Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Short Stories

This is topic Short Stories in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Lilamrta (Member # 557) on :

It seems to me that whenever I get an idea, it's a novel length idea, and so I have three novels that I want to eventually write. Even just a chapter is over 5000 words. I was wondering how you all come up with short story ideas, because I'd like to write them.

Posted by Rball (Member # 397) on :

Lemme guess--worldbuilder's disease. I've got a pretty severe case myself.

Probably the best way to start coming up with short story ideas is to find out what sort of ideas turn into short stories. Check out http://asimovs.com/ and read the Hugo and Nebula nominees. The featured stories are good too. There's a link on that site to the Analog nominees as well.

If you find those stories a bit intimidating (as I do), you might want to read something of slightly lower caliber. http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Magazines_and_E-zines/ is a good place to look.

Best of luck to you!

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

I used to only come up with novel ideas, and it was cool, but it was also frustrating.

Then, Will Shetterly (an author you may have heard of) told me to get a copy of Rust Hills' book WRITING IN GENERAL AND THE SHORT STORY IN PARTICULAR.

Something clicked when I read that book, and I've been writing short stories ever since. I've sold six of them, and the first thing I wrote after I read that book was the first of the six.

The main thing to remember with short story ideas, as opposed to novel ideas, is that a short story is not only short, it works best when it deals with ones. One character, one setting, one day in time, one goal, and so on. (This is called "unity" and it makes writing short stories much easier--though they're still not easy.)

Read Hills' book and think in terms of unity, and see what you can come up with.

Posted by jackonus (Member # 132) on :

These sound like good ideas to me. Thanks for posting the question. I wanted the answer to it too and never thought to ask!

I think unity is the best word for what I was going to describe as what is going on when I've been able to write short stories. I have taken something like "what if my dog was immortal?", "what would a cyborg feel like once he became obsolete technology?" or "what if I could time travel and hear what x 'really said.'" I'm sure someone else could turn those into novels, but I was just looking at that one aspect of the issue and it came out to 5-20 pages. Some of those might later become the outline or part of a larger story, but for now, they are short and personally some of my favorite products.

Posted by Jeannette Hill (Member # 317) on :

I find that I can come up with great beginnings for stories, both novels and shorts, but I have problems finishing them. The characters are all very clear and defined, but what happens to them is harder to come up with. (I know this is due mostly to my role-playing experiences, but still I struggle with it). The story I'm working on now is moving along okay, but only because the story came to me first, I think.
Kathleen has given you good advice. (go figure). If you start with one idea, and make yourself stick with that idea, you'll get the hang of it eventually.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Actually, even a short story works better if you have more than one idea. A one-idea story can fizzle if the idea isn't strong enough. Two ideas can create an interesting tension between them (and that tension is where the unity works).

What Hills talks about in his book, WRITING IN GENERAL AND THE SHORT STORY IN PARTICULAR,
sounds to me to be a lot like what Orson Scott Card talks about in his M. I. C. E. breakdown of story types as the character story.

Character stories work especially well in the short story format because they are about one thing--role changes.

If you approach your story idea as a role-changing problem for the main character, you will have a structure that will give you the middle and ending you may be searching for.

Taking Jackonus' idea of the immortal dog, for example, could give you a story about how the dog's role of being someone's pet would change when the owner died. You'd probably need to bring another idea into that (maybe add the cyborg with obsolete technology, and have them find each other?) to get it to work, but you could write a short story about how the dog's role and/or the cyborg's role have changed and what they do to either try to find a new role, try to get the old role back, or adjust to the lack of a role entirely.

(Actually, looking at Card's M. I. C. E. breakdowns can help you figure out the structure of whatever kind of story you are writing. Be aware, however, that milieu and event stories tend to work better at novel lengths, and idea and character stories may be more suitable to shorter lengths.)

Posted by rainsong (Member # 430) on :

I agree. Sometimes I need three or four ideas to keep a 2500 word story going. And to get through a novel? Waayyy more.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Yes, you definitely need more than one idea. But all your ideas have to be tied together into the same story, and given prominence by their relationship to the focus of the story that you're telling.

Posted by Lilamrta (Member # 557) on :

Thanks for all the help. I've actually started a short story about one of my characters from a book length story, and I think it's coming along well. Since those chapters were about the length of a short story themselves, it's like writing a self contained chapter.

Posted by rstegman (Member # 3233) on :

One thing to keep in mind, is that a short story might simply be an incident. All it has to have is a begining, and end and something happen.
A novel might be about a youngster learning magic to become a master to defeat the evil overloard. A short story might be about one of his tests, to see if he learned a spell he forgot to practice.