Short Stories – Advanced course by 24 Mar.
We have one scholarship place available on this new course. This short story scholarship will award one talented writer with limited financial means a place on our Writing Short Stories – Advanced course. Deadline Sunday 31 March.
Breakthrough Scholarship for Short Story Writers with Low Income
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