Perhaps I haven't read enough short stories. But it eludes me how you cut them down. To make reference to some of the people on this forum, MaryRobinette's Portrait of Ari seemed like it was a part of a larger story. Was that how it was intended and then you just cut a piece out? But then Silver3's recent fantasy story seemed like an entire story by itself. How did you come up with such a concise plot that moved so quickly?

Edit: Oh, you're wondering about good short stories. I liked The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe.

But there's no law that says you have to. If the attempt is filling you with despair and loathing, just let it go.

I think Mike is right, though, that giving yourself a challenge, particularly timed, will help a lot. After all, how many novel ideas can you flesh out completely, and write down, when you only have 90 minutes? That's what I would do, if I were you.

When I write a short, I come up with a situation, and a couple characters. I don't develop them really extensively, especially at first. I get an idea for a plot with a beginning, middle and end, but no subplots, usually a very short timeframe, and everything in the story is related to that main plot and character(s). I often write the first draft in a single sitting.

Is that what you want to know?

The reason I really want to do short stories is because I keep working on the huge projects that feel like they really aren't going very fast--so at this rate it will a year or two before I can really have complete stories and that doesn't suit well for me.

What you said John is brilliant. I never thought my poems would ever have anything to do with Science Fiction or Fantasy--or really any plot--but thinking about them, I see that I naturally have dramatization that could be adapted to a story. That'd be a really good point to start, since the ideas captured in my poems are short and concise. So, I'll try that too.

Basically, it's not something I'm good at either. My short stories tend to be hastily relabelled "novelettes" on the spur of the moment.

FYI, the story up at Deep Magic is pretty long, and it started just with the idea of what a metamorphosis curse, and of a hermit coming back to claim his former bride. It inflated beyond what I had foreseen, mainly because the backstory is heavy (too heavy, in fact; now, with hindsight, I'd never launch myself into something that complicated with the hope of keeping it below 7500 words).

My current idea of the whole process is: keep things at a bare minimum. Have a maximum of three, four characters that you know in depth. Reduce the others to cardboard and a minimal role in the story (should you ever need them). Keep the action to one problem, one conflict. No sidetracks. No secondary plots (the "one scene" method doesn't work for me, but that's personal).

Mike's idea of timed challenges is pretty good. It works for me (due to the way my mind works, I'm more a proponent of a slightly longer time, but the idea is definitely sound), and of course reading short fiction always helps.

But ultimately, no finished work is ever 'complete' in the sense of exploring everything you find interesting about a character, world, idea, or whatnot. Only an open canon has that capability. The more you write about a world, the more you want to write. The same holds true for the audience, which is why there is so much fantasy based on Middle Earth and so much SF based on Star Trek.

On the topic at hand, I have a very different frame of mind when I write long fiction than I do with short fiction. My long fictionallows me to relax and fully characterize, exploring many facets of the characters with subplots and parallel story lines. In a short story, I generally have one event or cool science thing that I want to explore. Depending on which of those ends I start, I develop the other side. When the idea has been explored, or the characters have changed in the way I want them changed, I'm done. As a result, I have never written any fiction between 6500 words and 75,000 words.