The best short stories have been the shortest. Even the short stories that take pages and pages to tell feel short in my memory, and in the way I can encapsulate their meaning to myself later when the work is not in front of me.

The usual advice is to start a short story as close to the ending as possible. It’s similar to a scene in a novel and though a short story may have multiple scenes, it should begin as close to the eureka moment of the epiphany as possible. Or, depending on genre, the uh-oh moment.

Neil Gaiman’s postcard story fills the same space in my mind as Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” – though one of these took a decade and a TV show to understand. If you’re having issues with O’Connor’s short story, watch Netflix’s Longmire series. Also read the books, they’re great, but watch the show. Just, the whole thing. The explanation happens during the investigation into a murder of a main character but that’s all I’ll say about it.

Ted Chiang’s short stories, including the short that became the movie The Arrival, may take entire evenings to read. When I think back to any particular one, though, what I remember most is the revelation.

As with any consideration of time and structure choice – whether you should be writing a novel, short story, or poem – remember that all of these has a epiphany. You don’t get to pick the epiphany, the reader does that, and it won’t be the same one for everybody. But some epiphanies can happen in an instant, and some need a running start to get there.