My linked short story collection is plotted like a novel. HELP!

The Second Moon

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I've plotted out a linked short story collection that I'm excited about, but when I showed it to my novel-writing sister, she said it was laid out like a novel. Let me explain.

In my last linked short story collection. There was a main bad guy that that the characters had to stop, but there were mini-adventures without the bad guy stories sprinkled in-between the ones involving the bad guy. These mini-adventures helped the characters met people who would eventually help them stop the bad guy, though.

In this one I'm plotting all of the adventures come right after each other, no mini-adventures without the bad guy (if she's there directly or just watching in the shadows).

What I'm trying to ask is if it is okay for a linked short story collection to read like a novel.
 

Undercover

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Have you ever queried this novel? I would think it's a novel too. I ask because you make so many threads about this one project, so unsure of yourself. There's only one way to find out if it's going to work or not is to query it. And if it doesn't, eventually you will have to move on and write something else.

I wrote my MG book the same way, short stories all linked to a bigger story. There might even be a word for it, but there's plenty of novels out there that use this pattern.
 

The Second Moon

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You're right. I should stop worrying and just write what I want to write. It doesn't matter if it seems I could have made it a novel.
 

lonestarlibrarian

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I was reading the Selena Mead stories (Pat McGerr) earlier this summer. One of them, "Is There a Traitor in the House", was a novel. But the other one, "Legacy of Danger", was actually a series of short stories that had originally been published individually in newspaper supplements, and were eventually brought together and linked as a novel, rather than as a collection of standalone shorts.

Knowing that ahead of time, I was able to recognize the bones as I read it. But in the process of reading it, I found myself enjoying the format very much--- in that each chapter was sort of a self-sufficient mini-adventure. So you didn't have the usual flow of rising action that you normally get from a novel, as things build up. Instead, you get a payoff every chapter, because every chapter has its own climax. But at the same time, it doesn't read quite as an anthology, because each chapter/story/installment is a unified part of a whole.

I liked it. Pat McGerr did a lot of cool things with her writing.
 

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I think it's better that it's a novel instead of a short story collection. It would be easier to sell that way. Short story collections are extremely hard to sell, like crazy hard. Just like novellas are, so if you ask me, I think you went in the right direction as far as that goes.
 

Paul Lamb

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You might consider it a story cycle: a set of independent stories with a common theme or common characters. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom is one example. Elizabeth Strout's Oliver Kitteridge is another. But I think I agree with the others who say you should consider it a novel, just maybe one that is unconventionally structured.