like trying to compare wombats and fruit bats

[truepenny]

There's a question I've been getting recently, and I finally realized why it always startles me. The question is (though is not always phrased): Why would someone who is a published novelist continue to write short stories? And it startles me because my answer is: Why not? What I realized today is that the problem, if 'problem' is the right word, is the questioner and myself operating off two rather different paradigms of what short stories are for.

There is a myth--and I use the word not as synonymous with a lie, but in its proper meaning, i.e., a story that helps us understand who we are and how our world works. It may or may not be a true story, but truth isn't always the most important thing about myths. Anyway, there's a myth among writers and editors and publishers of sf/f/h that short stories are how you launch your career. It's a story--a myth--that imagines a writer's career as a sort of evolutionary process, where you start with little stories and work your way up to big, like the tiny proto-mammals the size of shrews that eventually evolved into us, Homo sapiens, and sometimes you gotta wonder if that was a good idea, either.

Now, I don't have enough data to evaluate the truth of this myth career-wise; I don't know if it's true now, or ever has been true, that you build your name by writing short stories, and then break into the novel market like Superman through a brick wall. But I do know that viewing short stories as a stepping stone on the way to novels does a disservice to both. Novels aren't just big short stories, and short stories aren't just baby novels. They're two completely different animals. And, as a corollary, a short story writer is not the larval form of a novelist.

Some people are short story writers all the way down to the bone. Ted Chiang springs to mind. Some people only write novels (pameladean, is it fair to cite you here?). Some people write both novels and short stories, but are markedly more at home in one genre or another (think of Heyer going one way, and Poe the other). Some people do both with panache and élan: Gene Wolfe, for one. But it's not that Dean is more evolutionarily advanced than Chiang, or that we're all hanging around waiting for Wolfe to 'outgrow' short stories. The two forms are different, they're designed to do different things, and skill with one means nothing about ability to do the other.

I know I keep writing both because I have ideas come in various sizes, and trying to make a short story idea into a novel or vice versa is just asking for tears and recriminations later. Also, the two forms have different challenges and different satisfactions, and if it's the sharp, tart bite of a short story you need, a novel will not give you your fix. Personally, I like both wombats and fruit bats, and I wouldn't want to do without either.

The problem with myths is that they're reductive.

Comments

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

I had always heard that writing short stories was the way to get your foot in the door in the publishing scene.

I'm glad this may not be true. I am writing a novel for my first attempt at getting published. I actually like to read novels better than short stories because I like to be in the story longer. The plumper the book the better (usually). :-)

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

I agree, short stories and novels are two completely different animals.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I believe the "Start with short stories and work your way up the lengths" notion dates back to the days when it was possible for a number of writers to support themselves entirely from sales of short stories. (But often not from one genre. When Louis L'Amour was living off short stories, he didn't write only Westerns. He also wrote stories in which the hero defeated the villain using only his fists. There were fiction pulps devoted to various sports, and apparently boxing was one of those sports.)

Patricia C. Wrede has had a lot to say on the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition about writers and natural lengths, and how to tell which one is your length. As I recall, she spent a fair (or unfair) amount of time and effort on short stories which didn't sell. Then she wrote her first novel, and sold it. She now has learned to write short stories -- and sells some of them, while all of her novels so far have sold.

Stephen King said in the introduction to his first novelette collection that his natural length was the novelette -- which was much less salable than either short stories or novels.

Note: The Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base credits Pamela Dean with
six novels. (Seven entries; but two of those have the same title.) There are nine short stories listed for her. Complications: One short story became a novel, and the Secret Country Trilogy could be considered as one work or as two.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Pamela Dean has not written very many short stories-- "Owlswater," "This Fair Gift," and the series about the Way of Responsible Life (the green suicide priests) in the Liavek books-- but they are very, very good.

[pameladean]

I don't only write novels, but I have written very little short fiction and only one piece under ten thousand words. And even the 10,000- to 20,000-word pieces are much, much harder to write than novels. Sometimes they even take longer. It's a much, much more difficult medium for me and I need a serious incentive to engage in it.

So naturally I have always viewed this myth with profound skepticism and rising annoyance.

Any writer's evolution is always PERSONAL. I'm more evolved when I'm writing short stories than when I'm writing novels, if you want to look at it that way, which actually I don't.

It's the same with other aspects of writing, too. There are conflicting myths here, but some seem to say that plot is easy and characterization and style follow like frosting; others put things n a different order, but it's all foolish and nonsensical, because how hard or easy, how elementary or advanced, ANY GIVEN TECHNIQUE WHATSOEVER is, depends, not on the technique, but on the writer.

P.

[pameladean]

P.S. I got so cranky that I forgot to say that the wombats vs. fruitbats bit cracked me up, and is also quite a good way to express the situation.

P.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Creativity is subjective.

It's all subjective.

About the only safe generalization I can think of is that you can't produce if you don't work.

And I'm sorry I overgeneralized at you. I was racking my brain trying to think of a novel-only writer who was also really good (because otherwise the Chiang comparison doesn't work), and I couldn't remember any short stories by you, and I did have a vague memory of you saying something about not liking short-story writing. So I flung you into the sentence.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on the "nonfiction writers can't write fiction" thing, though. I become violent.

Well, that's because that's just stupid.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I find short stories so difficult to write that I really admire writers who seem comfortable at all lengths.

[pameladean]

Like I could object to that, even if I wanted to. 8-)

There's no need to apologize. My short stories are mostly long ago and far away in obscure, long out-of-print publications. And they really aren't very short. You're completely right that ideas come in various sizes, and I don't have the three-thousand-word size in stock. It's a very satisfying size for the reader, though.

I can't think of any novel-only writers at ALL, though there must be some. I don't know, though. After a novel or two the invitations to write short fiction start to arrive, and one does so want to honor them. My sole 5,000-word effort was written for Jane Yolen, who bought it, but accurately pointed out that it could be a novel, which eventually it became (Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary). One would have to be really on a far end of the spectrum to be able to resist Jane's blandishments.

P.

P.

[kate_nepveu]

Stephen King said in the introduction to his first novelette collection that his natural length was the novelette -- which was much less salable than either short stories or novels.

Nit: in _Different Seasons_, he said that he wrote the four novellettes included as kind of a way to finish off the gas tank after completing a novel.

I think it unlikely that King has a natural length, personally.

[arcaedia.livejournal.com]

Novels aren't just big short stories, and short stories aren't just baby novels. They're two completely different animals.

Very much agreed -- I was just saying last night that it would make a great subject for a workshop. The differences between them. How to move between one or the other. And so forth.

For the record... while I like seeing short story credits in a query and it will definitely catch my attention, many, in fact, most, of my clients didn't have a single such credit when they first came to me. Conversely, some are definitely more prone to short than long fiction. In the end, all that matters is telling a good story well. Breakout novels can come from incredibly talented unknowns or they can be something learned through the process of writing, evolving, and challenging one's self. The important thing is to sit down and write.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Even books which say "it all depends on the writer" state some things as absolutes. For example, in Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight says that the conscious mind thinks linearly; the subconscious thinks in webs of associations. (He calls the subconscious "Fred," but that's another matter.)

Which I found highly useful, once I figured out what bothered me about it. My conscious mind thinks in webs of associations; it's some part of my subconscious which thinks in straight lines. (Probably not the same part which writes my dreams; they have terrible plots, usually.)

[mariness.livejournal.com]

I'm using short stories to help me complete the novel I'm working on; when I get stuck on the novel, I shift to a short story, and vice versa. It seems to help me, or perhaps the short stories just offer me the illusion of feeling more accomplished, which leads me to believe that maybe I will finish writing this novel next year. In the meantime, at least I can say I've written something, and that's encouraging.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

The short story and the novel-length-or-greater are entirely different animals.

Back in ancient days, when there were lots of short story markets in SF (and other genres) and fewer novels being printed, it made sense to try to crack the market with magazines, who were publishing more stuff, than novels.

These days I think if anything it may be the opposite. It's certainly far less true than it ince was, certainly if you look at paying markets/markets with a veneer of respectability on one's resume.

And some authors tend to greatly prefer one medium over another. While the occasional short story has burst full-grown from my brain like Athena, or a violent sneeze, I greatly prefer novel-or-greater. The concepts I prefer to write about need rather more verbiage, or so it seems to me. (The grand sweep of history and social change doesn't often fit in a short story, nor does great character development. At least, not when I write them.)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I read some rather loopy criticism once of K Mansfield arguing that it was her tb and consequent bursts of energy/lethargy which led to her choosing the short story form (implying that if she's been in robust health, she'd have been the female Joyce or Proust). Duh.

(Though there's also the gendered trope of 'lady short-story writer' - see Alison Lurie's Real People. the 'little piece of ivory', perhaps, so suitable for the girlies.)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Now, I don't have enough data to evaluate the truth of this myth career-wise; I don't know if it's true now, or ever has been true, that you build your name by writing short stories, and then break into the novel market like Superman through a brick wall.

It did used to be true in SF/F that one built a Name in the magazines first, then went on to novels. This was the advice Roger Zelazny gave kinzel on how to break in, some, what? thirty years ago now? And was, in fact, the way Roger had broken in. But. By the time he passed this career path wisdom on to kinzel it was no longer true.

As received wisdom goes, it did about as much harm as good. Harlan Ellison, for instance, a writer who knows from short stories, just about broke his heart trying to cross over to novels, because he thought he was "supposed" to make that jump.

I do agree that the short and long form are different beasts; they exercise different writing muscles. I know authors who write short stories, novels, and poetry. I have myself written short stories, novels, advertising copy, book review, features and hard news in close proximity to each other. Anything that stretches the writing muscles is a Good Thing, IMHO, and a writer is well-served if heorshe can write in more than one form.

But to say that one must write only in one particular form, or that, once one has written a novel one must never again write a short story -- that's to enclose your voice and your craft within arbitrary fences of Should -- and I can't see the sense of that.

And it harm none, write what you will...

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Although I'm a natural trilogist I've written a couple of short things - 2.5K, 4K, 15K, and set out to hopefully find homes for them. It's a frustrating exercise for a new writer - the market is *tiny*. And most of the existing magazines don't seem to be good matches for my stories, or the other way round - which leaves anthologies, and breaking into _them_ as an unknown seems highly unlikely.

I cannot see how anyone could make a living - even at subsidence level - from genre shorts. There are literary magazines who will pay $500 or more for a short story. Amazing stories would pay $250 _were they open to submissions_, Asimov's $150, Interzone $113, Weird Tales $75 (all figures for a 2500 word story via www.storypilot.com )

Given the difficulty of being accepted to these titles, I conclude that it has to be for a little bit extra money and general promotion that writers aim to get published in that manner, unless the pay rates for pros are vastly above the ones I've just quoted.

Publishing shorts mainly seems to be a question of exposure - it gets the name out, it qualifies you to attend workshops like Milford, it somehow seems to signal 'serious writer' rather than 'has a novel in themselves.'

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent analysis. I started out believing the myth, and feeling frustrated because I couldn't seem to break in by writing short stories. Over time, I've learned that longer forms are just much more natural for me to work in--I enjoy reading them more, and it shows in my writing.

I still write short stories, though, when I find a character and plot irresistible, but not long enough for a novel. I think there are valuable things to be learned from both forms, just as I've taken some things from poetry and incorporated them in fiction.

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

As mentioned by rolanni above, Roger Zelazny suggested to me that that writers should start with short stories, which, in fact, I did, and which in fact he did... and then move into novels.

I'll point out that in my first pro sale to Amazing was in the May 1978 issue with Charles Sheffield, Mack Reynolds, Gordon Eklund, and Lisa Tuttle -- all novelists, I think. I'd been writing and selling non-fiction to newspapers and magazines for almost a decade by then, but was following Roger's advice. In Amazing, November 1978, my second pro fiction story shared the issue with stories by Glenn Cook, A. Bertram Chandler, Eileen Gunn, William F. Temple, James Sallis, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert F. Young, Charles De Vet, and Christopher Anvil, among others. I think all those above have book-length credit.

Now days... despite the fact that short fiction markets are much thinner on the ground, I think novelists who actively avoid short fiction (I have seen the head raise, heard the sniff, followed by the "oh, I never touch the stuff!")are probably limiting themselves in their craft, and in some cases are limiting their career.

Yes, the old short-story-ladder-to-success is out-dated. On the other hand, the underlying message I got from Roger and the under-appreciated Ted White was that short fiction is an excellent way to put your name in front of new readers. Call it brand awareness that you get paid for.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Nice post. My take: I'm a natural short story writer who's been trying to grow a decent novel bump for a few years. I think one issue of the myth isn't just the confusion-of-craft you cite, but also confusion-of-marketing. There isn't even just one kind of short story -- ie, it's not fruit bats and wombats, it's fruit bats and fungo bats and wombats and acrobats. The difference between flash (which may be the very hardest form to write) and a novella is probably greater than the difference between any short form and the novel. For that matter, short novels and doorstops have different structures and forms. By the same token my novel ROCKET SCIENCE is essentially a giant short story, while I have novelettes which are structurally and thematically novels.

All the thinking about short stories vs novels is a marketing grid overlaid upon the magical, dynamic spectrum of fiction and ideas.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

This particular bat finds novels doable and short stories next to impossible, which makes that myth a depressing thing to dwell on; this post is reassuring. Thank you.

[qnotku.livejournal.com]

The bottom line being that there is no bottom line, because everyone does it differently. Depending on how much of a switch-hitter one's brain is, that is. Novelists to the right, short story writers to the left and the writers who do both standing in the middle sticking their tongues out at all and sundry?

:smiles:

Teri

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

First off, BRAVA! to Truepenny for saying this so well.

Secondly, on the nonfiction vs fiction... Well, like shorts and novels, they are two entirely different animals, and of course one can be successful in both.

OTOH, lots of NF writers seem to not grasp that fiction (hereafter F) is different, and should be written differently from NF. And so lots and lots of NF writers are bad F writers. (I should note that the reverse is likely also true, but because we have this inbetween genre known as "infotainment," the F writers have a place to go that isn't too far from F.)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Apart from the odd exception, I've never been able to write short stories, and I can make out three reasons:

- I don't seem to get short ideas. Anyone turning up in my head is there for the long haul.
- When I get vague ideas, I tend to be interested in backstory and complexity, not crisp endings
- My writing is too flabby, too rambling for shorts; I've only just begun to tackle *that* problem. When I come out of it, I might be able to pack more power into words and write better shorts.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a natural novel-length writer. (Though this feels in a way like saying a natural necklace length, not so good at bracelets...) I like reading short stories a lot, but I've never figured out how to do them. I can see the way their pacing works, but it doesn't work for me. All the short stories I've sold have either been first chapters of novels, though generally novels I have no intention of writing, or poetry with the line breaks cunningly taken out, or they're this one idea, with no time to accrete complications or plot. I'm good at writing POV, and I can do a bit of practically any POV. The Google-POV story I sold the other day is 1300 words of Google-POV, which is fortunately what was wanted. But my stories plough into the ground when I get beyond the setup situation and something has to happen.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

There isn't even just one kind of short story -- ie, it's not fruit bats and wombats, it's fruit bats and fungo bats and wombats and acrobats.

Yes.

Absolutely positively a thousand million times yes.

Raymond Carver

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know that essay about KM, but wondered whether you know Raymond Carver's essay 'Fires' in which he talks about writing short fiction because ... well, because he was so poor and stretched, timewise, that they were the only thing he COULD write. He says, "To write a novel, it seems to me, a writer should be living in a world that makes sense, a world that the writer can believe in, draw a bead on, and then write about accurately. A world that will, for a time anyway, stay fixed in one place ... Time and again I reached the point where I couldn't see or plan any further ahead than the first of next month and gathering together enough money, by hook or by crook, to meet the rent and provide the children's school clothes ... So I purposely, and by necessity, limited myself to writing things I knew I could finish in one sitting, two sittings at the most."

He goes on, but I just think it's a lovely passage - brutally honest and terribly intriguing in terms of why one writer 'chose' the short form over novels; or why the short form chose him.

nike

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

There's also genre constraints, she said, serene in the knowledge that she was being utterly obvious.

SF/F wants lots of stories and lots of novels. I knew I should have kept trying to have a fantasy-writing kind of mind, blast it. But I don't I read it with glee and would as soon be shot in the head (glancingly) as write it.

I can write erotica, which lives and dies by the story, and I can write historical -- and if anyone's buying historical stories for anything except collections of established writers, I haven't found them. Okay, it's true I haven't looked so hard, becuase historical plots don't come in small bites, I don't think.

So I think I am very much with the 'writing them can be very good for you', but I'm glad to hear I don't need to write and SELL them to have a hope in Hell.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

There are a few markets for historical short fiction. (Not to imply that you must therefore go out and start writing historical fiction, but just as a data point.) Paradox (http://www.paradoxmag.com/) is one.

In general, I agree with you: historicals don't come in bite-sized pieces. In my own personal writing experience, neither does fantasy. (I.e., I almost never get fantasy ideas that can be crammed into short stories.) Most of my short stories are horror, because I find that horror ideas are much more likely to be short than long. But, you know, YMMV.

Everything I say about markets is really about markets in sf/f/h. Because that's all I write. What other tribes do is a mystery to me.