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Hi, I'm Anne Strainchamps.

A great writer once said there are three rules for writing a novel.

Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

So maybe try a short story instead.

Except short stories can actually be even more difficult to write.

Because in a short story, there are no words to waste.

Every single one counts.

Today, unto the best of our knowledge,

what makes a short story great? Actor Jesse Eisenberg and former This American Life producer Diane Cook have new collections out. We'll talk with them. But first, Ben Marcus. His most recent

collection is called Leaving the Sea, and he also just edited an anthology

called New American Stories. When Steve Paulson talked with him, he asked him to begin with a bit

from the introduction. Language is a drug, but a short story cannot be smoked. You can't inject it.

Stories don't come bottled as a cream. You cannot have a story

massaged into you by a bearish old man. You have to stare down a story until it wobbles, yields,

then catapults into your face. But as squirrelly as they are to capture, stories are the ideal deranger.

If they are well made and you submit to them, they go in clean.

Stories deliver their chemical disruption without the ashy hangover, the blacking out, the poison.

They trigger pleasure, fear, fascination, love, confusion, desire, repulsion.

Drugs get flushed from our systems, but not the best stories.

...