And I think it's a fairly common construction in short stories, really, to have lots of passivity and observation concluding with One Moment of Finally the Character Does Something: but that one moment is all it takes.
I kind of feel like that's the only way to write a short story. It probably isn't, but it's the form so many of them take. The more you try to fit in, the more you have to explain, and then it's not short anymore. Short stories have a lot of characters who sit around thinking while things happen, now that I think about it. You can only do so much characterization with your descriptions.
(This isn't as true in fantasy stories, I want to say, not always. The ones I've read recently have more of a mini-epic quality. A girl figures out how to use a sword to fight a boogey man over the rooftops, a man takes a baby on a journey to find a name before the shadows get the kid, etc.)
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I kind of feel like that's the only way to write a short story. It probably isn't, but it's the form so many of them take. The more you try to fit in, the more you have to explain, and then it's not short anymore. Short stories have a lot of characters who sit around thinking while things happen, now that I think about it. You can only do so much characterization with your descriptions.
(This isn't as true in fantasy stories, I want to say, not always. The ones I've read recently have more of a mini-epic quality. A girl figures out how to use a sword to fight a boogey man over the rooftops, a man takes a baby on a journey to find a name before the shadows get the kid, etc.)