Since I started writing, everyone has advised me to write short stories. Here are a few of the more common things people say:
“It’s easier to try and break into the biz by selling a short story first.”
“A short story is the only way to keep your early work manageable.”
“Once you’ve done a ton of short stories then you can graduate up to doing novels.”
My problem is… I just don’t have any interest in writing short stories. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I don’t have anything against them, I just find myself more invested in full stories.
Jane Espenson has an interesting post that gets to the heart of the matter.
“I recently read one of those collections of short stories. You know the kind, the “Best Short Stories of two thousand and whatever it is now” kind of thing. In the introduction, the editor talked about how she would have thought that short stories would be the increasing in popularity now, as we all lead fast lives with small amounts of leisure time. A short story for the subway ride, a short story before turning out the light to refresh for another hectic day… it seems to make sense. She was puzzled as to why this doesn’t seem to be happening, that novels still seem to be the preferred unit of prose-based fiction.
Well, I can tell her why. Start-up costs. You have to invest a lot of attention in the start of a short story. Who are these people? Are they firemen? What year is this? Hey, are we in China or something? Picking up a short story requires an investment in attention and care far beyond what reading the next chapter of a novel requires. There, we already know what we’re in for and we only have to worry about what our guy is going through next.”
That’s exactly it. I’ve got a pretty high reading comprehension, and I still sometimes find it difficult to get into a story at first. The ramping up process for the reader takes quite a bit of investment. The reader does all this hard work getting to know your characters, wrap their head around the premise and the plot, and then the story is over.
Something similar happens to me when I try to write a short story. I start laying out the ideas, the characters, and pretty soon I realize that it would make a great full novel. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to throw the ideas away when the short story is over. A good idea is worth going all the way?
We live in a world of one-off short stories, one-off novels, one-off films. There is nothing wrong with creating something disposable. If you want to create a story that is told once, and when it ends that world dissolves forever and you’re onto the next project — go right ahead. It’s your choice. BUT, if there’s any chance it could spawn a sequel, then you should worldbuild and hook-build with a series in mind.
What are the different types of series you can create? Here is a short list:
As for keeping things manageable? Nowhere does it say that full stories have to be long. I’ve always called my works in progress ‘novels’ but at 120 page targets they are mere novellas. I have no desire to write the 500 or 1000 page epic. A story of that size could just as easily be broken into small chunks and made episodic. Short books are easier on the reader.
Short books, not short stories. And if you’re going to create a sequel, why not a series?
Not to mention that writing short stories and writing novels are very different beasts. I’ve read terrible short stories by novelists I enjoy and vice versa.
Yeah. The only way I can think to work on short stories is to consider them like a TV episode, and make them part of a larger arc in my storyverse. Under that model, I could conceivably do short stories.
But the one-off disposable short story doesn’t interest me.
I like short stories quite a bit, writing and reading. But they’re definitely a different creature then a novel. You must sacrifice something, in the short form — character development, depth of meaning, whatever — for the sake of getting across a concept. It’s focusing an intense lens on just one aspect of a story: an idea that makes you think, a single dramatic moment, the prose itself…whatever it is the author wants you to really notice.
I do believe that a good short story should be able to be developed into a novel, but I could never get my writing group (when I attended one) to understand that I didn’t want the stories I was sharing to BE novels. To lengthen the narrative would have diluted the impact of the what I was trying to do — they might have been great novels, but not what I wanted. I guess you might say that short stories are more consciously artistic, because you have less room to convey the effect you want to achieve. Which is probably why they are less popular — most readers are just looking for a good story!
Stace, you’re right. It requires focus.
I think that kind of focus could be achieved with shorter novels, or novellas. It certainly can be achieved if you work on the level of individual scenes. Each scene in a story is a kind of story in itself. I don’t think a lot of writers have embraced that view yet, but it’s one I’m fond of…
In other words, I understand the short story mindset, I just tend to hijack it for full novels, or in the interest of making them shorter and more compact.
I think it’s also possible to write a connected series of short stories, although most who write short stories don’t seem to do that.
I agree that while I like to read short stories, I’m not very interested in writing them. In fact, all the shorts I have could very easily be turned into novels – mainly because I wanted to write them as novels in the first place. Usually I cut down to the most essential plot for word count requirements or page spaces issues.
But there is the rare exception in Ray Bradbury’s short stories. I have always thoroughly enjoyed most of what he writes and when I get into his short stories, I don’t much have a problem. Other authors, not so much. Maybe it’s because Bradbury characterizes immediately, giving the reader intimate detail of the players so that there is an instant attachment.
I just enjoy reading and writing novels more because there is more room to expand the world, the characters and the plot. I like the statement above that short stories are more “consciously artistic.” Maybe some novels that seem to drag should be written with this idea in mind – it would give them more of an impact and streamline the plot. Interesting question, either way.
Bri
I’ll tell you what is nice about writing short stories, though. It really forces you to make the most of your language. I’m currently writing some short narrative for an online game and my cap it 1500 words at the absolute most. 1000 words is preferable. Normally I use a lot of character reactions and small details to communicate a character and I’ve had to learn to pick just the right elements to convey as much character as possible with as few words as I can.
I gave up on short stories a long time ago. I can’t think in ‘short’ format. Every idea I ever have ends up growing. It is not a skill I have to write short. That and I don’t have interest in them either. If I’m going to put so much effort into an idea, it’s going to have some depth and be longer than 1000 words :D
I was going to say short stories and novels are two different mediums requiring different structures and pacing.
Jennifer: I have to confess that I tend to inflate my plots rather quickly too. In fact, while I was contracted to write six individual short stories, I ended up framing them all within a meta-plot which will only become clear once all six is over. And I’m finding myself wanting another two or three stories to get even more details in…
Also, I have to sneak up on each piece and knock it out quickly before I’ve had too much time to think it over.
As I said, it’s been a good exercise and I think it has improved my writing and while I’ll certainly accept another contract like this if it’s offered, I have to confess that I hope to find something a bit more comprehensive to work on as well.
A good short story shouldn’t require any extra attention at all. It should be clear what the setting is. A bad short story will confuse you without intending to. It’s unfortunate really. There are a lot of fantastic speculative fiction short stories out there. There’s just a lot of horrible literary garbage that gets far too much praise from Oprah-lites like.
People are correct though in saying that it is easier to get a publishing contract if you start with shorts first. Especially in speculative fiction (not so much fantasy though, that’s a whole new thing). It acts as a track record for your potential publisher. Shows you are serious about the craft, etc. That and a lot of times an editor won’t really read your novel if the query doesn’t intrigue him or her. It’s a brutal business unfortunately.
Have any of you besides Corvus done a series of connected short stories? Do you know of any?
I think I might be interested in writing short stories as a series featuring the same characters. In that sense it’s not much different from writing TV episodes.
Corvus: I took a Creative Writing: Short Stories class in college. I wrote about 10 I think if memory serves me short stories. Five of those ended up being part of a series too :) They were stand alone, but a series none the less. It’s a good exercise, but hard. I admire those who do write short stories well. I wish I could cause I’d send stuff out to magazines, but I know myself, and I know that it would almost be a waste of time for me to write them–I just don’t do them well enough.
Is Raymond Carver’s “Short Cuts” considered a related series? I’ve seen the movie, but have never read the book, so I don’t know for certain.
Ditto. Short stories and novels are different in so many ways. I’ve always felt that a short story almost has to speak up on its own; they’re difficult to write well, because everything has to be so distilled to capture the reader and make the experience meaningful.
Writing short stories can be a good exercise to writing longer works.