Comments | sartorias: Saga, Series, Roman Fleuve

sartorias

Saga, Series, Roman Fleuve

Oct 04, 2013 06:31

Katharine Kerr channels my processWhen I was a kid, I couldn't write short stories because I always thought about "What comes after." When I closed a book, often I wondered about how everyone's life would change; in my stories, I could actually live it by writing it down ( Read more... )

process, writers

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Short Stories princesselwen October 4 2013, 14:44:46 UTC

I understand your problem with short stories. I have only one fairly short one, because most of them tend to stretch out towards the upper-word limit. I find that I just can't fit the reunion of old friends or the quarrel of two brothers into five or six pages!

Re: Short Stories sartorias October 4 2013, 15:10:42 UTC

Ain't that the truth!

Re: Short Stories princesselwen October 6 2013, 05:51:49 UTC

I find that I can only write short stories when I'm dealing with characters I created from scratch and a world I don't know all that much about. But the more I know about the characters and their world, the more short stories veer towards the novelette and novella range.

One exception are short stories describing a limited event or episode in the lives of characters that still have a part to play in the greater story. However, even those short stories tend to veer towards novelettes on occasion.

Cora

Re: Short Stories sartorias October 6 2013, 08:49:52 UTC

Or series? (I read Kurierdinest while sitting in the doctor's office, and thought it was cute!)

Re: Short Stories princesselwen October 7 2013, 01:04:02 UTC

Glad you enjoyed the story.

Courier Duty/Kurierdienst is actually a side story to not one but two abandoned novels (In my early writing days, I decided to go big and abandon several books in a series at once). I was planning a whole series of Carrie Ragnarok novels, though only two partially completed novels and two short stories (the other one is collected in Flights of Madness, since it's too short for a standalone) actually exist. I should probably dig up the abandoned novels some day and see if they are salvagable, though they'll probably need a lot of work. Though I will definitely revisit Carrie one day, cause her voice comes very easily to me. Plus, a supporting characters in one of the two abandoned Carrie Ragnarok novels still has my favourite character name ever, Swiss diplomat Urs Nödeli.

Cora

Re: Short Stories sartorias October 7 2013, 01:22:15 UTC

That is a terrific name!

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