Raymond Carver, writer of minimalist and evocative short stories, once described his affinity for that form with the same sparse punch that marked the stories themselves: "Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on." Carver's stories are emotionally charged dramas of the working class, but his words may be even more applicable to the telling of scary tales. Of the giants in the genre, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft rarely worked outside the short story or novella form, and while authors like Richard Matheson and Stephen King have obviously been active novel writers, there's an argument to be made that their best work is their shortest.
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