Writing SF/F short stories - useful for novelists?

[Triceratops]

Someone expressed (upstream) that only the large and notable slick mags are likely to be noticed or recognized by agents/editors and deemed credit-worthy. And this is absolutely true. Even the SFWA has a pro rank and list for inclusion into their organization. I started off in the copies for pub payment slot, and evolved into the larger markets. But I must admit that it took me 18 months of solid ink slinging to do so. It can be done, no doubt. But you do need to make that decision of buckling down, throwing caution and hesitancy to the wind, and going after that goal with all the guts you can muster. Don't lose sight of the enjoyment factor. But realize you're in for some stout competition.

Tri

[Tirellan]

Originally Posted by iansales

First, writing short stories is probably harder than writing a novel. So if you think you can knock out a couple in order to boost your profile... well, it's not that easy, sadly. And you've also got to sell them. While there are plenty of magazines, print and on-line - check out Ralan and Spicy Green Iguana - they all receive huge numbers of submissions. It's a difficult market to break into, and requires perseverance as much as talent. In that respect, it's excellent training for novel-writing...

Ralan remains an excellent resource, but Spicy Green Iguana hasn't been updated for 2 years. I would also recommend Duotrope as a site full of information on markets for short fiction which casts its net wider than Ralan

[alihale]

Wow! Many thanks for all the hugely helpful replies, everyone, I really didn't expect such a great response.

(By the way, ctg, I'm female, Ali's short for Alison And I have finished a 105K fantasy novel -- it's only in the last year that I've started trying short fiction.)

I think from all the advice above, I've realised:
- My fantasy ideas tend to be novel-length
- My sci-fi ideas tend to be short-story length

So I'm going to have a go at a few more sci-fi short stories, and see if I can piece together something that I'm happy enough with to submit to markets. And I agree with all those who've said it can at least hone my writing style, and that every little helps on the writing CV...

Cheers again for all the help, you guys rock

Best,

Ali

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by ctg

Very well said, I agree on every word, but it doesn't stop me from talking to the people and provoking them to write, when I know they can write.

LOL... No, nor I. And I'm all for encouraging promising new writers (of whatever age). But I also think it's important to get that bit of reality out there as a part of the process of winnowing those who will always be amateurs (which is fine -- amateurs do it for the love of the thing, and there's naught wrong with that, in my book -- but they aren't likely to become professionals) and those who will eventually make a career out of their writing.

ctg is correct when he suggests that writing a novel can be like writing a series of short stories, and I don't believe he meant that as literally as it appears to have been interpreted.

When you come to write your novel, you generally have two options: You can either sit down and start writing straight away, letting your novel meander and evolve as you think of new things, or you can plot it out beforehand and give yourself a roadmap.

Short stories are useful if your approach is the second one. It can be daunting to think "Hell, I have 180,000 words to go," but easier to think "Okay, at 8,000 words per chapter, I have 6,000 left to go on this one." It's also nice and easy to let a "short story" chapter spill out onto the page, within your roadmap, without feeling as though you're losing sight of your target. And if you do change plot mid-chapter, it's easy to go re-write your roadmap.

As for my responding so literally to ctg's analogy... that's because it can (and therefore likely will) be read that way by a fair number of people, and can prove a stumbling block in that fashion. My point in challenging it was to prevent such a misunderstanding.

However -- to prevent another kind of misunderstanding -- the model you propose is also somewhat misleading, in that both novels and short stories (generally speaking -- there are always the episodic novels mentioned above, etc.) have their own internal logic and structure, and to see a chapter as structurally a short story is a risky undertaking at best; one needs to envision the novel as an entity, regardless of length, just as one does the short story... or you're likely to find yourself falling more and more into the meandering sort of writing that ends up with you painted into corners. If anything, planning is even more important for a novel, because it's far too easy to use the extra space to allow you to wander... and find yourself derailing yourself over and over along the way.

As Chris says, each idea pretty much has its own length, and should be treated accordingly. As an example: I recently read a fair spate of Sheridan Le Fanu's work, including a short piece called "A Passage in the History of an Irish Countess", as well as his novel Uncle Silas. Essentially, they're the same tale, with the same themes, the same characters (with names changed), and the same incidents. But... the short piece, while having some worth of its own, reads as almost as a sketch for the later novel, because the ideas he was dealing with needed room to breathe; the short story form was completely wrong. When he later gave it the novel form, not only did the ideas have room to grow and become all the more powerful, but the rather simplistic villain of the short tale became one of the most memorable, complex, and menacing figures of Victorian fiction in the novel -- even taking on added spiritual dimensions and ambiguity. On the other hand, how many times have we all read more recent novels that were padded short stories because the ideas simply couldn't support that much verbiage? Think, for instance, of Jordan's Wheel of Time, where even the fans of the thing will admit that several books in the series were simply stretched out to the point of even them not caring about what was going on. And so on.

As I said, the above is simply for the sake of clarification, especially for the younger aspirant writers....

As for Ali... sounds as if you've already got a fair idea of where you want to go with this, so good luck, and keep us posted....

[ctg]

Originally Posted by alihale

Wow! Many thanks for all the hugely helpful replies, everyone, I really didn't expect such a great response.

(By the way, ctg, I'm female, Ali's short for Alison And I have finished a 105K fantasy novel -- it's only in the last year that I've started trying short fiction.)

I think from all the advice above, I've realised:
- My fantasy ideas tend to be novel-length
- My sci-fi ideas tend to be short-story length

Sorry about the misunderstanding your nick wrong. Question, can you take your fantasy ideas and spice them up so that it reads like a sci-fi? Take for example Battlestar Galactica, and you can notice how easily you could set the settings in the Fantasy world (way much bigger then our planet) or take the Dragonlance-series (with Twilight ... and so on) and transmutate that storyline into the sci-fi settings. Do you see what I mean?

Note, that I do not suggest you to copy those plots, as the original story is always ... original.

[Troo]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

However -- to prevent another kind of misunderstanding -- the model you propose is also somewhat misleading, in that both novels and short stories (generally speaking -- there are always the episodic novels mentioned above, etc.) have their own internal logic and structure, and to see a chapter as structurally a short story is a risky undertaking at best; one needs to envision the novel as an entity, regardless of length, just as one does the short story... or you're likely to find yourself falling more and more into the meandering sort of writing that ends up with you painted into corners. If anything, planning is even more important for a novel, because it's far too easy to use the extra space to allow you to wander... and find yourself derailing yourself over and over along the way.

That's likely down to me posting while at work, rather than in the peace and quiet of home. Yes, novel chapters are not short stories. I am not suggesting that they are, in any way.

What I'm saying is that short story writing skills are essential for novelists

[alihale]

Interesting thought, ctg, I do understand what you mean though I'm not sure how it would work for me. Hmm, it does open up possibilities for revising my fantasy novel (though if I go through another revision I think I'll want to strangle something... I'd called it very definitely FINISHED after the last one!)

Ali

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Troo

That's likely down to me posting while at work, rather than in the peace and quiet of home. Yes, novel chapters are not short stories. I am not suggesting that they are, in any way.

What I'm saying is that short story writing skills are essential for novelists

Yep, most definiely. And as for the posting... Oh, do I hear ya!... (In addition to the evil smiley, I think we need a wincing smiley as well....)

Ali... I think most who write feel that way at times. Sometimes it's best, when it reaches that point, to just set it aside for a period (a few days, weeks, or months, whichever works for you) so that you can come back to it without all that emotional baggage, allowing you to see the material afresh, and consequently do the best editing and revision, rather than pushing it and getting frustrated (and possibly missing things that need changing, or opportunities to improve yourself as a writer)...

[ctg]

You can always blame me Ali. I'm used to it. Everyone does it.

[Troo]

Clearly it's all ctg's fault.

[lin robinson]

Writing a novel is like stringing up those short stories one after another

Hate to tell you, but if that's what you are trying to do, you're going to have a hard time.

I would make an analogy with another question: Does running sprints make you a better marathon runner?

Is running a marathon just tacking 17,000 hundred yard dashes together?

[Barney]

Originally Posted by lin robinson

Hate to tell you, but if that's what you are trying to do, you're going to have a hard time.

I would make an analogy with another question: Does running sprints make you a better marathon runner?

Is running a marathon just tacking 17,000 hundred yard dashes together?

As has already been said (by Troo), I don't think ctg was saying that novel = series of short stories. But I reckon that most novels can be broken down to subplots that usually involve the same characters and some common settings.
The subplots should marry together and interlock to form a satisfying, unified narrative we call a novel. They shouldn't always pay off sequentially (as in an anthology), but maybe in clusters, as pacing demands. But there is nothing wrong with initially thinking of those seperate strands as short stories. Not at all.

To return to your analogy - someone who has practiced running sprints will have a much better chance of finishing a marathon than someone who one day decides to run a marathon with no prior training

[Anthony G Williams]

Speaking personally, writing short stories has never appealed to me: I just think in terms of novels.

Conversely, in my non-fiction work I enjoy writing articles but find books very hard going (although admittedly it's nice to hold a published book in my hands).

Oh well, it takes all sorts.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Barney

As has already been said (by Troo), I don't think ctg was saying that novel = series of short stories. But I reckon that most novels can be broken down to subplots that usually involve the same characters and some common settings.
The subplots should marry together and interlock to form a satisfying, unified narrative we call a novel. They shouldn't always pay off sequentially (as in an anthology), but maybe in clusters, as pacing demands. But there is nothing wrong with initially thinking of those seperate strands as short stories. Not at all.

Again, I have to take issue with this (at least, if I'm understanding what you're saying here). Unless it is an episodic novel, or a series of shorter tales woven together into a novel (in which case such a disproportion is simply all-but-inevitable), then these subplots need to be seen conceptually as a part of a whole, not as short stories, or a series of interrelated but distinct tales which eventually form a whole; else there is far too much chance of misproportion and imbalance in the novel as a whole. This is something we see even with many excellent writers who attempt such a scheme, and it usually takes them several books to get the proportions right so that the novel works as a whole, rather than a set of more-or-less disparate parts. They may give that impression on first reading, but it should be evident on a more careful reading that the writer saw them as threads contributing to the entire tapestry, much the same as various motifs, tableaux, tropes, bits of foreshadowing, and even choice of phrasing; rather than as in any way stories in their own right....

[Barney]

Yes, the point was that the threads of a novel aren't treated as seperate strands tied together end to end. Rather, they all combine in the warp and weft to form the tapestry. To quote you;

then these subplots need to be seen conceptually as a part of a whole, not as short stories, or a series of interrelated but distinct tales which eventually form a whole

the subplots form a whole. They are interrelated. This precludes them being distinct from each other, otherwise they couldn't cohere.
To me writing short stories is something everyone should do before they try to write a novel. If you can't write well over 7000 words, or even want to try, does that mean you can write a 100,000 word opus?