Short stories -R- us

[kelly_swails]

So, yeah. Last week I hit a wall in my Stormy Weather outline. I'm rewriting/expanding/making awesome a YA ... novella ... I wrote about four years ago. I like the concept and I like the characters, so I wanted to clean 'em up and see what I could do with 'em. I got about 10K in before reworking the outline again. (This is usual for me: outline,

Comments

[j_cheney]

That's intereswting about your characters. Mine seem to be the same, novel or short.

(It's actually easier to write a novel for me, perhaps because of that. A short story means cramming a character into 7.5K....;which is hard for me.)

[kelly_swails]

I think most of the writers I meet have your mindset: Novels are fun! Short stories are hard!

[karen_w_newton]

I think I'm your opposite. I've written more novels than short stories. :) For me, with short stories, it's tougher for me to get the character out there in the longer length works.

When I was much younger I studied visual arts, specifically sculpture, and in that case, the reverse was true. I could do a wonderful job with a small-scale work but had a lot more difficulty working large. My teacher always pushed me to work bigger, which was OK-- making me learn and grow was his job-- but if I had stuck with it, I think I probably would have produced a lot more small scale works because I was better at them.

Some writers are brilliant in any length, but some of us have a natural length. It takes a lot less energy to work at your natural length. But if you want to stretch, finding specific techniques to do it is always a good thing.

Good luck!

[kelly_swails]

It seems like most writers I meet are more comfortable at the novel length. I'm striving to be one of those writers that are good at both, but the shorter form is my comfort zone. Hard work pays off though, right? Right?

[karen_w_newton]

I sure hope so!