Problem with Writing Short Fiction

Write novels?

Try writing long and then pruning - go back & delete any unnecessary subplots and characters. Then make every word, every scene count - everyth sentence must push the story toward its ultimate and satisfying conclusion.

And know the end before you write the beginning so it doesn't wander around trying to find itself.

Best of luck! Writing short isn't easy - but it's fun!

Stop trying!

But seriously, if you really, really want to write short, try narrowing your scope. Stick with one or two characters and one incident. Say you want to write about a relationship between two teenage lovers. You wouldn't start when they meet and end when they split. You would choose the day the decision was made to a) have sex, or b) break up. You could write a short from the POV of one of them, describing the day they go on a picnic and the girl notices how he licks the edge of his sandwich before biting into it, and she decides she could never live with that. But they don't actually break up there; you end at the decision.

Read some short fiction to get a feel for it. Study the beginning and end, and the scope of the whole story. And realize that you may just be one of the writers who doesn't write short. That's okay. Shorts not required!

Siddow said:

That's okay. Shorts not required!

Click to expand...

So true!

(Shirts & shoes, however, are required.)

Kate and Siddow have some great advice there.

I suggest giving yourself a maximum word count and sticking to it - then figure out how to tell that story in that number of words.

You might find it useful to pick one scene or event from your story and use that as the short.

First things I wrote were movie scripts, and you have the word (well, page) count issue there. I didn't think I was learning much specific to the length there, as I was focused on the other aspects of that branch of writing. Then I moved to a novel and ran wild and free (eventually my wife made me get dressed again).

Then someone told me the best way to sell a book was get some published credits in short stories. So I took a run at some. I could not for the life of me tell anything like a decent story under 7K.

So I went back to thinking like a scriptwriter. Come into a scene after it's started (which followed onto coming into a story after it's started), and leaving before the scene is finished. That helped. Active verbage helped, because it drove the narrative much more efficiently. You can cheat a little by using contractions (but this really is a cheat). Lastly, I went through with the red pen. I now have, amongst other things, a stockpile of redundant "that"s (so if you're running short, let me know, I'll send some).

Now I can tell a good tight story in 3K - though 5K is better, if for no other reason than you get paid by the word, so let's not get too economical on the prose.

Only if you're over 18-years of age, check my website for an example of a short story.
http://www.evelynosimon.net

When you get there, click on stories. When you come to the sex scenes, if you do not wish to read them, just stop there. LOL!

You could try this.

Keep it simple.
Take a character you care about.
Give hir a goal or objective to achieve.
Think about the difficulties s/he faces, and choose one major on or two serious ones.
Then write it out in no more than 4000 words.
Edit and prune to 3000.

Short

I could ramble on all night, but the short answer is that you're starting the story way, way too early, and ending it way, way too late. A 5K story has to start 5K before it ends, not 35K before it ends. From word one you should be thinking about the climax, aiming toward it, and if you hit 1K without the climax in sight, you either started too early in the story again, or you put in a whole lot of stuff that has no business in a short story.

Why do you need to write short fiction in the first place? You can't put a story into a specific amount of words. Some stories only need hundred words, others need a million words.

Dont kill me...but I really disagree with almost that is said here.
I am not an expert on the subject, but I do write some short stories and they are published.

This is my advice take it or leave it...

A novel is like taking a video movie. You have the ability and time and batteries to pan in and out, to move focus from here to there. Sometimes you get out of focus but you can immediately fix it as there is a lot left to still view and concentrate the lens upon.

A short story is like taking a picture still with FILM. You get one chance - you get one possibility at clicking and taking the picture until it is forever lost.

Use your inner eye. Concentrate on the ONE picture. Dont concentrate on the whole scene of everything going on. If you have a 5k limit make it say what you want to say in 4k. If 10k make it say it in 8k. Words are a premium in short stories. Every one must be treated like gold.

And always remember that some people just cannot write the short story. You may not be cut out for it.

MHO

Try the 20-minute short story. I got the idea from a teacher who happened to do this sort of thing for McSweeney's. Think about your story for a few minutes and then just write. Set a timer to go off after 20 minutes. Then stop, edit any grammatical/spelling errors and maybe change a few words. With that, you're done. You must have a beginning a middle and an end in the story.

Mark Lazer said:

Why do you need to write short fiction in the first place? You can't put a story into a specific amount of words. Some stories only need hundred words, others need a million words.

Click to expand...

I completely agree with this.

But...

(And isn't there always a but )

If you want to crack the shorts market, you have to learn how to write short.

and...

Writing shorts is a skill that will benefit your long form work.

When I first started I came to the conclusion, very quickly, that I liked words to much to be a good writer. I used way too many. Learning to write shorts really helped me become a better novel writer.

Experiment, have fun, find what works for you. When you are happy, your readers will be.

Plot the ending first, get there are quickly as possible, bin the subplots and almost all secondary characters.

Read well written short stories, a lot of them. See how the writer manipulates the information he delivers to the reader--usually just enough in the beginning to set time and place. Study how the plot generally revolves around one or two characters, and how the plot itself is confined.

You learn to write short stories the same way you learn to do anything well-- by studying those who have mastered it.

TeddyG, as usual, is spot on.

I write a lot of short fiction, read a lot of short fiction and have been a judge in short fiction contests. The best ones use the principal of keeping the story grounded in the elements of fiction. . . focus on something to define your characters. . . your method of characterization. . .

Keep in mind the turn of your story and build to it, if you can't figure out the turn, take a step back and plot/outline it in a spiral notebook or something akin.

Now, I am not saying to be a strict formalist here. . . structure is important but not the be all end all of the short story, but understanding how to do it helps you to deviate if you want.

Also, Read Read Read Read Read. . . if you want to know how to write short fiction, read a lot of short fiction.

Good Luck

Mark Lazer said:

Why do you need to write short fiction in the first place? You can't put a story into a specific amount of words. Some stories only need hundred words, others need a million words.

Click to expand...

I've never believed this for a second. Any story can be written at any length. Stories don't dictate to the writer, the writer dictates to the story. Or that's how it should be. The idea that stories should be a given length is an incredibly modern notion.

A story is the length it is because of what the writer decides to put in or leave out.

It's amazing how notions about length go out the window when money comes through the door. When an editor offers a writer a $20,000 advance for a novelized version of his short short, the novel gets written. And when an editor offers a writer two or three thousand dollars for a short story version of a novel, the short story gets written.

It goes hand in hand with writer's block. Writer's block also does not exist except in the minds of those who believe it exists. The first known case was almost exactly two hundred years ago. And there's no evidence that the 19th century had more than two additional cases (And both of these claimed writer's block only after reading about that first account, until literary journals began widely publishing accounts of the first case.)

And writer's block did not become universally common until teh advent of teh internet. It's purely a name it and claim it affliction.

Before the 19th century is was universally believed that writers were in charge of the writing, and this belief made writer's block impossible.

The same was true of length. Writers were taught they were in charge of length, and length wasn't an issue. Writers wrote stories at whatever length they wished the story to be.

No story needs one word more, or one word less, than the writer decides to use. The writer chooses the structure of the story, the writer chooses the number of characters, the writer chooses how many threads go into the story, on and on and on. These deliberate choices determine the length of the story.

The shortest story out there can be written perfectly well as a novel, and Mody Dick can be written perfectly well as a short story.

I disagree with that. I can't make a story longer just to make it longer. Maybe it's my writing style, but I won't add some kind of event that doesn't add anything to the story. Why would I tell that the protagonist went to the supermarket to buy peanutbutter if it hasn't got anything to do with the story whatsoever? The same goes with cutting stuff; it's my story I added a scene because I felt it was important. I could decide to ditch that scene if it doesn't turn out the way I pictured it, but I won't get rid of it because with it I would have 200 hundred words more when I opted for an X amount of words.

If you're having a hard time writing short stories, why not try writing flash fiction (under 1000 words) for a change but also that way, you might hit your goal of 5k or 7k. Or it might teach you some new skills and/or a new perspective that might help you learn how to write a short story and hit the word count you're looking for.

On a practical note, do you check your word count as you're going along? That sometimes helps.

Why look at it as a problem? Just because you can write novels, doesn't mean you can also write shorts, and vice-versa.

If your strength lies in novel-length fiction, write novels.

The twenty-minute short story idea is a wonderful thing to try. You'll find an ending because you're going to be going "Crap crap crap! Three minutes left and I'm not done, I need to be done!"

Look as an ending suddenly appears. You might not like it, you might not even know where it came from (or, it might read like something you pulled out your bum) but it's an ending, and it's very honest. That's good.

Then do some magic editing. Remember that editing can include a complete re-write. If nothing else, you've got the idea and you've got some boundaries. Go with it.

As for the idea of stories "needing" a certain length to be told...I don't know. I don't like that idea. The one part of Steve King's "On Writing" book that I disagreed with was when he said that stories were found things, because I thought this contradicted the idea that writing is a craft, just like plumbing. A plumber does not "find" pipes, nor does a project fall apart because the pipe he picked "needed" to be three feet too short.

The reason Harlan Ellison writes in public, on a whim, is to show off. (Duh.) But it's also to show that there's nothing mystical about writing, at least not about the writing part. It's work, it's a craft. Yeah, there's art in it too, but work are the legs that art stands up on, not the other way around.

Jamesaritchie said:

The shortest story out there can be written perfectly well as a novel, and Mody Dick can be written perfectly well as a short story.

Click to expand...

Moby Dick should have been written as a short story. The entire "story" part of it is in the last twenty pages or so. Raymond Carver would have had it down to five, Borges to maybe one.

caw.

blacbird said:

Moby Dick should have been written as a short story. The entire "story" part of it is in the last twenty pages or so. Raymond Carver would have had it down to five, Borges to maybe one.

caw.

Click to expand...

Yes - I think it would be fun to do flash fiction of great novels we have read.