August 29, 2022
Do you ever write short stories? What do you see as the biggest difference in the writing process between a short story and a full-length book?
Novels are my primary form, but I have explored and published a few short stores. I wrote two of them for collections that are no longer available. But for every book I’ve written, I’ve reached a point where I’ve wondered if I’d get enough words to call it a novel. (50,000 words is the figure often used to denote a full-length novel, but that number can vary by genre.) Short stories have the opposite challenge—fitting the plot and characters into few enough words. (Usually between 1,500 and 10,000.) Considering my longest book, the Ranger’s Dog Tags, is about 90,000 words, and the shortest, The Fall of Jake Hennessey, ran 52,000, you can understand the difficulty I have writing something much shorter.
What’s the difference? The writing has to be tighter. Descriptions need to be hints and not long strings of flowery phrases. Same for the characters—there’s no room for lengthy speeches or action scenes to build their personalities. Everything has to be compact.
But creating those short stories helped me become a better writer. They forced me to show, not tell, and made me reach for the thesaurus to find the exact word instead of settling for one that was close enough. Those changes slow down my writing speed, but also translate to less editing. One of the short stories took me almost six months to complete. I’m currently writing at the non-breakneck speed of one book a year. (Compare that to authors who strive to complete a book a month. Every month.) They also forced me to do more plot development before I put words on paper, although I remail a pantser (writing by discovery.)
While I don’t expect to ever adopt the short story as my default writing style, I wouldn’t object to writing another one if the right opportunity presented itself. I enjoyed the experience.
How do the other authors on this hop feel about the short story form? You can find out by following the links below.
As always, until next time, please stay safe.
August 29, 2022
Do you ever write short stories? What do you see as the biggest difference in the writing process between a short story and a full-length book?
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1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
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5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
Many of my novels started off as short pieces that just refused to stop. In the end, I went with the flow and let them develop into whatever they wanted to be. I always know when I’ve finished, just not when it will happen.
I’m on one book per year too. I don’t know how anybody could write one book a month, every month.
Unless you’re on of the Big 5 authors whose publishing house can hire a team for you, I don’t think it’s possible to write a decent book a month. I’m usually still feeling my way through the character’s story a month into the process. I can do one or two books a year depending on the genre, but again — there has to be consideration of quality.
Absolutely. The one author I am aware who releases a book every couple of months writes what I call “fluff.” Her writing is decent, but it’s there’s no depth to the stories.
One book a month sounds rather rushed to me.
A book a year is a good pace. I think maybe I could go a little faster if I were able to do it full time, but life has a way of demanding attention in other areas, too. @samanthabwriter from
Balancing Act
The most I’ve done is 1 1/2 books in a year. Maybe that will change now that I have retired from my day job.
Pingback: Exploring Short Stories by PJ MacLayne | aurorawatcherak
Maybe the Blog Hop should consider an anthology, PJ.
I believe the hop used to have a lot of the authors that were in the first anthology I participated in. KWilliams, correct me if I am wrong. It’s a good idea but a lot of work
I so agree. There’s a point where you think you’ll never have enough words to reach novel length. It feels like an uphill slog.
Tweeted.
My last book really had me worried because the ending had been written years ago, and there was only so much I could do with character development and stay true to the story.