Complexity and story forms…
Fiction writers have their comfort zones. Some love to write long novels; at the other extreme, others prefer short stories. A return to oral tradition like in the Moth Movement emphasizes the latter, but normal fiction that communicates via the written word comes in all sizes. There are constraints imposed by all story forms too, but authors’ comfort zones are just as often evident as they are hidden.
One reason that I refuse to use Twitter is that I can rarely communicate anything without thinking about it and almost invariably that process leads to more than 140 characters. (Many Twitter users’ tweets are knee-jerk reactions without much thought added—our president’s tweets are good examples.) I find a 3K word limit for a short story constraining, but a 10K limit not so much.
The key to my preferences is complexity, and I bet that’s true with many authors. I never start a story with its length pre-determined—it could turn out to be a short story, novella, or novel. And the final choice is easy: complexity leads to more words, even if I’m a minimalist writer. Short stories cannot be complex, although they can contain a complex theme—gun control or spousal abuse, for example. Novels are usually complex and contain a number of complex themes…or they should if they’re worth much.
Damon Knight, like many sci-fi writers, published a lot of short stories. His short, “To Serve Man,” was a famous Twilight Zone episode (you can catch those classic b&w half-hour episodes on several cable channels). He also wrote Creating Short Fiction (the third edition is on my reference shelf), a particularly good guide on how to write short stories. Phillip K. Dick was another master of the sci-fi short story form. His shorts and novellas were discovered by Hollywood and turned into movies.
Hollywood has problems adopting sci-fi novels, though, although Dick’s The Man in the High Castle made it as a serialized version (the serialization wasn’t very well done, I might add). I used to wonder why something like Asimov’s The Naked Sun and the Foundation trilogy weren’t made into movies (Star Wars’ plagiarism of many Foundation elements doesn’t count), but complexity is the reason. Hollywood can’t do complex. Just consider how I, Robot, another Asimov story, was destroyed as a movie.
A published story, where the medium is the written word, often doesn’t translate well into the audiovisual medium of a film. I recently watched the movie version of Forsythe’s The Day of the Jackal on a cable channel (yet again). That original version is a hundred times better than the Bruce Willis’ disaster. It follows the original novel well, but all Forsythe’s nuances are missing—the novel is too complex for a two-hour movie.
When I started writing as a kid and continued as a busy adult with a demanding day-job, I wrote a lot of short stories and a few novellas—I didn’t have time for complexity. But the world is complex, even if it’s a fantasy world, so a good story often demands complexity. It’s natural that I gravitated more to the novel as I explored my fictional universes that, after all, must seem real if they are to resonate with readers. But any writer must recognize that some stories aren’t complex, and they can resonate better by being short.
Of course, it’s all about knowing when and how to stop. As you spin your yarn and come to the point where you can’t decide what more there is to say, don’t. Stop there. Don’t add complexity if it’s not required. Knight and Dick never wrote a full-length novel as far as I know (sci-fi buffs can correct me if I’m wrong), but their short works are justifiably famous nonetheless (or should be) and hit home without complexity.
And that leads me to a lament: it’s sad that the short story form has fallen from favor among both readers and writers. My gut tells me that short story collections and anthologies don’t sell well; the few stats I’m privy to seem to confirm that. (This phenomenon is probably related to the fact that the print magazines are fast disappearing and generally publish pop drivel now.) Authors want to write the “great American novel.” And readers seem to prefer novels over short stories, so many authors cater to that marketplace preference instead of letting a story become a short, novella, or novel, depending on its complexity.
I tend to give away short stories and novellas, either in PDFs free for the asking (see the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” webpage) or on my blog, but I still value them. (That’s partly driven by the disappearing act of magazines where I can submit a short—why bother if they pay little or nothing?) My one extensive collection, Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, doesn’t sell at all (nevertheless, I hope to publish a second volume soon), but these and other shorts I have in anthologies are some of my best stories. Complexity in a story isn’t a personal goal, it’s an organic outcome of my creative writing process. It’s a bit of a puzzle that in these times of 140-character tweets, short Facebook comments, and brief blog posts that short stories don’t sell well.
Maybe novel readers nowadays aren’t the ones who participate in all this brief social media chitchat? Are they the outliers of the reading population who look for more food for thought and consequently turn to the novel form? Readers, please let me know what you think. And writers, let me know which story form you prefer and why. Unlike me, you might have a preference, and your reasons will be interesting.
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Aristocrats and Assassins. In #4 of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” Castilblanco and his wife are on vacation in Europe when a terrorist starts kidnapping members of European royal families. Castilblanco and eventually Chen work with authorities to discover the terrorist’s agenda. This fast-moving mystery/thriller/suspense novel is on sale now at Smashwords in all ebook formats; use coupon code VN74R.
And look for this new mystery/thriller/suspense story coming this spring from Penmore Press: Rembrandt’s Angel pairs Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiquities Inspector Esther Brookstone with Interpol Agent Bastiann van Coevorden, as their search for dealers in stolen artwork leads to exposing an international conspiracy. Bastiann first appeared in Aristocrats and Assassins and played a prominent role in Gaia and the Goliaths. Esther made her debut in The Collector. This new team of sleuths discovers that pursuing stolen artwork can become surprisingly dangerous.
In libris libertas!
