I saw a post on Threads the other day about a reader’s reaction to a well-known novelist taking a respite to pen a short story. The reaction wasn’t positive. I mean… social media…
It got me thinking, though. Many writers stick to one genre, one format. Is fear of the other the primary reason they stay with what they know? I reached out to some authors who are successful in both the short story and the novel worlds to get their take on writing long versus writing short. I wanted to see if there was some secret sauce they all put on their tacos that helps them bridge the two.
I thought I was on to something when award-winning novelists Greg Herren, Raquel V. Reyes, and Micki Browning all started their careers by writing short stories. The format caught them when they were in school, and they were all successful with having their first published pieces being shorts.
Then along came uber-prolific Alan Orloff, who debunked my emerging theory of needing to start with short fiction to be successful in the category. He began his writing career with novels and was reluctant to join the short story train. Leave it to Alan to buck the trend.
Short stories typically don’t pay the bills unless you follow the Michael Bracken approach and get as dedicated as he is to the craft (check out ShortCon to learn more). For the rest of us mortals, short story payments typically run in the two-to-three-digit range for at most a handful of stories a year. So why do authors take time away from their novel-length manuscripts to create short stories?
Here, everyone is on the same page: because writing them is fun. Short stories allow an escape, a freedom to experiment. These authors use the short form to try their hands at different sub-genres or points of view. If it doesn’t work, not a whole lot of time has been wasted on what gets chalked up to a learning exercise. Browning probably expresses it best: “Novels require commitment and steadfast adherence to the promises made to the reader. Short stories are summer flings: full of reckless abandon, new perspectives, and the occasional bad decisions.”
As tempting as it is to dig into those bad decisions, there’s only so much space available for this article. Sorry. (Editors note: But do stay tuned…more is coming on those bad decisions.)
So what have these folks learned from going between short and novel-length fiction? Without question, writing novels takes discipline, which is great for meeting short story deadlines. Looking at it from the other direction, Reyes mentions that writing short makes her a better self-editor because every word must serve a purpose. Browning, Orloff, and Herren use short stories as a proving ground for new approaches to novel-length writing, and with the quick (relatively speaking, as we are still in the publishing world) acceptance or rejection, they have input on their efforts to take into their long-form writing.
Still afraid of writing in a different format? Herren’s advice for short story writers fearful of going long is to think of a novel as a series of interconnected short stories with a through-line. Orloff, Reyes, and Browning all agree that trying to go short isn’t a waste; at the very least, you’ll learn something. In the words of the Life cereal kid, “Try it, you might like it.”
