Switching from novels to short stories

TheNightTerror · Dec 4, 2005

Questions about switching from novels to short stories

I'm getting a little curious about short stories, mainly because I have a bastard of a new story idea in my mind. Not only will it not go away, but it tells me I'll sorely regret it if I try to make it into a novel length story. I'm terrible at thinking of short story plots, so I've never cared about learning about them.

My last stories I wrote have all been 360 pages or longer, so the idea of writing something that could reach maybe 40 is making me scratch my head. Although, considering the last few times I said I'd write something a certain length, it ended up almost twice that long, so maybe 70-80 is a better guess.

Anyways, I may as well rattle off my questions now.

1) Would a 40-80 page story be a novella?

2) How short would it have to be to be considered a short story?

3) Am I allowed to use chapters, or should it be so short that they're not necessary?

4) If it's any good, what do I do with it?

God, it feels weird to even think about writing a short story . . . I think I'm going to go back to piecing together the plot and seeing if I can't stretch it out some more.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 4, 2005

Short story

Well, a short story is anything from 2,000-7,500 words, so if you're using the standard Courier 12, a short story can't go above 30 pages. Then comes a novelette, which is 7,500-17,500 words. This is a maximum of 70 pages with Courier 12. A novella is 17,500 words up to 30,000 words. (Up to 40,000 words, with some genres.)

In all honesty, it's very tough to sell anything above 5,000 words. Once you get into novelette and novella lengths, markets and very few, very far betweem, and when there is a market it most often goes to established writers.

But length is a choice. Write it at 5,000 words. You might be surprised at the results.

AdamH · Dec 4, 2005

TheNightTerror said:
Anyways, I may as well rattle off my questions now.

1) Would a 40-80 page story be a novella?

2) How short would it have to be to be considered a short story?

3) Am I allowed to use chapters, or should it be so short that they're not necessary?

4) If it's any good, what do I do with it?

Now to rattle off some answers.

1) Yes. Keep it around or less than 5000 words.

2) See answer 1). Also, most short story publications go by word count instead of page count. It makes life simpler to start thinking in these terms now.

3) Why not? It's your creation. If you submit it and the editor doesn't like the way it's formatted but accepts the story, he/she will tell you. At that point it's up to you to make the adjustments they ask for if you want to.

4) There's tons of places out there. A good resource someone introduced to me here was Story Pilot. http://www.storypilot.com/ It's a search engine to find submission calls and guidelines to mags out there. You can search my genre, word count, pay...pretty much any criteria you can think of.

The main difference between a short story and a novel in my experience is a short story is a clip in time...the most important clip of a character's story...while a novel is a series of clips weaved into a greater story. Short stories are novels with all the description and scene setting cut out. It's all about the story and not the scene. Only write what's integral to the plot with no frills that you would've normally added in the novel.

Good luck!

TheNightTerror · Dec 4, 2005

@Jamesaritchie -- seems I haven’t cruised through here for long enough. I thought either Times New Roman 12 or Courier 10 were the standards.

God, I feel smart right now. :tongue

I had a stereotypical writer’s day today, I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote instead. I cranked out the story, she weighed in at 11 pages, 2750 words, right? Definitely only a short story. It was actually quite a bit of fun, considering how badly me and short stories clash.

@Maddwriter -- ironically enough, I did start out with chapters, but it only had 2. Force of habit made me do it I guess, but they were the very first thing I axed. I better sleep before I proofread it for real, though. :tongue

The Story Pilot site looks really neat -- I did a few searches, and once I figure out what genre this thing is, I’m in business.

I swear, that’s gotta be my biggest weakness. I never can figure it out.

Actually, detail wise, I slipped into the short story mode without too much trouble, I guess I haven’t been adding all the frills I should’ve in my novel.

Now maybe this damned story will leave me in peace . . .

But no. The urge to proofread persists . . . just watch, next I’ll want to send it out into the world before my novel. (Although…would it be easier to publish a novel if I did manage to do something with my short story, if it’s any good the morning after?)

Thanks for the good luck. :Thumbs:

Jamesaritchie · Dec 5, 2005

Font

TheNightTerror said:
@Jamesaritchie -- seems I haven’t cruised through here for long enough. I thought either Times New Roman 12 or Courier 10 were the standards. God, I feel smart right now.

I had a stereotypical writer’s day today, I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote instead. I cranked out the story, she weighed in at 11 pages, 2750 words, right? Definitely only a short story. It was actually quite a bit of fun, considering how badly me and short stories clash.

@Maddwriter -- ironically enough, I did start out with chapters, but it only had 2. Force of habit made me do it I guess, but they were the very first thing I axed. I better sleep before I proofread it for real, though.

The Story Pilot site looks really neat -- I did a few searches, and once I figure out what genre this thing is, I’m in business. I swear, that’s gotta be my biggest weakness. I never can figure it out.

Actually, detail wise, I slipped into the short story mode without too much trouble, I guess I haven’t been adding all the frills I should’ve in my novel. Now maybe this damned story will leave me in peace . . .

But no. The urge to proofread persists . . . just watch, next I’ll want to send it out into the world before my novel. (Although…would it be easier to publish a novel if I did manage to do something with my short story, if it’s any good the morning after?)

Thanks for the good luck.

The Courier 10/12 can be confusing. Thinking Courier 10 is the standard comes from Mac users, and from some old word processors, that had/have fonts measured in point, rather than pitch. Courier 10 pitch is the same thing as Courier 12 point. Courier 10BT, for example, used to be very popular with Macs, and with some software programs intended for writing. Many still use it. But Courier10BT is measued in point, not pitch, so it's really Courier 12.

PCs, and word processors such as Word and WordPerfect, come with fonts measure in pitch, so you want to use Courier 12 for any PC font, or when using Word, WordPerfect, or any modern, popular word processor.

Three of the most popular fonts are Courier New, Final Draft, and Dark Courier. All are measured in pitch, which means size 12 should be used. These are really all the same font, but each prints with a different darkness.

I Prefer Dark Coirier, simply because it prints darker than Courier New, and is a free font.

TheNightTerror · Dec 5, 2005

Thanks for all that info!

I'll keep an eye open for Dark Courier. God, I didn't think there could be such a huge difference between Times New Roman and Courier. Courier seems to take up much more space, despite being the same size. Is there a reason for that? It just warped my 330 page novel into a 449 one. And I was so happy about keeping it under 400 pages . . . d'oh! And the short story is up to 12 pages.

Mike Coombes · Dec 6, 2005

courier doesn't kern - the space each letter takes up is the same, so
iiiiiiiiii would take up as much space as
OOOOOOOOOO

TheNightTerror · Dec 6, 2005

Ah, gotcha. :Thumbs:

Jamesaritchie · Dec 6, 2005

Courier

TheNightTerror said:
Thanks for all that info! I'll keep an eye open for Dark Courier. God, I didn't think there could be such a huge difference between Times New Roman and Courier. Courier seems to take up much more space, despite being the same size. Is there a reason for that? It just warped my 330 page novel into a 449 one. And I was so happy about keeping it under 400 pages . . . d'oh! And the short story is up to 12 pages.

There's not only a reason for it, it's why Courier is the standard. Every letter in Courier takes up the same space, so no matter what words you write, you still get the same number of spaces on each line. And the number makes thing easy. Courier, with one inch margins, gives an average of sixty spaces per line, no matter what that line is. Times doesn't do this.

Courier is also easier to read, and far, far easier to edit by hand. You need room between lines, between words, and between letters to insert proofreaders' marks, and Courier makes this much easier.

TheNightTerror · Dec 6, 2005

I really need to spend more time here.

I'm much more used to Times New Roman, so I'll probably use it when I'm writing, and use Courier for printing. Although, Dark Courier will probably help my eyes, I'll install it right now.

the debster · Dec 27, 2005

Dark Courier

James -

In another thread you mentioned Dark Courier and here again too. Thank you so much for that tip.

I love the dark print, yet it screws up my pagination when I format from Courier New to Dark Courier.

For example, I was asked to send an attachment of 50 pages, orginally formatted in CN. Knowing the receiving party would prefer darker print, I reformatted in DC. After I formatted, I realized the DC version came out to 52 pages.

Any advice as to how to keep the document essentiall unchanged?

Thanks,
DJL

Jamesaritchie · Dec 27, 2005

the debster said:
James -

In another thread you mentioned Dark Courier and here again too. Thank you so much for that tip.

I love the dark print, yet it screws up my pagination when I format from Courier New to Dark Courier.

For example, I was asked to send an attachment of 50 pages, orginally formatted in CN. Knowing the receiving party would prefer darker print, I reformatted in DC. After I formatted, I realized the DC version came out to 52 pages.

Any advice as to how to keep the document essentiall unchanged?

Thanks,
DJL

I don't think I can be much help here. I've used Dark Courier for so many years that I didn't realize there it made a difference in pagination.

jerewrites · Dec 27, 2005

going short

I write novels, but recently I needed a break from the long stuff and the constant revisions. So, I tried writing short stories (about 5,000 words) and I wrote a couple that're pretty good. I see a short story as a group of scenese that are tightly related, close to one another in time, with a limited number of characters. As the experts remind us, each scene must have a beginning, middle and end, with a "hot spot" that advances plot, expresses theme, or reveals character. No hot spot? The scene goes. (I keep this rule posted on the wall over my writing desk.)

I think the short form is good training for the long stuff. Don't know much about the markets, though.

If nothing else, going short gives you a rest from your novel. Sometimes, I think, we need that.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 27, 2005

jerewrites said:
I write novels, but recently I needed a break from the long stuff and the constant revisions. So, I tried writing short stories (about 5,000 words) and I wrote a couple that're pretty good. I see a short story as a group of scenese that are tightly related, close to one another in time, with a limited number of characters. As the experts remind us, each scene must have a beginning, middle and end, with a "hot spot" that advances plot, expresses theme, or reveals character. No hot spot? The scene goes. (I keep this rule posted on the wall over my writing desk.)

I think the short form is good training for the long stuff. Don't know much about the markets, though.

If nothing else, going short gives you a rest from your novel. Sometimes, I think, we need that.

To be honest, I think writing short stories is the worst possible training for writing a novel. The two skills are not transferable in most areas. Everything is done differently. The dialogue is written differently, the narrative isn't handled the same way, the characterization needed in a short story simply doesn't work in a novel, the plot is handled differently.

There are any number of very good short story writers who can't write a good novel, and any number of good novelists who can't write a good short story.

The best training for writing a novel is writing a novel, and unless you have a natural talent for both forms, which some do, writing short stories can royally screw up any later novel you wish to write.

Mike Coombes · Dec 28, 2005

As per usual, I'll grasp Mr Ritchie's coat tails firmly and agree whole heartedly. There are some writers who excel in both forms, but this isn't by any means a given; the skill sets are totally different. I'm now resigned to the factc that I probably will never write a novel, but I'm consoled by the fact that my shorts, when on form, kick arse.

Switching from novels to short stories

TheNightTerror

Jamesaritchie

AdamH

Pumped Up Kicks

TheNightTerror

Jamesaritchie

TheNightTerror

Mike Coombes

Guru

TheNightTerror

Jamesaritchie

TheNightTerror

the debster

Jamesaritchie

jerewrites

Jamesaritchie

Mike Coombes

Guru