Many novelists find it hard to write short stories, just as many short story writers cannot imagine writing an 80k story. But writing is writing and one form can actually improve the other. Many of the greatest names in literature wrote short stories; H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Clemons, Earnest Hemingway, and more recently Stephen King. As we all know, Hemingway also wrote non-fiction as a journalist. He would say that a writer should be able to write anything well. And King, known for his very long novels, started out writing short fiction for magazines.
You may ask, why write short? Valid question. There are a host of benefits to writing short fiction and even trying your hand at journalism. First and foremost it will improve your writing. I'll get into that as we proceed. Second, and equally important, the short story market is much more open to aspiring writers and your chances of being published are much better. That gets your name, and your voice, out where readers, agents, and publishers can discover it. First let's look at how your writing will improve when you slim it down to 5k words.
The same rules that apply to long fiction apply to short fiction. But to get into that limited word count the writer must be more selective and succinct with their prose. You can't, obviously, write a two page description of your character's new dress, and you can't pick War and Peace as your plot. Writing short is a practice in precision and getting the most kick out of every word. Let's start with plot.
Like any story, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Writing 101, right. But many would-be writers tend to cut one out to get under the word count. They will start right in the middle, wrap it up in one sentence at the end, or rip out the all-important middle. But a short story still has to be a complete story. The protag should also show some progression through the story, the events should have some effect on the characters. If the events mean nothing to the characters why would they have meaning to the reader?
Keep the plot simple and straight forward. You can't slip in side plots and peripheral intrigue like you can in a novel. Stay on point. Novelist's often have trouble writing a good synopsis of their work, writing short will improve that skill tremendously. Find the core of the story you want to tell, then stay focused. Think beginning, middle, end. Where does the character start, what happens, what is the effect? Even the epic “Lord of the Rings” can be summarized as: Young hobbit is thrown into a difficult situation, is whisked away into world changing events, but finds the inner strength to rise beyond what he and others thought were insurmountable odds to complete his task.
I recently wrote a short, short story for a contest; 1500 words or less. Very short for me. My short stories generally run 5-8k words. My guide was the words of Hemingway. “I've seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I've seen a school of over fifty sperm whales in the same stretch of water and once harpooned one over nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg.” (from George Plimpton, “An Interview with Earnest Hemingway”)
What we leave out is provided by the reader. Readers are very imaginative, short story readers even more so. When they read a well written story they see every detail, feel every emotion, hear every sound. The writer doesn't need to explain it all. In “Death in the Afternoon” Hemingway tells us, “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.” but... “A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”
A short story can be rich and poignant, just look at some of the great short stories in classic literature. The writer knows the grand, epic tale which surrounds the short story and the reader senses it in every line. In short fiction much is left to the very adequate imagination of the reader. Unlike modern novels, filled with elaborate descriptions and convoluted side plots, short fiction drafts the reader into an active role of filling in the blanks. In my recent story, published in Fissure Magazine, I could simply say a Victorian character wore a waistcoat. The reader knows what Victorian men's fashion looked like. It required no description.
Likewise I described the heroine in my recent ultra-short story, not in a long-winded paragraph, but by simple key phrases slipped into the story line: “Her long gown flowed weightlessly as she moved through the jovial crowd and across the dance floor, her corset showing no sign of respiration, her eyes showing no hint of emotion behind the brightly feathered mask she wore.” The reader can picture a woman in an elegant Victorian gown entering the room, and a host of other character information is given in a very short scene. The reader is left to imagine an elaborate Victorian masked ball and the heroine briskly passing through the crowd.
Beyond training the writer to be more succinct and purposeful in there prose, writing short teaches us to be vicious editors. In the 1500 word short, I originally wrote over 2500 words. I edited entire paragraphs from the text. That would be equivalent to trimming a 100k manuscript down to 60k, deleting entire chapters. But I kept asking myself, as Hemingway demands, “does the reader already know this? Do they need to know? Can they guess?”
Yet, what is left in the end must be a complete story; beginning, middle, and end. I was a little worried I had gone too far, so I sent it off to a couple of authors I respect for a quick read. One told me I had hurried the ending, leaving it flat. A quick rewrite of the ending solved the problem. I can't say it enough, don't forget to keep the story a complete story. Beginning, middle, end, and the characters progress in some way. Leave your readers wanting another story, not wanting more from that story. It's a thin line, but it will make your prose stronger and your editing more focused.
As I alluded to earlier, the market for short fiction is growing even as the novel market shrinks. It is pure economics. Editors are more willing to risk one short story in a magazine from an unknown writer than risk rolling out a complete novel. Publishing short stories in magazines and anthologies gives readers a taste of your writing, helps you get comfortable working with editors and meeting deadlines, makes your writing stronger and more professional, and the credits look good on your queries. So give it a try. It's also a great distraction between novels, and keeps your creative juices flowing.
Keep writing,
max
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