Short Story vs Novel

I guess I don't follow the leap between tight, hard-working language and how that would make a novel become more episodic and short story-like.

I also don't think "intuitive and organic" necessarily connects to "every single word, image, and character working hard." At least in my mind, "intuitive and organic" would be more rambling and off-the-cuff, while the tight, hard-working language would be cerebral, controlled and deliberately crafted.

I've read books that advise that you squeeze all the potency out of EVERY word and EVERY image in the first draft, but I find that sort of control freak approach makes me choke and stop writing completely. It puts this perfectionist impulse in me that requires I write everything correct and powerfully in the first draft, and nothing kills a WIP faster than perfectionism in the first draft.

I'm throwing my lot in with those who suggest slapping out a first draft and analyze the story's potency and tightness in the editing phase.

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but I do think writing short stories is good practice for better novel-writing. It gets you working on the basic elements - strong characters, plot arcs, the right amount of description, all that good stuff.

When writing a short story, you address all these elements in a much smaller space, which forces you to do it faster and therefore more effectively. The editing is much more manageable, and if you totally botch a couple of projects - well, at least they weren't 85k-word novels.

Anyway, if you haven't written many short stories, I'd recommend trying some. I suppose you could think of each novel chapter as a short if you want that episodic feel. My chapters aren't episodes or stand-alones, but I do try to think of each one as its own piece - I find I write better when I'm in that mindset. I pay more attention to the needs of each little chapter and resist the urge to dash them off. The result isn't episodic, at least not for me, and I find it works well. That's just my preference, though.

Diviner said:

The reason I wondered if approaching scenes or chapters from a novel like a short story might end up being episodic is that short stories are not only compressed but complete, lesson learned, conflict resolved, characters ready to regroup.

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I understand what you're trying to say here. I used to be a short story writer, but I had to give it up because it caused too many problems with trying to write novels.

Novels and short stories are often treated the same (especially in how-to books) because they're both fiction, but each form requires different skills. Some skills, like describing things, editing, characterization can be applied to both--but there are also a number of elements that work for one and not the other. I think I've run head-on in every one of them!

In my early attempts at a first novel, I did try to think of chapters as short stories. But the problem is a short story has a beginning, middle, and an end; whereas, a chapter is part of a much bigger picture and doesn't have the same elements in the same way (i.e., the ending of a novel's chapter isn't the same as the ending of a short story--the novel will still continue to the next chapter, but a short story has concluded). As a "short story," a chapter might also not fit in properly with the pacing of the overall story.

Diviner said:

I think, but don't know, that there might be good reasons not to be so tight in structuring a novel.

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One of the legacies I've been left with is tight structure. My novels always have a tight structure, and it's very hard when it comes to revisions and I need to add a scene or a subplot. I've had to map out the timeline so I could figure out how to break the story apart to add the scenes.

Diviner said:

Most novels create a sense of urgency, a need to keep turning pages to see what happens next.

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Doesn't that depend on the story, though? A page turner tends to be more plot-focused, but there are character focused stories that don't have that same effect. If it were a thriller, I'd expect it to be a page turner, but if it were a story about a character's change in life, I'd expect a very different kind of pacing.

I've always been of the school of the thought that the novel and short story are different genres/ art forms.

Just because you're a great novelist, it doesn't mean that you can write great short stories. Vice versa.

Agree with gothicangel.

They are different forms, but it doesn't prevent us from experimenting, combining them, and blurring the lines between them.

Diviner said:

Could you briefly explain which short story considerations are inapplicable to the novel? I agree that the forms are different--otherwise why would I like one better than the other? I'm just trying to get my head around how much energy I should put into writing a form that presently does not much interest me. I can see the value of unity present in good short stories, but at the same time I find them slightly claustrophobic, a narrow world view not allowing me to dream or participate as a reader, too directive in some ways and definitely exclusive. Is that part of the essential difference?

I like to stir up readers and have them beg for more. (I wish.) No, I am not a great novelist, just someone working at it, trying to put the pieces together to tell a good story readers can get excited about.

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Damon Knight wrote a good book on short story writing. It's a form I have never been able to master, even with his expert advice though. My short stories pretty much just don't work.

Edit: Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction

There are differences in where you start, where you end and even what makes one.

Diviner said:

I am interested in hearing what others have to say about why or if novels need to be considered differently from the compression of a short story. It seems to me that writers like Ian McEwen and Paul Auster write their novels with this kind of compresssion.

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Excellent question. I think compression is the key to good writing, whether it is a short story or a 1,000 page novel.
The first principle of editing should always be to cut anything unnecesary and to condense the good stuff. Rigorous editing takes a lot of sweat and concentration, which is perhaps the only reason why some writers feel novels are exempt from the same focussed attention that shorts demand. It is an intimidating task to make every sentence of a huge MS perfect (but if you ain't a perfectionist, you ain't a good editor, in my humble opinion).

It's a temptation difficult to avoid. Even some of my all-time favourite writers have written lazy books where they are coasting, hoping the slack bits will be overshadowed by the sections where they could be bothered to turn it on.

It's always the other way around. Flabby writing won't escape an attentive reader and always sticks in the craw. Compression is just as necessary for novels as it is for shorts.

I just write. I just try to tell a good story and people it with good characters. The whole "analytical/intuitive/organic" angle is, I think, a red herring. I really hate the term "organic" writing. There ain't no such critter, and it's most often used by those who don't understand how anyone writes without an outline. We don't do it "organically."

No matter what you're writing, be it a short story, a novel, a poem, an article, etc., and no matter what method you use to write it, every single word, image, and character should work really hard. That's just good, tight writing.

But trying to learn how to write a novel by writing short stories is like trying to learn how to bake a muffin by learning how to bake a seven layer cake.

The two form are radically different, and many of the best short story writers out there can't begin to write a decent novel.

By the time you get any good at writing short stories, you could probably have written several novels, and even when and if you master the short story, you may, like a lot of great short story writers, still be lousy at writing novels.

It's "easier" to just go ahead and write the novel, and one heck of a lot easier to sell a novel.

The reason to write short stories is because you love reading and writing short stories, and you want to sell short stories.

The reason to write novels is because you love reading and writing novels, and want to sell novels.

Really, if writing short stories helped with writing novels, then writing novels should help with writing short stories, but no one makes this argument.

I would also argue that a short story is not just a short novel, and a short story is not a compressed novel. The two form have similar surface attrbutes, but so little else in common that more writers greatly delay their novel writing success than speed it up by trying to learn by writing short stories.

The way you learn to write the kind of story you want to tell is by writing the kind of story you want to tell. You do this over and over until you get it right. You don't do it by writing something else.

Diviner said:

Thanks for responding. What would you say are the elements which work for short story but not novels?

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The biggest one is story structure. We'll say a short story is 15 pages and a novel's 300 pages. Because of length, a short story has to jump right in and get started, hit the middle, and then wrap up. Sometimes they can come right to an almost abrupt halt, sort of like a punchline. The storyline is usually pretty simple. A novel might take 70-100 pages to set up the story, hit the middle, start wrapping up the subplots before the end, and then launch into the ending, and then wind down.

I actually tried to write my first novel like a long short story (in addition to trying to write each chapter like a short story). I'd get to about 100 pages, right where the beginning needed to transition to the middle, and the book would run out of steam. Because I was trying to write it like a long short story, I didn't bring in elements like subplots or plot threads that would help me make the transition. It's a very different set of skills to be able to pull in those subplots and threads and develop them into something.

Number of characters is also a key difference. A short story might have 2-3 characters in the entire story, but a novel may have more than three in a scene and a cast of 100.

Characterization: Got a whole novel to develop a character, but in a short story, the character needs to be pretty much characterized coming into the story.

Editing was a big plus I got out of short stories though. If I ever run too long, I won't have any trouble weed-whacking it down. That's easy.

Jamesaritchie said:

Really, if writing short stories helped with writing novels, then writing novels should help with writing short stories, but no one makes this argument.

I would also argue that a short story is not just a short novel, and a short story is not a compressed novel. The two form have similar surface attrbutes, but so little else in common that more writers greatly delay their novel writing success than speed it up by trying to learn by writing short stories.

The way you learn to write the kind of story you want to tell is by writing the kind of story you want to tell. You do this over and over until you get it right. You don't do it by writing something else.

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Seconding this. I learned to do short stories so well that I had to relearn how to write all over again to do a novel.

The medium is the message. The form you choose to write in shapes the content of that form.

Short story is about observation. The writer picks up an observation and shows us it. You normally have a good twist at the end of a short story and they don't have complex plots or many settings. The characters' motivations are normally contained with in that scene. Everything is relevant to that scene. Basically with a short story, you're showing us a piece of onion skin under a microscope. In a novel, you're showing us the onion entire.

And short stories have far more opportunity to make your reader beg for more and pique their imagination than novels do, simply because we don't know the whole story in a short story. We have to guess at things.

Here's how a short story can help you in novel writing: they can be very helpful when writing scenes featuring minor characters. Often these can be boring and tedious because they include characters we don't know- yet they have the opportunity to illuminate a novel. So try writing the scene as if it were a short story with the minor character as the MC.
I'm not very good at writing novels (don't have the stamina, I guess) but writing short stories has helped me look for 'moments'. 'Moments' are the bits that stick in a reader's mind: whether it's a witty line, a sad reply, a shocking action, a brutal scene, whatever, they get to the heart of the story and they grab a reader's attention. It's what motivates them to buy instead of just borrowing from the library.

Jamesaritchie said:

The reason to write short stories is because you love reading and writing short stories, and you want to sell short stories.

The reason to write novels is because you love reading and writing novels, and want to sell novels.

Really, if writing short stories helped with writing novels, then writing novels should help with writing short stories, but no one makes this argument.

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It's not quite so clear-cut. The forms are different, and plotting, structure, etc. will be radically different.

But a lot of writing basics can be learned from both. Writing either can help a new writer find his or her voice and develop skills with rhythm, description, diction, flow, etc.

Kind of like how an eye for good lighting and a well-framed shot will help both a photographer and a cinematographer, but they still require a vastly different set of skills beyond the basics.

I would also argue that a short story is not just a short novel, and a short story is not a compressed novel.

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Absolutely.

I think of it like this: novel is to a short story as a movie is to a photograph.