Monday, April 11, 2011

Short Stories vs. Novels - "natural length" and the fractal structure of stories

I've often heard it said that writers have a "natural length" - set a particular author loose on a story idea and their stories will tend to come out in a particular length range. This also applies to the idea of "natural novel writers" whose ideas like to expand into longer books, and "natural short story writers" whose ideas are pithy and can be concisely expressed. Some people find it really hard to cross over this borderline; others find it less difficult.

I believe in natural length. I began as a novel writer, and for the longest time I was convinced that short stories just weren't for me. Then, once I started writing them, I learned a lot of things about story structure that I could bring back and apply to my novels. However, it turns out I do have a "natural length" for short stories - it runs between 7500-12,000 words. This is called the "novelette" length. I never set out to write a novelette; I just have an idea, organize it and write it... and guess what? It's a novelette.

I think that the difference between novel and short story writers may have something to do with structure. It's hard to say, but I do notice that I find it easier to take a large idea and render it in a small form than to take a small idea and render it in large form. When I take a large idea and shrink it, I remove everything that doesn't tie directly back into the main conflict thread. When I take a small idea and expand it, I often find everything I add in feels like fluff. Maybe it's just that I like the potent feeling in every sentence of the short form.

Another factor, though, might be what I call the fractal structure of novels. People talk a lot about the "hook" and about "arcs" and about the "climax" etc. The more I write, the more I realize that this same kind of structure happens at multiple levels. Each chapter needs to have its own hook, its own raising of stakes, its own climax. To some extent, even each smaller scene has this same pattern on a smaller scale. It's no wonder that novel chapters can so often be used as short stories!

This may be one reason why it's tricky to move from short to long. A string of short stories does not make a novel, because they'll have structure on the lower level, but they may not have structure on the larger level. That large-scale, across-the-novel trajectory may be difficult to identify and work into the progression of the shorter pieces. I don't mean to say that it can't be done, but I know I would find it tricky if I had created a sequence of stories and hadn't come into it already thinking about how to create the larger-scale pattern.

Have any of you had experience switching from long to short, or from short to long? What was it like for you? Have you taken a particular story and tried to change its format from novel to short or vice versa? I'd be interested to hear what your experience was like.

17 comments:

  1. I think I'm more of a novel length writer. Not that I can't write a short story, but when I get a plot idea, it generally doesn't fit short story length. (I've got 4 or 5 going right now.) My zombie story began as a short story for a forum challenge, but even from the beginning, the plot and premise didn't fit in the 3k max length of the challenge. And as I kept working on it, the plot developed new twists that kept adding to the length, though still keeping to the premise idea that spawned the whole thing. It just didn't want to be short.

    However, my Red Riding Hood story will probably stay short because of its structure. It's just tabled for now because of the movie that came out recently. (Though my friends on the WD SF/F crit forum are encouraging me to go back to it anyway and never mind the movie.)

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  2. I too tend to write on the long side. My recent ideas for short stories have all evolved into something bigger -- something that could not be called a short story. Even when I deliberately try to keep it short, feedback from writing friends is invariably: write more, I want to know about this aspect (deliberately omitted or shortened), etc. But novel writing is that much harder and time consuming. But you still have to try to write short and long, I think. How else do you know what works for you as a writer?

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  3. Jaleh, thanks for commenting. I have never written 3K and I suspect it's beyond me, but maybe I'll eventually figure it out. Good luck with your stories!

    Bluestocking, I agree that it's good to write both short and long. You bring up an interesting issue about readers wanting to know more when you're trying to be concise. I tend to work around this problem by making the conciseness a product of a character's cultural viewpoint (cultural myopia!). If my character has a judgment of something about his/her world, it goes a lot further toward assuring readers that I know what I'm talking about (and they can trust me) than if I include it without said judgment. This is one of the reasons that POV and judgment are such important tools for me. They help me deal with complexity.

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  4. I do believe in natural length, but it's not a matter of the author. Rather, the story you're telling has a natural length. Sometimes it takes experimentation to find it though. I have a number of short stories that when I looked them over I realized they were just long synopses in narrative form. That said, I have other stories that fall in the ghost length of 1500-2000 words (too long for flash too short for a short story), and pretty much every other length possible. The one hole in my lengths was novella, but I'm currently working on a story that fits nicely in the 20k-30k range (Exact numbers coming any day now :)). I wanted to write a novella for a call and looked at what story would fit there. Could I have dragged this story out a bit more? Maybe. Could I have brought it in shorter? Not really. It's a natural novella. Just as a good number of my short stories fall in the 5k-6k range but then there's the ones that like 8k-10k. I can write whatever length the story calls for now. Couldn't always though.

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  5. I just wrote a flash fiction piece for the first time; the brefity is really a shock! There is so much to fit in, every word counts. I found it helpful to establish an editing eye for the larger story I'm writing.

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  6. I've never heard of this concept haha Guess I've been living under my rock too long ;D The ideas come to me at their set length. I know which ones are for short stories and which ones for novels. I get more of the full stories than short stories. The very first time I tried to write a short story the idea was too much and it came out a novelette that I still need to finish. Practice made me better at short stories :)
    http://writermeetslife.blogspot.com/

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  7. Margaret, I think you've got something there. Natural length for ideas makes sense to me - but then it means I usually get *ideas* of a certain length. Not at all impossible. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    Stephsco, thanks for your comment, and good luck with your flash piece!

    M.G. Pereira, I hope this idea is helpful to you in your process. Thanks for the comment.

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  8. I think I'm definitely more of a novel writer although I have tried my hand at short stories. I have a couple of ideas for shorts I want to have a crack at but I'm finding that one of them has too many ideas to be a short short and that it will probably end up being a novelette. It's like you said, I think it depends on the amount of ideas trying to be expressed. You can always condense down. It's not so easy to expand.

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  9. I tend towards short novels/novella lengths as well. I've written some short stories, but it is always hard for me to do. I've thought about turning a novel idea into a short story and vice versa, but it usually fizzles pretty fast. To be truthful, the only reason why I wrote short stories was so I could publish in magazines, get some name recognition and eventually move up to novels. I wonder if other people fall into this trap?

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  10. I checked with Juliette and got permission to pass this on. For anyone interested in playing with the shorter lengths, may I recommend checking out Forward Motion (www.fmwriters.com) in May. The site runs a Story A Day challenge using online idea generators. The short timeline and the limited nature of many of the generators is what got me past the hump between writing 8000 word novel synopses that I called short stories to actual, working shorts. The challenge is leveled from 10-31, and at this point I get most of my rough drafts from May. And just to be true to my younger self, I often get a novel synopsis or two out of it as well :).

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  11. danbracewell, I'm not sure what you mean by trap. I originally attempted short stories thinking they would be my entry into the market (and they were/are), but I've found they've taught me a lot that I can apply to my novels. I don't consider that a trap at all, and now I enjoy writing them just because I enjoy writing them!

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  12. Margaret, I appreciate you checking with me. I hope my readers may find it useful too!

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  13. Fascinating...

    I'll be publishing a book in May that could be called a short novel and I'm going to follow it with a short story collection. Each chapter of the novel will spawn a short story; though, I don't think the stories will feature the MCs of the novel (although, they may be referenced or make short appearances).

    I haven't yet got to thinking very consciously about the story collection (way busy promoting the novel) but feel it forming below the radar :-)

    So, on this post's topic, I suppose you could say I'm going to let a novel give birth to a short story collection...

    You can thank Haley Whitehall's blog, "Soldiering through the Writing World", for this first visit to your blog.

    Off now to add you to my Blogroll...

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  14. Welcome, Alexander, and thanks for the comment! It sounds like an interesting project you're working on. Good luck with it!

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  15. Stuart, thanks for your comment. I think the problem with expansion isn't so much length as the larger-level structure required.

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  16. These ideas resonate strongly with me. I like writing short stories, but every one eventually presents itself within my consciousness as a chapter from a potential longer work. I have never, so far, succeeded in finishing such a longer work, but have produced anough short stories to fill my newly-published book: 'Short Stories to Read on the Bus' (on Kindle & Lulu.com)

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  17. Good luck, Greywanderer. Thanks for the comment!

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