Ben Loory, the author behind Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day, recently visited the KQED studios to record an episode of The Writers’ Block. Get to know him a little better with this Q+A, in which he talks about his love of The Twilight Zone and how screenwriting is like selling your kids into slavery.
The stories from your first collection, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, read like Twilight Zone-y fairy tales and are mostly quite short. Where does your interest in that type of story come from? And what draws you to that minimalist format?
Ben Loory: I think they’re more fables than fairy tales, really. When I think “fairy tales,” I think princesses and castles; I’m more about octopi and Death personified and a skydiving moose and whatnot. I don’t really know where the interest comes from; it’s just always been there, ever since I was little. I always loved Aesop’s fables, Animal Farm, Stuart Little, Sylvester the Magic Pebble…really anything at all involving talking animals (let’s not forget all those Warner Brothers cartoons). And The Twilight Zone is just the best show of all time…that’s just a simple fact, right?
As for what people call my minimalist form, I don’t really see it that way. I just write stories the way I tell them (and the way I like them told to me): short, funny, to the point, sometimes scary, and with plenty to think about. I don’t see why stories have to become so long just because you write them down.