What's the difference?

Short fiction has to be succinct. With a novel you can afford to go into extraneous details, to have various sub-plots and create a full-immersion experience for the reader. With short fiction, you have a very limited amount of space so every word has to be effective.

The reader knows it's a short piece so they expect to be engaged in the story much sooner. The general rule is you have two paragraphs to hook the reader's interest. With a novel, the reader is more willing to be eased into the story, they're more tolerant when they pick up the book, so the writer has 2-3 pages to hook them.

You need to know what your story is about with short fiction. You can't just start writing and discover the story as you go or you'll end up having to re-write most of it. Have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Know your characters. In the small amount of time it takes to read your story, you need to make the characters believable. The better you know the characters, the more potent your writing will be. You can develop them as you write but, again, you'll need to rewrite to really make them effective.

There are many, many threads here on writing short fiction, and there are plenty of magazines and books and web pages dedicated to this story form. Good luck!

You can also go through the articles AbsoluteWrite has on file. There are plenty of articles on short fiction.

IMHO a piece of short fiction is everything a book is but without the fluff. You cannot explore the characters secret motivations and give them three or four reasons for doing something. Everything needs to be simplified and focused on action(or whatever your main focus is in the piece).
A good exercise is reading bad short fiction(join a critique circle and you will find a lot of bad short stories) and think what makes it bad.

Also try reading good short stories. Subscribe to magazines and read the free ones online. Like a novel, short fiction should have a story arc (beginning, middle, end) and a character arc with some change or growth. This is true even of flash (although occasionally with the shortest stuff, you only get a snapshot).

What differs is that it is streamlined, focused. You don't have room for multiple subplots and themes. Likewise, too many characters can clutter a short story. It's like the difference is thirty minute TV show and a two hour movie. This doesn't mean that a short can't be deep or complex, just that your story must be pure. No filler. No fluff.

I basically plan novels and short stories the same way. First I jot down bits of ideas about the story. When I get enough bits, I mix them together by free-writing about them until I come up with a good skeleton: characters, plot line, setting. Then I research anything I need to know. Then I do an outline that tends to be like a really rough first draft, including stretches of description and dialogue. Then, when all the elements seem to be in place, I do an official first draft.

The difference between the novel and the short is how long it takes me to do the preparations and the first draft. Research for a short is generally very focused, taking a day or two; research for a novel is generally broad and extensive, spanning months. Writing the short, a week or two, plus several days of editing. Writing the novel, two-three months, plus months more of editing. Development of the novel from idea to that detailed outline is a long process, too, during which research is probably going forward.

Development of shorts may span quite a little while, just because I like to let the ideas simmer until I'm really motivated to push them through to product.

Since my natural bent is for the novel, I usually conceive of shorts as discrete stand-alone pieces of a story that could go on much longer. I have three novel/series milieus from which I can pull these pieces, so I don't have to develop a whole world for each short.

My novel started as a short story. My short stories started as novels. Go figure.

I read some great advice in The Writer Magazine that said something like, a short story is a takeoff that grows faster and faster until it just ends. There isn't really a middle, the beginning leads right into the climax. That was my understanding of it anyhow.

-Feathers

I teach a short story workshop and one of the topics we cover is the big difference between short stories & novels.

Here are a few:

Short stories, because of their length, contain one plot pivot point. There is no room for subplots. Characters are limited to no more than one or two main characters and as few subordinate characters as needed. Settings are usually one or two places.

Although all real short stories must tell a complete story - beginning, middle, end - in skillful hands this process can take very few words. If it is not complete, it is a vignette, not a short story.

In a novel, you are not constrained by length - you are constrained by all other conventions of good writing, and you are telling a story, but you may have several main characters, a whole cast of subordinate characters, multiple locations at will, and as many subplots as you need to tell your story in detail in as many pages as it takes.

A short story is not a whole branching tree - it's a whole flower on a single stem.

Many writers like the freedom a novel allows for in-depth exploration.

I like the limits short stories impose on me to tell a complete story in as few words as possible.

I like two books on writing - they may not be what you are looking for, but they are my favorites:

On Writing by Stephen King

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

prrrfect, go to the library and read the books in the 808 section. those are the writing books. use the bits that make sense to you, skip the bits that don't. but try it all. there are as many ways to write as there are books. people outline, people don't outline. people interview characters, people don't. try it out. if it works, great. if it doesn't move on.

Don't forget to check out the books that talk about narrative structure without saying "this is the way to write. " two of the best books out there are "the art and craft of novel writing" by Oakley Hall and "A passion For Narrative" by Jack Hodgins.

It's all relative. Kate really likes Writing Down The Bones. I didn't. Doesn't make either of us right. Just different. I do think that Kate's assessment of a short story is right on.

Just remember that short stories and novels are two very different things. If you don't like writing short stories, no biggie. Not everyone does.

I like the Gotham Writers' Workshop book "Writing Fiction."

prrrfukt said:

Is there a difference in the way you go about writing a novel or a short story? What are the guidelines to writing a short fiction?

I realize this may seem like a stupid question, but when I first set out to begin my novel, the first time. I didn't research anything I just started "Pg 1." and began to try and come up with a great novel. I didn't realize that you had to come up with a plot, character information and all that.

So if anyone has any information for me I would be most appreciative.

Click to expand...

First .... the only stupid question is the one that is not asked...
Second... I am not sure what the norm or usual answer would be ... but... when I start a novel I do a summary and usually a character sketch for each one in the book ....... and because I write Mystery novels I include victims and ways/means of death... on a short story I actually do an outline, and try to put the hook in the first few sentences....

Not sure it helps but I tried. There is a lot of really terrific people here and they can give ya much better advice I am sure. I try but am not as gifted and smart as most on this site........ just don't give up!!!

Write ON!

I think of shorts as vignettes, a small piece I want to show, novels are deeply detailed. Brings to mind a story by Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle--about a man who starts out painting a leaf and ends up doing the tree, the sky behind it, the ground below, and all the wildlife that lives in the tree and the world around it.

Sometimes an idea will want to be a leaf--other times it'll want to be the world tree. :}

Actually when I write short fiction I just grab an interesting idea and go. If I get stuck, I play a quick game of "What if?" in my head. Or, sometimes to greater success, I ask myself what I could do to make the story stranger. Usually works. I've had about a dozen short stories published online (though only one where I actually got paid), and I don't believe I plotted any of those. I have a few that I'm proud of that I've plotted, but so far no one has been interested in publishing them.

As for novels, I've tried the same approach, but I haven't had success in even coming close to finishing.