Writing short stories vs. long ones

Writing a short story is a different experience from creating a longer one.  This seems like an obvious statement, but you don't realize how true it is until you've attempted both.  I feel that the biggest difference is in how you pull the reader into your world.

In a longer story, the characters are introduced slower.  A reader will come to know your characters' personalities through dialog and bond with them  based on how they react to situations.  This type of relationship takes time to develop.

In a short story, the reader is instantly drawn in to a world already in motion.  The bond a reader feels has less to do with the dialog and more to do with emotions.  The character is worried and therefore, you feel worried.  The trick when writing short stories is for the author to make the reader care about the characters in a very short amount of time.

Just as a reader is pulled into a world already in motion, so too do they leave it that way.  A short story does not have to end the same way a longer one does.  This is one of my favorite aspects of this genre.  In a longer story, a reader will cry out in protest if too many loose ends are present.  You feel gypped.  All that time invested in reading the book and nothing is resolved.

A short story, on the other hand, may end at any time.  The uncertainty of  the character's fate is half of the fun.  Since the reader came into a world already in motion, it is up to the reader to decide how future events will fall into place.  The job of the author is to leave just enough clues to enable that train of thought.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of "Ferryman" by Nigel Edwards

Summary: "A mythology grew up around the Ferrymen, fostered by a mystique which they wrapped around themselves. Some thought them amoral servants of a ruling elite, sanctioned to undertake work beyond legitimate resolution; others with more fanciful imaginations – or who were more devout, depending on your point of view – believed them emissaries of Evil, with a capital E." Could the Ferrymen become real in your lifetime? Should they? Read this thoughtful and disturbing near-future science fiction story and decide for yourself. Review: This was a fantastic short story.  "Well-written" doesn't even begin to describe Ferryman ; it's engrossing.  The simple, clean style perfectly highlights our precise  protagonist.  If this future Edwards presents to us does in fact become a reality, the character he describes is exactly the type of person who would become a Ferryman: highly competent with the hint of a god complex. What's  especially clever abou...
Read more

The Short Story Project

I was introduced to the short story genre in high school and simply fell in love.  It's completely different from reading a novel.  A novel is a lengthy involvement.  Character development and plot must transport you into the author's world as the story gradually unfolds. Short stories are distinct experience.  A good short story writer will make you care about the outcome of the characters even though you may not necessarily know anything about them.  It is a complete experience in one sitting; not too unlike reading a poem.  You read the short story/poem for itself and not for the hope that it will drag out for 800 pages and then maybe have a sequel. The short story genre has become a lost art.  When newspapers were at their height, a writer could make a name for himself by publishing a short piece of fiction every week.  Charles Dickens is a perfect example of this.  Since then, the literary world changed.  You have to have an age...
Read more

Interview with Author Hugh Howey

Welcome to Book Brouhaha! Why don't you start out by introducing yourself and telling us a little about "Wool." Thanks for having me, Alain! I suppose I'm just this normal guy who just wrote a little story called Wool. It's about a group of people who live underground. When their society turns on itself, it threatens all of mankind. In a way, it poses the conundrum of every revolution: How do you destroy an unjust social structure without the collateral damage being worse than the injustices were? I suppose the most interesting thing about me, personally, is that I lived on a sailboat while I was in college. This led to a career as a yacht captain, which sent me all over the Caribbean and the East Coast. I didn't start writing in earnest until my wife dragged me away from the sea and into the mountains. I've always loved the short form. I've been told that it isn't as marketable, even though science fiction has a long and glorious history of c...
Read more