posted
I'm going to start with a confession. I suck at short stories. They somehow all turn to mush around two-thirds of the way in. I don't seem to be able to stop it.
However, it occurred to me that I could excerpt three chapters from the middle of Book I, The Shaman's Curse and probably make a decent short story out of it. Hopefully without it turning to mush.
Other than as a writing exercise, is there any point to that? I mean, could I use both of them at the same time? Or is that just not done.
posted
I'm going to say no, there's no point to it. I'm of the opinion that short stories are not worth the effort IF you're trying to make money for your writing. Stick with the novel.
If it's an uncontrollable urge, like vomiting, then, yes, please write it, but make sure you have a trash can handy.
quote:I'm going to say no, there's no point to it. I'm of the opinion that short stories are not worth the effort IF you're trying to make money for your writing. Stick with the novel.
If it's an uncontrollable urge, like vomiting, then, yes, please write it, but make sure you have a trash can handy.
posted
Short stories are good. They help figure out the market and build credentials, which in turn helps you publish your novel.
Posts: 98 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I agree with Grijalva. My plan is to establish a "name" with short stories in the hope that this will make it easier to get the novels published.
Also, I think that short stories are good for honing one's writing craft. They're easier to get feedback on from Hatrackers and enable one to explore aspects of writing -- character development, milieu, action, wild concepts, etc -- without the huge, possibly wasted investment of time in a novel.
But they are a different art form. Simply extracting a few chapters from a larger work is unlikely to make a decent short story. People have tried it here in the past and it's obvious that there is a larger story in the wings, unsatisfying as a short.
It is done, though, for writers to explore a concept in a short story, get it published, and expand it later into a novel which also gets published. Asimov did it, for example, with the robot stories, initially shorts but there were one or two robot novels as well. I imagine that reader reaction to published shorts tells the writer which ideas and characters might sell as novels.
Making money isn't the only reason to write short stories. I write them, not because I feel sick if I don't, but because they're an art form I enjoy, as well as one I can learn from. and hope to make a name with. And their characters beat me up if I don't.
posted
I wasn't going to simply extract the chapters. To make them stand alone, there would need to be significant revision. For one thing, the POV character would change. But a lot of it would stay the same.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
For those that seem to be confused by my opinion let me clarify (and this opinion is the result of some mild debate in the 2008 Literary Boot Camp forum):
If the short story is the weapon of your choice, then go ahead. However, I think the old wisdom of writing short stories to hone your craft is bunk. Maybe it worked back in the days of the pulp era, but, especially today, it doesn't seem to be a viable way of honing your craft.
There are fewer and fewer venues for short stories. Online mags are hit and miss (mostly miss), and are being run by the same people who couldn't get their names into the print mags. Print mags are finding it harder and harder to stay afloat, thus resorting to using "names" only.
There is nothing in the short story that will help you write that novel. If you think taking a couple of chapters from the novel will make a good short story then do so. But I do not believe that writing short stories to make a name for yourself is the way to go. If you want to make a name for yourself, write and polish the novel.
Again, if you feel you MUST write that short story, then do so. I've got a couple floating around in my head (along with the marbles) that will ONLY work as short stories. But I take my shoe off and pound it on the podium: Writing short stories will get you nothing other than numerous rejection letters, or, possibly, a book of short stories that will disappear forever.
Use the time instead to write the novel. After you're done with that novel, write the other one. And the next...
My 2 cents; I think this is one of those issues that people feel strongly about, so I'll emphasize that this is purely my personal opinion. I've quoted from Rich, but only because he has interesting points worth arguing about; success is very possible through writing only novels, but I do believe in the validity of starting with short stories.
quote:However, I think the old wisdom of writing short stories to hone your craft is bunk. Maybe it worked back in the days of the pulp era, but, especially today, it doesn't seem to be a viable way of honing your craft.
For me, honing my craft means being able to practice writing a story and then receiving feedback on that story. With short stories, I can do that process relatively quickly. My opinion is that if you can get the component elements right in the short form, then you have a higher chance of getting it right in the long form. If we're talking about making a living from that (as you could in the old pulp rag days), then that's obviously a thing of the distant past. I see publication as being quite distinct from honing your craft; more publication doesn't necessarily lead to better writing and, in fact, huge success sometimes seems to have a negative effect on some writers. Good writing (and a far dose of luck) leads to publication and I see short stories as a time-efficient way of developing my writing.
quote:There are fewer and fewer venues for short stories.
I believe this is also true for long fiction. Large press is increasingly risk-adverse, though POD is giving small press a fighting chance.
quote:Writing short stories will get you nothing other than numerous rejection letters, or, possibly, a book of short stories that will disappear forever.
Or possibly get you known by other authors, agents and publishers as a name to watch out for. Speculative fiction is such a niche industry (even in America) that I do feel that this is an important part of becoming a writer. Writing is going to get you a lot of rejection letters unless you have an extraordinary amount of luck. Most of the writers that I admire got their start in short stories. Being successful in shorts gave them both confidence and contacts. Having said that, most of the mega-sellers probably didn't start in shorts, but there's not many of them anyway. My goal is to be a good writer and hopefully everything else will fall into place. My path to do that is to use shorts because I find that a time efficient way of improving.
posted
I must stress again: I agree with everything Nick says.
But I would caution on putting too much emphasis on using the short story to hone your craft, or use it as a way to break into the business. Yeah, you've gotta practice, but when you're practicing for a marathon, you don't do a lot of sprints.
Also, there is no money to be had in short stories. There's no money to be had in novels, either, but there's a better chance of making money from the novel than the short story. You wouldn't work for free so don't write for free.
By the way, everything I've said should be taken as no more or less than if I was critiquing someone's short story/novel. It's just one opinion, to be used or discarded as the writer sees fit.
posted
It's not bunk. It's an opinion based on personal experience (I have learned much about writing from my shorts) that deserves as much respect as any other opinion here.
Posts: 1796 | Registered: Jun 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote: I wasn't going to simply extract the chapters. To make them stand alone, there would need to be significant revision. For one thing, the POV character would change. But a lot of it would stay the same.
Quite--I didn't mean to imply you wouldn't. There's no convention I'm aware of that this isn't done. Indeed, I've been doing it myself to learn what works and what doesn't, before trying my hand at something larger.
posted
I agree with Nick. I wrote my first novel before starting short stories and I wished I had done it the other way around. Now I'm realizing how much work that novel is going to take to revise now that I understand writing a lot better than I did.
Also I'll add that I've learned more from critiquing other people's stories, both through personal emails and places like Baen's Bar, than I have from writing my own. It's helped me see what I like about stories and what I don't like and helps me turn an objective eye on my own stories to better improve them.
posted
Oh, and regarding the original question, by what I've heard I don't think publishers have any problem with a short story and a novel being the same story, though I think it tends to work in the opposite direction: a short story becomes a novel.
If you were successful getting the short story in publication, you could use that as a marketing tool for the novel.
posted
I actually became a member of this forum in the midst of writing a novel. Actually, it started as a screenplay, and I saw the submission to acceptance ratio and thought I'd have better luck publishing a novel. I do not know the exact statistics regarding novels queried and published, but I know that pro-mags only accept about 3% of what they get. I have found a great benefit in taking some time off from my novel to work on short stories. I write at a snail's pace, so there is a two-fold benefit. First, as many have said, one receives feedback on style and content. Second, one receives an emotional benefit in having completed a story from start to end. I would like to emphasize this second benefit, the emotional satisfaction. A novel is far-reaching in the sense that it takes a significant portion of ones life - unless you're Stephen King. However, I believe I have heard that Stephen King did not get his first novel published until after he had become well-known. I believe the Bauchman (sp?) short stories figured somewhere in there. All that aside, I believe it is important to give yourself little moments of personal reward while working toward greater goals. Short stories provide that.
Posts: 2003 | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I had a devil of a time finishing anything whatsoever. If I tried a novel or anything long, the story would wander wildly. I had a novel nearly finished, about twenty pages from the end, but gave up on it as it seemed like it was wandering all over the place. My short stuff were not that much better. I could not plot out a story.
I took some Creative Writing classes and was not doing much better there either. They had the requirement of two pages double spaced on the assignment, and four pages double spaced on free writing, and they alternated between them. I never really fit within their limits in the three terms I took the class.
During the summer, I decided I was going to write a four page, single spaced short story. I wrote dozens on dozens of short stories, nearly all of them with endings, which I could not do before, and I did get two stories within the limits I was after, though one really needed a few more scenes to finish up.
I was them able to write a 450 double spaced novel from beginning to end. I never edited that pile of garbage, even though it had gems within it. I need to cut it down. I can see the scrub growth within it, but cannot figure out where to start without having to start over.
My goal of finishing short stories gave me the practice needed for the novel. I now finish shorts all the time and it has also shown in my story idea writing too. Many of them are very close to being complete short stories.
Short story writing is practice to longer stuff. One learns how to plot out a story beginning to end Using the analogy of the marathon runner, One trains for the marathon by running increasingly longer distances. You don't dash out and run twenty six miles after a life time of laying around. Instead, one first runs around the block, then brings it longer and longer, until you can run ten, fifteen, and twenty miles without pain. Then one is ready for the full run. Short stories are the practice of completing a distance, but in this case, getting all the steps between begining and end in the proper, satisfying order.
posted
Also, now that I've put so much work into short stories, one of my most important criteria is a story is it's length. Is it only as long as it needs to be. Every chapter, every section, every word has a purpose. So many novels do not follow this idea (perhaps I've been reading too much Stephen King) that I think I am going to have a very difficult time trying to get a story up to novel length. I tried to write a "longer" short story last month, and still only got up to 5000 words (which is high for me, but not really high for the writing world in general).
Posts: 299 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I used to be able to turn out short stories, but, the last couple of years, my stuff comes in at heavier lengths (when it comes in at all). Ten thousand word minimum, ranging up to one hundred thousand. I think I've lost the knack for shorter lengths...but I concur with the idea that each and every word in a short story is important.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Meredith, when you sell publication rights to a novel, you usually sell novel rights (to a book publisher). When you sell publication rights to a short story, you usually sell either serial rights (to a magazine) or anthology rights (to an anthology). So different people buy different rights.
Even if you weren't rewriting the chapters with a different point of view (which makes it a different story anyway), you could sell rights to both the excerpt as a short story and the novel without any problems. The novel publisher would probably want to include something in the front matter of the book that says something like "portions of this story have appeared in different form in EXCITING STORIES magazine," but that's no problem.
So, if you'd like to try it, go for it. And I'd recommend sending the short story, when you've got it ready, to the Writers of the Future contest.
posted
I'm honestly not trying to piss anyone off. I'm just suggesting that if you want to make money at this game, short stories are not the way to go about doing it, no matter how much practice you think you need to do. One can't practice forever.
And if you don't mind not making money at it, then it doesn't matter what I say, or what anyone else thinks, quite frankly. Do it. When your short story gets sold, and it gets picked up for an option, or you make a novel out of it, then I have no problem with someone coming back here to tell me he or she told me so. As a matter of fact, it would be a good thing if someone did that.
Ok. I've stepped down off my soapbox. No more to say on the subject.
posted
I agree with Rich. Write 'em if you love 'em. But I think you can learn just as much--probably more--by fumbling your way through a novel, or two, or three. At least I did.
Posts: 603 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I seem to remember reading in one of the recent threads that the average full time novelist makes around $30,000 per year. I'm not sure how many novels/how often they have to produce to make this, but the vast majority do not seem to be getting rich.
The main two in our genre that have "recently" become truly rich seem to be writing youth/young adult fantasy. I suppose if we are hoping to get rich, we should write novels in this genre. Stepping outside of myself for a moment, the fact that I'm writing more sci-fi material suggests to me that money is not the motivator that I inwardly think it to be.
quote:Also, there is no money to be had in short stories. There's no money to be had in novels, either, but there's a better chance of making money from the novel than the short story. You wouldn't work for free so don't write for free.
In three years I have made a little under $2,000 from writing short stories.
No, it isn't enough to live on (and yes, if you look at the time I've spent on those stories, it's way below minimum wage), but I think you are being overly dismissive.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
