Short Story, Novella, Novel?

dragoncd

dragoncd

Rule #78 - No excuses!
Joined
Feb 28, 2007
Messages
45
Okay, so I am undertaking my first writing experiment. I have been an avid reader of fantasy forever and figured I would try my hand at it; putting all the jumbled thoughts of mine down on paper (digital or whatever). My question is this -

As a first time writer who would like to write a story and get published; what would be the best course of action as far as story length for publication purposes? How would a short story be published? In a collection of other stories? How about a Novella? A novel seems like the first time home run which isn't as feasible as me writing a 30, 50 or even 100 page story to get my feet wet. Do many fantasy authors start out by writing short stories and novellas to graduate to novels; or do most people just "go big" and write a novel the first time out?

Your thoughts and experiences will be appreciated.

Craig
 
Just write, man. Make a daily habit out of writing. That's the best advice for any writer. Some ideas will develop into stories and these may be short or they may be epic, who knows. But just write.

Of course, the first million words are just practice. Don't know who said that, but it's quite true.
 
Can't agree more Ghost. When you write you begin to get the idea about what you're good at. So, also, try everything, from super short to epic novel, from first person to third person omni, etc etc.

As far as sales, maybe try short stories.

B5
 
Short stories are the easiest to see published, and have the most markets. Shooting for less than 5 or 4k maximizes their usuability is many markets.

Here is a great market resource page: http://ralan.com/

And here is a page that shows proper manuscript format: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

Onlien critique groups are also helpful, like this: http://www.critters.org/

Ghost and MrBF are right that you should not be afraid to sit down and write, and not worry so much about publication. As a first time writer, learn first to write for yourself, because not everything you write will be publishable. However, having a goal is what motivates successful writers to improve, and don't be afraid to embrace that goal and figure out what you need to focus on to get it.

When you have some feel for writing (hint: the process is probably not what you expect before you start) and you decide to get serious, investigate your markets. If you like shorts and want to see them published, READ shorts, lots of them, and analyze what works. Shorts are a different discipline from longer works, and inevitabley people that just dive into one end of a short story expecting to just pop out the other without exercising a certain discipline and concision end up with a mess. I used to see a lot of these when I was a novella-length editor for a small press: stories that should be shorts written by authors that didn't start with a plan, ending up as meandering and bloated novellas. You'll learn to identify a short story length idea, and a longer length idea as you learn to write (shorts don't have room for 'b' plots for the most part, or much if any digression).

But that's in the future, for now just write for yourself, and don't let your expectations out-pace reality. Writing is like the tortoise and the hare, and you want to be the tortoise.
 
Ditto

I agree with the above posters.

Practice, practice, and practice some more. Then have an idea of what you can do well.

The best chances at getting published are with short stories with print or online magazines, but that's not saying it will ever be easy.

I know I can't really write short stories, partly because I don't really like reading short stories--never have been fond of them. The same goes for poetry for me.

What I have found myself to be almost decent at is writing serialized fiction-novel length stories told in bite sized parts that I post a couple of times a week.

Writing a novel and getting it published is difficult, but not impossible. You won't really know what you are best at, until you start getting your stories down on paper, revising and editing, and seeking honest critique from friends, family and places like this and the critters site noted above.

So, write what comes to mind. Even if it doesn't come out the way you want to, save it for possible revision and consideration later. As you get better at the craft of writing, you may come back to some of your earlier, failed ideas with new insights and new abilities to make it come out the way you want it to.

Writing well is a skill. Skills can only improve with practice, persistence, and more practice!

Good luck

Doug
aka Agent Rusty Bones
 
Short stories are a great way to get started. They don't take that long to write and the length necessarily forces you to restrict the size of the cast, the number of plot threads, etc. Aim for about two thousand words.

Ghost has already given you the best advice out there: "Just write." The second best advice is "Read," as Ward has pointed out.

To get my "million words" out of the way (although I didn't realize that was what I was doing) I spent years writing scenes from my various stories and then deleting them as soon as I was done. The practice was great for me. By the time I finally started writing "for real," I had come a long way. Something like that might be a good exercise for you, too. The only difference I would recommend is that you save your work for future reference (and to provide a barometer for your progress).

I recommended you start with short stories because they have a good balance of giving you room to develop your plot whie still being short enough for you to crank 'em out quickly. Short stories are a very different kind of beast from novels. Shorter works teach you the value of what they call "word economy." In other words, you have to make every word count.

If you really want to master word economy, though, you'll have to try flash fiction (also known as short shorts). Short shorts force you to tell your story in less than 500 words (sometimes less than 200). I don't advise you try that as a beginner, but it's worth your while once you think you've hit the intermediate level.

Anyway, for now, just write. Be the tortoise. And feel free to ask the friendly posters here for a crtique once you get something put together. We're all in this together, yes? ^_^
 
I agree with the advice given so far, with one addition. If all you do is write for practice, without any feedback, you may never learn whether what you're writing is any good or not. So it's a good idea to show bits of your work to readers who you can trust to give an honest assessment, so you can find out what you're doing well and what you need to work on.
 
Very good point about the feedback. Just remember this: You don't have to agree with it and you don't have to follow the suggestions you get. However, you are obliged to listen to and pay serious thought to what your critics have to say (otherwise there's not much point in getting the feedback in the first place, now is there?).

Sometimes, even when the feedback isn't particularly helpful, it nevertheless gets me thinking and my work benefits for it. So, yes, feedback's a beautiful thing.
 
Fantastic advice; thank you very much. Just while we are talking about it - what amount of words would put a story into each class? Seems that 2k words would be a short story? 2k-10k maybe? Over 10k might be a novella?
 
dragoncd said:
Fantastic advice; thank you very much. Just while we are talking about it - what amount of words would put a story into each class? Seems that 2k words would be a short story? 2k-10k maybe? Over 10k might be a novella?
Click to expand...

I can't remember the amounts off hand, but I know we've talked about this before. Click above to do a thread search--it should be easy to find.

B5
 
Hardcovers are a lot more expensive to print that paperbacks. Supposedly they'll charge about the same amount for, say, a 300- and a 500-page novel. They figure readers won't be as willing to shell out the same $18 for book that's only a fraction of the length of the one right next to it. (Ironically, I know some readers who deliberately avoid large books based solely on the length.)

When I was starting out, I'd read that 40K was the baseline for a novel and that was what I shot for. Once I actually started researching the publishers themselves, I got a different story.

On average, most the publsihers I've looked into want something between 60K and 100K. Aiming for 75K is a good idea, but if you're just stuffing in needless padding, don't. It's better to preserve the quality of your story. If your potential publishers give you guff about it (and you can't think of any way to reasonably add onto the length), then you might want to put that story in reserve and market it in the future when you (hopefully) have a little more leverage.

Sometimes time is all it takes. When I wrote my first novel, it weighed in at a paltry 16K (which, technically, didn't make it a novel at all). Over the process of successive edits, along with the inspiration for several new scenes, I managed to bulk it up to 60K without, in my opinion at least, any sacrifice to the flow of the story itself. It's just something you'll have to fiddle with yourself. If you've got some good people workshopping your stuff, they could provide that spark you need to take it a step further.
 
The normal range for sff novels which I've recently seen quoted elsewhere is 80-120,000, but 200,000+ is not uncommon these days.

My first novel (The Foresight War) was 120,000 words, the second (Scales) 90,000 (about 225 pages).
 
Again, thank you all for the advice. I have taken it to heart. I wrote a "prologue" this last weekend that came to 3k words. Judging from that, I am going to shorten my sights on a 15-20k story and see how that goes.
 
Novels

Practice does make perfect, but to answer your question about Shorts, Novellas, and Novels...

Short Stories are easy to write badly and hard to write well.
Novels are probably the easiest to write well, and I'll tell you why I think this.

As an author, words are your ammunition. A short story is the equivalent of a musket. You have limited ammo so each shot should hit it's target. With 1000 to 10000 words, each word has to be the best word you could possibly use.

Novels are M16 machine guns. You can spray words out and only a small percentage have to hit the target.

Of course, it takes time, discipline, research, dedication, and a healthy amount of insanity to write anything.

If you like to agonize over every word and are able to put a lot of meaning into very few words, then short stories are good.

If you find yourself being verbose and going into great detail, then you'll find yourself writing a novella or novel.

I write both, but I like writing novels more. With any piece of work you want your reader to run to his or her friends and say, "Hey, you just have to read this." And when asked, "What's it about." You don't want them to be able to describe it completely. You want them to say something like, "It's great, I can't really explain all of it. Read it for yourself, you'll see."

With novels, getting this reaction is easier because of the quantity of content, but with short stories you have to get the same reaction with only quality of content.

I hope this helps. Peace,
J. Allen Wentworth
 
You can't really spray with M-16s anymore. They swapped out auto for three-round burst to reduce ammo consumption. Yes, yes, I'm being pedantic, but it's entirely ironic. I can personally guarantee the high ferrous content of this post. ^o^

Some writers are better equipped for short stories and others for novels. The only way to find out what kind of writer you are is to try it.
 
James Carmack said:
You can't really spray with M-16s anymore. They swapped out auto for three-round burst to reduce ammo consumption. Yes, yes, I'm being pedantic, but it's entirely ironic. I can personally guarantee the high ferrous content of this post. ^o^
Click to expand...
To be even more pedantic, it depends on the version of the M16 you have: the M16A2 and M16A4 (as used by the USA) have three-shot bursts, but the M61A1 and the newer M61A3 have full auto :D
 
I didn't know they put auto in the A3. I've only used the A2, so it's all I really know, but that's not really relevant to the topic at hand. ^_^;
 
jallenw said:
Practice does make perfect, but to answer your question about Shorts, Novellas, and Novels...

Short Stories are easy to write badly and hard to write well.
Novels are probably the easiest to write well, and I'll tell you why I think this.

As an author, words are your ammunition. A short story is the equivalent of a musket. You have limited ammo so each shot should hit it's target. With 1000 to 10000 words, each word has to be the best word you could possibly use.

Novels are M16 machine guns. You can spray words out and only a small percentage have to hit the target.

If you like to agonize over every word and are able to put a lot of meaning into very few words, then short stories are good.

If you find yourself being verbose and going into great detail, then you'll find yourself writing a novella or novel.
Click to expand...

I haven't been active here in a while because I'm still working on a large novel project, but seeing this post I had to come out of hibernation to add my $.02.

As someone who has always focused on the large when it comes to writing projects I can say that it doesn't matter what the length of your story is, each word has got to be there for a good reason or it should be cut out of the story, because it is only getting in the way of that story. Novels aren't necessarily more "verbose" or "wordy" than short stories. Overly verbose writing is also called bad writing. A writer needs the same economy of words for a novel as they do for the shortest story. A novel that "sprays words out" with only a few of those words being important to the story is a BAD novel. A good novel is only as long as it needs to be. Longer length in a story provides more room for complexity, character/plot development and multiple subplots, not unnecessary wordage.
 
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