Start with a novel or short stories?

[Jaigon]

It appears the post "I have a story, has it been done before?" already contains some of my question. Sorry for the redundant post, but if you want to read and comment anyways I would be grateful


Hi everyone. I'm sure this question has been asked many times, but I am asking it again:

Should a new writer start off with short stories before getting to the novel? I am asking because I just recently got into writing again. I wrote lots when I was in high school, but it's been over 5 years now. For the past year or so I've had this idea in my head, and an itching to transform it to words. It is a fantasy/distopian world complete with characters and a vague plot. I decided about a week ago to begin writing a novel based on this idea. Since I haven't published anything, and haven't done serious writing for a few years (other than academic stuff for college) is it too much to start with a book? I've heard others say that it is better to start with short stories until you get a grasp of the language and process, otherwise you end up editing lots. The problem is that I really want to write about this idea, and it is way too big for a short story. It is painful for me to put it off to the side and just work on short stories (although I wouldn't mind doing something in parallel).

Anyone been in this dilemma? What are your thoughts?

If this has already been asked please direct me to the post.

Thanks!!!

 

[Laer Carroll]

Every writer is different. What works for one may not work for others.

Sorry. We can tell you what worked for us. I’m sure many will. But in the end you have to find your own, unique, personal way.

 

[J.D. Carelli]

It used to be true that short stories were the way to break in, but no longer. A survey was done not too long ago (from some SFF author I can't recall at the moment) which showed that authors breaking in these days could so through both ways. So the advice I hear (and which makes most sense) is to do what interests you.

 

[Andrew LH]

My feeling is that, even if short fiction as a market is generally difficult to earn from*, in terms of developing your abilities it is unmatched. It has the advantage of brevity, so you can complete things and gain a sense of achievement on that level alone; but you are training yourself in the basic skills of Story without committing yourself to what may be a very long creative process that, come the end, primarily demonstrates that you need more practice--and that could be disheartening if you've poured yourself into your magnum opus only to discover you tried to run before you could walk. As said by those above, though, this is just my opinion.

* as though long form was easy...

 

[JimF]

A lot of people told me to start with short stories. Most were non-writers, but at least one was a poet and creative writing prof. Their logic seemed to be that short stories are shorter, therefor easier. My mistake was believing them. I wanted to write novels, still do. I enjoy reading the longer form, and was never a fan of short fiction. I read many more novels in a year than short stories.

On a purely technical stand point I think writing a well-structured short stories is more difficult, you can definitely learn a lot by writing them. But can be like pulling teeth if you have no desire to write them.

So this is a question only you can answer. If the stories you need to tell are long form works then the novel is for you. If you love the concise composition required by a short story then that is what you should write. Maybe you like both. That's even better.

Good Luck.

 

[Jaigon]

Thanks for the good advice everyone. I thought the same, that short stories would be much easier to break in with. But my passion is with the bit epic stories. I find that it is constraining to limit something in only 1,000 or 2,000 words- of course there's no reason why I can't do both.

My initial fear was that my magnum opus, if written too soon, would come out immature. I have reflected a little more and realized that this first novel won't be the last I ever write. It doesn't matter if my first work is immature, sloppy and downright terrible. When I'm done this magnum opus I will probably have another magnum opus in mind, and after writing one epic, another epic will feel more natural. The only concern I have is that short stories seem much easier to share and get advice on. Most experience authors are willing to set aside 15min to read a 1,000 word story, but very few would devout hours to read a 50,000 or 100,000 word novel (especially if it is terrible). Even if it is terrible, and I still feel it is the magnum opus, I could edit the s@%! out of it once I'm more experienced

 

[kmtolan]

My initial fear was that my magnum opus, if written too soon, would come out immature.

I wish more writers starting down the path would consider this. Few carpenters started out by building a house. They first learned how to use their tools.

Kerry

 

[Laer Carroll]

Some people are naturally short fiction writers. Some are great at writing longer stuff. Neither way is THE right way.

Don’t worry about it. Do what obsesses you. As Jaigon said, so what if the first effort has problems? Doing it will hone your skills, teach you how to work on larger issues. Your second effort may be terrific.

Or maybe even your first effort. Some of my favorite writers, who now have a long history of achievement, were good from day one.

 

[RedMage]

Thanks for the good advice everyone. I thought the same, that short stories would be much easier to break in with. But my passion is with the bit epic stories. I find that it is constraining to limit something in only 1,000 or 2,000 words- of course there's no reason why I can't do both.

My initial fear was that my magnum opus, if written too soon, would come out immature. I have reflected a little more and realized that this first novel won't be the last I ever write. It doesn't matter if my first work is immature, sloppy and downright terrible. When I'm done this magnum opus I will probably have another magnum opus in mind, and after writing one epic, another epic will feel more natural. The only concern I have is that short stories seem much easier to share and get advice on. Most experience authors are willing to set aside 15min to read a 1,000 word story, but very few would devout hours to read a 50,000 or 100,000 word novel (especially if it is terrible). Even if it is terrible, and I still feel it is the magnum opus, I could edit the s@%! out of it once I'm more experienced

The first thing I ever wrote was a epic fantasy trilogy. 3 novels, each larger than the last. No short stories, no workshops or writing forums. I wrote the story I had in my head and my heart, got it down on paper, and didn't let anyone see it or say anything about it. I believed in the strength of my story. Only when I finished was I able to take a breath, look back, and realize that some things were lacking. One of those was the telling. I need help with grammar and sentence structure and other writing mechanics. That's the point I started looking for help improving it.

There were goods and bads in that. You're going to learn a lot of things when you are part of a community like this. Ask questions, answer others questions, engage in discussion. Some of the things I fell short on with that first trilogy, and the next story after that, could have been corrected at the time I was writing them if I had been part of a writing community. On other things, I'm glad I didn't have the outside input. It allowed me to make attempts, find the faults on my own, and discover how to correct them.

Like you, I really struggle with the short form. I want to make it more than what it is/should be. That has given me a lot of respect for writers who can write short stories, flash fictions, even novellas.

So write your epic. When you're ready, our forum (and many others) has a workshop group. Ours is located here at the SFFH Workshop. I've put my current novel through there a few times. So while it is easier and far less time consuming to read a short form than long form piece, there are still people out there who will help you.

 

[Bodhi]

My 2 cents

Do you have a familiarity with short fiction? Do you read a lot of short stories?

I found that mostly I was only familiar with novels. Although trying to write either without a lot of direction could be difficult, I only really knew what made a good novel. You have to be selective at a different level when you try to write less and still get the juicy bits in. What aspect of writing THE NOVEL do you feel most likely will challenge you? Organization? Having enough content? Completing it? Having a good, readable style? If you just play with shorter stuff, it may just feel like a snippet of a larger novel and not a standalone piece, which could be fine if it's just practice for your "magnum opus."

Also, I think someone referred to Jaigon without seeing him as the original poster...

 

[Jaigon]

Do you have a familiarity with short fiction? Do you read a lot of short stories?

I found that mostly I was only familiar with novels. Although trying to write either without a lot of direction could be difficult, I only really knew what made a good novel. You have to be selective at a different level when you try to write less and still get the juicy bits in. What aspect of writing THE NOVEL do you feel most likely will challenge you? Organization? Having enough content? Completing it? Having a good, readable style? If you just play with shorter stuff, it may just feel like a snippet of a larger novel and not a standalone piece, which could be fine if it's just practice for your "magnum opus."

Also, I think someone referred to Jaigon without seeing him as the original poster...

To be honest, I've never been able to get into short fiction. I find that a book takes some time to grow on me, but once I'm in it becomes an obsession. When I read a short story I don't have time to really immerse myself. I've read some short stories, but every time it has felt like a chore.

I have two weaknesses I can see so far. My conversations don't always feel very smooth. I can get proper content for the conversation, but currently it is feeling a bit robotic. Secondly, I struggle with getting character mannerisms. I can describe a character well enough, but it's little things I miss out on (e.g.- habits the character has when he is nervous, his facial expression when he gets angry, ways he/she might approach a stranger, etc).

 

[KatG]

The short story market is not at all easy to break into and barely exists outside of SFFH. It is not, as a form, some superior way to learn writing or brevity. And if it entirely bores you as a form of writing to read it, why on Earth do you think your brain is going to cooperate writing them?

The majority of fantasy writers don't do short fiction -- they market novels. But there are also fantasy authors who also do short stories and did some sales of those before placing a novel. There's no one right path. But your brain is not going to do what it doesn't want to do. It will keep going back to the novel if you try to do short stories.

The likelihood is that while you write, while your brain is engaged in writing, other story ideas will also pop up and some of those may be short story ideas and some of them may be worth trying out while you are also working on your novel, or maybe that will happen later. But in many ways, a novel can be like a series of short stories, so you're not necessarily not practicing such techniques in working on the novel. But writing a novel also requires sustaining techniques that may be more important to doing it than stylistic techniques in writing short fiction.

Right now, if you work on the novel, I would suggest not worrying about "weaknesses." First drafts are messy. Write it out and then you can edit and revise.

 

[SteveW]

I started off last year with a novel length project, but as I became more involved with this forum, the monthly motivation threads, and the workshop thread, I started to also try short stories. It was a mixed bag. Like JimF I have always been more interested in novels as a reader and writer, so I sometimes find my interest in short story writing lags. However, I did find some great advantages in tackling short stories.

It allowed me to begin to develop my editing skills. This would not have happened if I stuck to only writing the first draft of a novel. It opened me up to the workshop and gave me some experience having a completed piece critiqued and it gave me a taste of the submission (and rejection) process. All of these experiences started changing the way I looked at my writing, and it improved what I was writing in the first draft of my novel. I also found switching to a short story a welcome diversion if I was getting burnt out on my main WIP. (Work in progress) It enabled me to walk around any writers block, continue writing and developing, and then come back to my novel with fresh eyes.

If I had only kept writing the 1st draft of my novel, I don't think I would have work shopped any of it before I hit a wall. (And I hit the wall hard. I am just now getting back into the ring.)

Even starting back up now, I am sure I will switch back and forth between my main WIP and short stories.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the fold. And I can't stress this enough: don't hesitate to jump into the monthly motivation threads or the workshop thread if you already haven't.

Steve

 

[Wilson Geiger]

I started off last year with a novel length project, but as I became more involved with this forum, the monthly motivation threads, and the workshop thread, I started to also try short stories. It was a mixed bag. Like JimF I have always been more interested in novels as a reader and writer, so I sometimes find my interest in short story writing lags. However, I did find some great advantages in tackling short stories.

It allowed me to begin to develop my editing skills. This would not have happened if I stuck to only writing the first draft of a novel. It opened me up to the workshop and gave me some experience having a completed piece critiqued and it gave me a taste of the submission (and rejection) process. All of these experiences started changing the way I looked at my writing, and it improved what I was writing in the first draft of my novel. I also found switching to a short story a welcome diversion if I was getting burnt out on my main WIP. (Work in progress) It enabled me to walk around any writers block, continue writing and developing, and then come back to my novel with fresh eyes.

If I had only kept writing the 1st draft of my novel, I don't think I would have work shopped any of it before I hit a wall. (And I hit the wall hard. I am just now getting back into the ring.)

Even starting back up now, I am sure I will switch back and forth between my main WIP and short stories.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the fold. And I can't stress this enough: don't hesitate to jump into the monthly motivation threads or the workshop thread if you already haven't.

Steve

A Steve sighting! Good to see you on here again.

To echo others, this is really a personal decision. Some people really enjoy writing and reading the short form, others prefer long form. Twenty years ago this probably wouldn't even have been a question, since you had to focus on short stories to earn your wings. Not true anymore.

Just to give another (probably redundant) example: I started out waaaay back in high school writing novels. Or what were supposed to be novels, if I'd ever actually finished them. That's all I'd ever read, and I didn't know enough about the market back then to even know I should've been writing short stories.

I got back into the writing game about three years ago, taking it much more seriously, and I started by writing short stories. While it's not a superior form to learn writing maybe, what it did do was show me that I could finish what I'd started. And that was an important milestone for me. That's what writing short stories taught me.

So, to each their own. I agree with Steve, a good first step might be joining some of the competitions on here, get your feet under you, and then go from there.

 

[Jaigon]

A Steve sighting! Good to see you on here again.

To echo others, this is really a personal decision. Some people really enjoy writing and reading the short form, others prefer long form. Twenty years ago this probably wouldn't even have been a question, since you had to focus on short stories to earn your wings. Not true anymore.

Just to give another (probably redundant) example: I started out waaaay back in high school writing novels. Or what were supposed to be novels, if I'd ever actually finished them. That's all I'd ever read, and I didn't know enough about the market back then to even know I should've been writing short stories.

I got back into the writing game about three years ago, taking it much more seriously, and I started by writing short stories. While it's not a superior form to learn writing maybe, what it did do was show me that I could finish what I'd started. And that was an important milestone for me. That's what writing short stories taught me.

So, to each their own. I agree with Steve, a good first step might be joining some of the competitions on here, get your feet under you, and then go from there.

Thanks for the advice. I've already written a story that I plan to submit to the flash fiction contest (still need to edit it, only wrote the first draft). I think I will focus on my novel, but write a few short stories to fill in the gaps whenever I feel stuck.

 

[suboptimal]

Last year I forced myself to read short fiction and am very glad that I did. It took a mental shift to get used to it, but I feel like it has opened up a huge new realm of fiction for me. Short stories can take on ideas that aren't robust enough to endure a novel-length treatment, but in short form are fun and interesting. And short stories can be highly experimental in ways that novels can't (at least in the hands of mere mortals). I've got a bunch of collections on my Kindle that are in regular rotation: Ballard, Silverberg, Wolfe, Sturgeon, Faulkner, Nabokov, Barthelme, etc. A side benefit of this approach has been an avoidance of the mimicry rut, where my writing ends up taking on too much of the flavor of the novel I'm reading. The shorts don't make that happen as much, though if I could transform my writing into anything half so wonderful as these guys I'd be doing just fine . . .

My writing has benefited a lot from a focus on the short story. A few ideas I've had for novels have turned out to be better suited to the shorter format, which in turn has helped me get closer to having a finished project to show others. As a beginner I see it all as good learning fodder, anyway.

 

[Peter Kenson]

The first thing I ever wrote was a epic fantasy trilogy. 3 novels, each larger than the last. No short stories, no workshops or writing forums. I wrote the story I had in my head and my heart, got it down on paper, and didn't let anyone see it or say anything about it. I believed in the strength of my story. Only when I finished was I able to take a breath, look back, and realize that some things were lacking. One of those was the telling. I need help with grammar and sentence structure and other writing mechanics. That's the point I started looking for help improving it.

There were goods and bads in that. You're going to learn a lot of things when you are part of a community like this. Ask questions, answer others questions, engage in discussion. Some of the things I fell short on with that first trilogy, and the next story after that, could have been corrected at the time I was writing them if I had been part of a writing community. On other things, I'm glad I didn't have the outside input. It allowed me to make attempts, find the faults on my own, and discover how to correct them.

Like you, I really struggle with the short form. I want to make it more than what it is/should be. That has given me a lot of respect for writers who can write short stories, flash fictions, even novellas.

So write your epic. When you're ready, our forum (and many others) has a workshop group. Ours is located here at the SFFH Workshop. I've put my current novel through there a few times. So while it is easier and far less time consuming to read a short form than long form piece, there are still people out there who will help you.

This is fantastic advice. I'm going through this stage myself. I couldn't write a short story to save my life - I don't think it's in me.

So write what's in you. This is real life now, not a writing class. Go for it.

 

[Laer Carroll]

I never read short stories. I find them boring. If I read I want a novel and many hours of living in another universe, not a brief dip into one.

 

[E_Moon]

Talents vary. Some people are natural short-form writers (just as some people are natural poets, not fiction writers.) Some are natural long-form wriers. You find out what you're best at by just jumping in and starting something...and then seeing how it turns out. All my short stories from perhaps age 13 on turned into longer, and longer, and longer stories. Not good stories, but LOONNGGG stories. I had read the advice about starting with short stories for what they can teach you, and what it taught me (never finishing one because when it grew longer then it "should" I would stop and start another) is that I am not a natural short-form writer. I have now written publishable (and published) short fiction, some very, very short. But it's not natural to me. Most stories that come to me naturally are intricate, complex, many-layered, and will not fit in 7500 words. I did not write a publishable short story until after many failures and, finally, finishing a 500,000 word monster fantasy. (Edited down somewhat, but not a lot, when it was published.

I grew up reading lots of short stories in the magazines that existed when I was a kid (and don't, now) when short fiction was in a lot of different magazines. But I started reading full-size books early, too, and found them more satisfying (for me) because I could stay immersed in that fictional world longer. If you've always liked a particular length, you will probably find that you like writing that length. (And if you don't want to write long, don't become enthralled by Anthony Adverse.

So start something and see how long it takes to get to what you think is a satisfying ending. If it's 5000 words...if everything you write ties itself up neatly in less than 7500...you're a short-form writer naturally. If, however, you're 40,000 words into a story and it's still galloping toward the horizon...and the next story you start behaves the same way...you're not. You can learn to write in different lengths from your natural length, but it will always be harder, and your best stories will probably be within your natural range.

 

[Jaigon]

Thanks for the advice. I'm currently about 15,000 words in, and have not even introduced all of the characters yet. I think it will end up being 100,000 words or more. I'm finding I like this longer style. I can fully describe the world and have room to develop characters and complex plot lines. I'm just regretting when I'll eventually have to edit the whole thing and make it a coherent piece. In doing this I have found that I am more of an organic writer. I planned out events, characters and settings... but everything is changing as a write. It almost feels as if the plot is being determined as a write. 90% of my notes are becoming irrelevant.