Dissecting the Short Story: "God Bless" by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Welcome to the new installment of my Dissecting the Short Story series. This week's entry is a timely one, being for a story set around the holiday season. As with all entries in this series, my intention here is to look at a story which was sold to a pro-rate fiction market, generally one of the large digest magazines, and see what we -- as writers -- can learn from it.

I thought this was a fantastic story and one which went in directions I would not have expected before reading it. If you have a copy of this magazine, it might be worth your time to read this one before reading my notes below.

Story:
"God Bless" by Barbara Westwood Diehl
Published in:
January, 2012 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Approximate Length:
2500 words
Presentation:
Third Person, Chronological (Well, pretty much...)
Summary [WARNING: Spoilers Included!]:

Dissecting the Short Story: "The Gap" by Mikal Trimm

Welcome to the new installment of my Dissecting the Short Story series where every other Friday I look at a recently-published short story from a major genre fiction publication.

Story:
"The Gap" by Mikal Trimm
Published in:
December 2011 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Approximate Length:
2500 words
Presentation:
Third Person, Chronological
Summary [WARNING: Spoilers Included!]:

Dissecting the Short Story: "Hostage Situation" by Dave Zeltserman

This is the first of a series of posts (introduced here) which will appear once every two weeks on the blog. In this series, a short story from a recent major digest will be analyzed in detail, to see what we can learn about how the author approached creating the story.

Story:
"Hostage Situation" by Dave Zeltserman
Published in: 
September/October 2011 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Approximate Length:
2000 words
Presentation:
Chronological Narrative, Third-Person Limited
Summary [WARNING: Spoilers Included!]:
A bank patron, Lawrence Talbot, is present when a robbery occurs is distressed at the timing of the event. There's somewhere he needs to be, and when the robbery turns into a hostage situation, his worry only increases.