Forms of fiction…
I won’t go into relatively new forms, like flash fiction and some memoirs and celeb books (with the fiction sometimes discovered after publication). I won’t deal with the genre question (I got into trouble on Goodreads for doing so). I’ll only discuss the traditional forms—short stories, novellas, and novels.
The best (and maybe only reasonable) way to separate them is via length. (I’ll probably get in trouble for that too.) Length is measured in thousands of words, abbreviated kwords, whether you use simple or complex ones, erudite ones, or slang and regional language. For me, anything less than 10k is a short story (many ‘zines want less than 3k); between 10k and 40k, it’s a novella; and anything above 40k is a novel, although most novels are 60k and above for the simple reason that publishing even an ebook is expensive, and anything less than 60k is hardly worth it. That doesn’t mean that authors don’t play around with word count. Word count is also a function of genre (again, I won’t discuss that).
There are more subtle ways to separate them that are usually fuzzier and more controversial. The number of characters in a novel is generally much larger than the number in a short story, but you certainly have some novels that have only a few characters (hard to imagine it going the other way—you can probably make a whole short story just listing all the characters in Clancy’s Red Storm Rising). Description of settings in a short story also tends to be sparse and extensive in a novel, as well as the number of settings.
In brief, the short story is bare bones while novellas and novels have more meat in them (apologies to the vegetarians and vegans among my readers). Because of this, some people claim the short story is the hardest to write well. Maybe that explains why anthologies and short story collections don’t sell well, and why the vicious circle closes, because authors don’t bother writing them as a consequence.
“Everyone has a story in them” goes the adage, but there’s a corollary: …but everyone doesn’t have a novel in them, despite what NaNoWriMo claims. I was recently corrected about that program: NaNoWriMo doesn’t expect you to write a novel in a month; the idea is that wannabe novel writers learn to follow a schedule and organize their time so that they can eventually write that novel.
That brings up the more general question: What fiction form should you focus on? I’m not talking about the best way to sell your fiction. That’s a secondary question that’s not important in the long run. After all, most of the movies made from Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre came from his short stories, not his novels.
A. B. Carolan recently taught me something about this. About ten years ago, I wrote the short story “Marcello and Me.” I was writing a lot more short stories back then (and before I became a full-time writer, I did so most of my life). I mentioned to A. B. that the story won some kind of prize (I haven’t dug into my files to see which one), he read it, and then said, “Steve, let me turn this into a YA sci-fi mystery.” The Secret of the Urns was the result. Not to toot my own horn too much (fortunately this blog isn’t like Goodreads where you can’t even mention you’re an author in some discussions), A. B. taught me that writing short stories might be where wannabe authors might want to start. A good short story can always be expanded into a novel.
That’s another negative for the NaNoWriMo concept. I thought about whether I’d done that with other short stories. The answer is yes. Each part of Survivors of the Chaos (first book in the Chaos Chronicles Trilogy, the novels now bundled together as The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection) came from short stories, for example, as did some scenes from the second and third novels in the trilogy; same for another sci-fi tale, More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. In the mystery/thriller side of my writing, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan started as a short story that I expanded, just like A. B. did with “Marcello and Me” (that original short story can be found in Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape).
This leads me to offer some (probably unoriginal) advice for writers just starting out: Just write, write, and write some more. What you write either becomes short fiction or a novel, but the first can always be turned into a novel later on. Consider all that to be prep for NaNoWriMo if you want, short runs going to longer runs and on to the marathon of writing the novel. Each form of fiction becomes a little more complex as we move from short story to novel. And who knows? You might just stick with short stories and have some of them made into movies like Philip K. Dick. After all, the fun is in the writing!
Comments are welcome.
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Want free fiction? I give my short fiction away now. Besides what you find in the blog category “Steve’s Shorts,” I offer free PDFs containing short stories and novellas. You don’t even have to email the request anymore. Use this URL to see the list and download what you want. (You might want to peruse the same list on the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” because the list on OneDrive just contains file names, some suggestive of contents, others not. Remember, I write in three genres.) Of course, you can still request via email…and subscribe to my email newsletter while you’re at it. Happy reading!
A new interview. I love interviews. They allow readers a peek into my writing life to see that I’m not just some old recluse who writes all these stories. The new interview by Indie Crime Scene accomplished all that and allowed me to answer some questions about my books, focusing on the mysteries and thrillers. This is a great blog for all mystery, thriller, and crime readers (they also have one for sci-fi). Thanks, Indie Crime Scene’s Dennis Chekalov for the spot-on questions. Although we’re talking internet here, that’s good journalism. Readers, enjoy!
In libris libertas!
