The scenario, a likely sequence of events, reveals the strengths and weaknesses of characters that touch our hearts and keep us reading.

“Likely Lake,” by Mary Robison, Object Lessons: The Paris Review presents The Art of the Short Story

Socially awkward moments reveal our deepest insecurities. What is likely to happen to a man who screwed things up with his ex-wife and is trying desperately to make a go of it with his reluctant girlfriend when a woman he barely knows blurts out that she has a crush on him? Confused, hurt feelings touch a nerve as well as our hearts.

• “Slower Than Death,” by Mike McCracken, The Stoneslide Corrective

We think we know what will happen when Mickey’s owner takes the old Boston terrier to the vet because he seems to be winding down. We don’t. A genre shifter.

• “Marital Relations,” by Sylvia Otmarsh, The Stoneslide Corrective

We think we know what is happening behind a closed bathroom door. We do, even though we wish we didn’t. 

• “The Mother,” by LaToya Watkins, Ruminate, Issue 29, Autumn 2013

Gripping, gritty, hard to read, impossible to stop. The scenario is at once familiar. A self-styled Jesus, son of a whore, dies a Jonestown death. What will the mother finally say to people who come to ask her to name her son’s father? Sometimes you have to live with a story for a while before the significance of the end hits you. I haven’t figured it out yet.

From The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Vol. 1 by Ursula K. Le Guin

These two stories work together to explore the theme of freedom vs fidelity. They provide a framework for those who want to think deeply about where the United States is as a nation today.

• A Week in the Country

A world away from Cleveland, people in Central Europe struggle to live through centuries of oppression. Two students take the train for a holiday in the family home in the country. The events that lead to the death of one student are juxtaposed against the struggle to survive on all fronts: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

…the future, however you look at it, contains only one sure thing and that is death. But the moment is unpredictable. There is simply no telling what will happen.

• Unlocking the Air

Piercing in its presentation of a world caught between the East and the West and wanting neither, the author switches her view of events from fairy tale to history to biology to story to objects—a stone, a bus, a key. It works as another juxtaposition of a moment against the sweep of time.

So much depends on the circumstances.

• “A Taste of Dust,” by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, The Best American Short Stories 2005, edited by Michael Chabon

A familiar scenario; man at the height of his success leaves wife for younger woman; man ages and must now contend with flip teenage children and impatient younger wife. In a twist, the first wife finds she envies him. Note to writer self: Try heading off your predictable ending with an unanticipated emotion.