Sometimes, Where You Are Is Where You Are

Blogging, like many other things in my life, is cyclic. This summer, that cycle has been a slow simmer – sorry about that.

The world of fiction writing is full of contradictions. New writers often look to established writers for hints at what the secret recipe is, what the path to success should look like. More often than not, at least from the folks that I know that are on the other side of the curve, there is only one true rule to the path of publishing – everyone gets there by their own road. No two paths are alike.

When I started writing back before the age of mobile computational devices (listen to me, sounding all aged and wise!), I started by working on a novel. It was a monstrous thing, partly inspired by Barker’s Cabal, partly my own misguided mishmash of mutants and hidden societies. Then I latched onto this idea that’s really popular with new writers, at least in the science fiction/fantasy genres, and that’s that you need to write short stories first. We look back to the Golden Age and we see writers that filled the late pulps before they went on to write novels – Asimov, Heinlein, De Camp, Clarke, Bradbury, etc. – and we think that that must be the path. Write short fiction first, then work your way up to novels.

Only there is no “working your way up.” It’s a lie. The art of writing a short story, and the art of writing a novel, have no more in common than writing a technical report and writing an article for Harper’s. Proficiency in one has no bearing on the other. They aren’t just different forms of stringing words together.

The mindset of a novel is that you need to develop your characters, expose them to be more than the two-dimensional constructs that walk out on page one. Novels should have layers, and when properly executed, the first plot you see isn’t necessarily the tale being told.

A short story comes at you from a completely different perspective. There isn’t space or time (hah) for developing the depth of the character you would get in a novel. What you’re looking at is a slice of time, usually a small subset of actions. Gone are the drapings of long, in-depth story building – we’re focussed on getting to the twist, usually with as much surprise as possible. Which, as I write this, I realize is why a story I sent out this morning probably won’t get accepted, but I’ll digest that nugget later.

No, these aren’t hard rules, and there are plenty of short stories that carry with them depth of character and plot. My point, rather, is that a novel isn’t merely a longer form of short story. They are two different things, two different species of fiction writing.

So why would writing one lead to the other? While it’s true that writing, in general, improves with time from practice, there is no reason to suppose that writing shorter works will better prepare us to churn out novels.

Take my recent efforts. I’ve got a novel (or two) in progress at the moment, but nothing that I would call breathtaking or amazing. Sorry, but it’s true, and this is more than just my internal critic at work. I keep working at them, despite knowing already that they’re trunk novels, because I know I need the practice.

Likewise, I have a half-dozen mostly finished short stories sitting in the bin right now. There’s a lower bar for short stories – they’re quicker to complete, edit, and therefore easier to send out for rejections, which is part of the reason I like writing them. There’s a flaw in my writing that I’m just becoming cognizant enough to recognize, but while I work that out I plan on continuing writing.

And this is where I’m at. I’m quickly approaching 40, and I still whittle away in my free time writing fiction, hoping one of these days the cogs finally line up and lock into place. Where I’m at is where I’m at, and that’s ok.

Related articles

• Sarah Waters’ Ten Rules for Writing Fiction (aerogrammestudio.com)
• Get to the point! – Short Story Mechanics (writingwranglersandwarriors.wordpress.com)
• Eight Rules for Writing Fiction (shanorawen.com)