On short fiction

[edgeofthewood]

I've never considered myself much of a short fiction writer. But I'm beginning to consider the possibilities. Many of the things I've written for the MA could end up as passable short stories, and a couple may actually already be there

Comments

[mneme]

Pretty much what wd said.

It's about structure--it's fine if a short story refers to events and characters beyond its bounds (just like it's fine if a novel does so) -- and doing so well will in either case help make the subcreation more real in the eye of the reader. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with a short set in a larger universe--either a mimetic one or a separate subcreation.

But what makes a short story a distinct story is its structure -- usually, that the problems brought up in the first third of the story are resolved or transformed by the last third of the story. It's the structure -- and the resulting feeling of closure, that lets a short story stand on its own even if it's set in a larger universe.

Apropos of nothing, I'd guess that there are three ways to expand a short story into a novel-length work (not that I've worked at novel length--though the epistolary game that drcpunk, batyatoon and I may someday finish approaches it). You can keep the idea of the story, but expand it so that it takes place over a novel-length narrative (thus keeping little to nothing of the writing of the original story. Or you can strip off a piece or two of the story -- changing its structure by working it into a larger narrative and leaving it less "closed" than it was as a stand-alone story. Or you can keep it entirely intact, letting its unity stand -- and thus either have it be a closed part of an "episdodic" narrative where all the sections (or just some of them; having it be a prelude is traditional; having it be the last chapter of the book is also traditional) stand on their own, or even be a "story within a story" -- a flashback, a told story within the narrative, or whatnot.

Each of the approaches has a very different result on the overall narrative, of course.