Taking material from a novel for a short story.. may I????

From what I understand, it wouldn't hurt your chances of getting published at all. In fact, it might actually help. Adapting a chapter into a short story is more difficult that it seems -- be warned. At least it is for me.

Congrats, by the way.

Also, check the rights of the anthology. If you still want to use the elements of your short story for your current novel, there might be problems if you're not free to use it right away. I know some magazines accept portions of books and release 'first serial rights' or something like that.

Chumplet said:

Also, check the rights of the anthology. If you still want to use the elements of your short story for your current novel, there might be problems if you're not free to use it right away. I know some magazines accept portions of books and release 'first serial rights' or something like that.

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i'd be interested if anyone finds any information on this. I have part of a novel that I am in the middle of that would stand up pretty well on its own and was actually thinking about submitting that portion of it as a short story. I have been looking around but can't find too much about converting part of a novel into a short story.

For literary magazines, it's very straightforward. If you have a chapter/section of your novel that can stand alone--adequate character development and an encapsulated story arc--lit mags are happy to publish novel excerpts, taking only first serial rights for publication and re-releasing them to the author after publication. Any contract with a lit mag should make clear what rights they will be taking and when/whether those rights revert back to the author. Typically, lit mags do this automatically, but you should ask. Also typical is the need to then identify in the published novel, what sections were previously published and to give credit to the magazines in which they were published. Rarely, very rarely, would you be required to pony up anything to the lit mag.

It's essentially the same way poetry collections work. 90% of the time, when a poet publishes a poetry collection, many of the poems have been previously published in lit mags. When I worked at a lit mag, we had a standard "rights reversion" form to send people who were amassing a poetry collection or a story collection. The writer called, we sent the form, no hassles.