[caption id="attachment_808" align="alignleft" width="152"] photo c. Grizelda Holderness.[/caption]

By Nimue Brown.

Let’s start with the obvious; that what divides short stories from novels, is the length. However, there’s a lot more to it than that, as a consequence of the size differences. A flash fiction short story can be as short as you like. Somewhere around the 20-30,000 word mark, you have a novella, which is indeed a small novel, somewhere over 50,000 words, you have a novel. Unlike a novella, a short story really isn’t a short novel at all.

Part of the issue is time. A short story can, and probably should be read in a single sitting. Novels usually demand repeat visits. The shorter form allows us to absorb the piece as a whole, as a single experience to be digested in one go. Novel reading over days, if not longer, means we exist partially inside the world of the book for a lot longer. We digest short stories, but are swallowed up by novels. It’s a very different sort of experience.

The smaller something is, the more precisely placed every word must be. All of it matters. Often as a consequence, short stories are more tightly crafted, more akin to the poet’s art because it takes a lot of work to make something small. In some ways the space of a novel is easier, you can work around ideas, pull out plots and issues slowly. To make the plot plausible in a matter of a few thousand words is harder. Only certain stories can be told in this way without losing something. Only certain stories can bear the weight of seventy five thousand words. It may take more time to write a novel, but word for word, I find the short story slower, and often harder work. If there’s a page in a novel that isn’t the best page you’ve ever written but it gets the job done, often that’s fine. In a short story, that page would destroy the piece.

Some writers specialise in one form or the other, some move between the two. Sometimes this is a matter of preference, sometimes it’s because we get the one form and do not engage with the other. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the short story for the new writer is that you can get something down in a timely way and find out whether anyone likes it equally quickly. A novel can take years to write, and hours to read, assuming you can find someone who will. There are craft skills that can be honed in the short story and taken to novel writing, but it’s a mistake to see short stories just as a stepping stone to the big stuff. They remain a form in their own right, and perfecting them takes time.

You can check out some of the short story collections CI has published by using the search facility.

Categories:

0 comments on this article

This thread has been closed from taking new comments.