lilacstarflower

I've never attempted this but would like to give it a go.

The problem is, I don't see how a character or story can be fully fleshed out in 5000 words.

How do you manage that successfully?

Or am I just being dumb?

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kip

Try reading more short stories. Here's a great example of character and plot synthesis in less than 1500 words:

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

Sam Winchester

It's ironic that short stories are one of the hardest things to do in writing. You'd think that finishing something in 5,000 words would be easy and quick. It isn't. In fact, I think writing a 300 page novel can be easier than writing a short story.

I've only attempted one before, so I don't know what mindset you need to be in to write them. The best book of short stories that I've read is called, Thriller: Stories to Keep you up All night. It was edited by James Patterson. I think it's well worth the read if you're going to write a short story.

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lilacstarflower

Thanks Kip.

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SevenWritez

HOLY SHIT! I didn't know Haruki Murakami wrote short fiction. The guy is a fucking beast. Thanks, Kip.

The Hack

I struggle very hard to write short stories. I agree w/ everything Sam said above.

kip

lilacstarflower and SevenWritez, no problem. :^)

With regards to what Sam said, I'm completely the opposite. I've written two-and-a-half novels and a few dozen short stories in the last few years, and find the latter vastly easier than the former. That doesn't mean I find stories easy, but I do find them much, much easier to write.

It really depends on your attention span. It's very difficult for me to stick with a project for more than a week, and writing stories allows me to express myself without losing interest. I firmly believe anyone can learn to write in the short or long form, but I also believe different people are preferentially drawn to one form over the other.

Me? I enjoy reading both stories and novels, and the overwhelming majority of books I read annually are novels, rather than story collections. But when it comes to writing, I'd much rather get to work on a 3k-5k story than an 80k novel. I imagine some people are completely opposite, and would much rather spend months immersed in a novel than the equivalent amount of time writing one or several stories. Fortunately, there's room for both types of writers. On my part, I just finished a story this evening.

lilacstarflower

My thoughts exactly. I was worried I was doing something wrong when I felt alright with attempting a novel but struggled to develop a short story

I'll check out that book too

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tehuti88

I'm one such person who, because I can't write short stories, writes huge novels/serials instead.

Your problem regarding character development in such a short space of time is my exact problem, too. The only way I have around it is that my short stories all take place in the same storylines that my longer works take place in--meaning, character development, at least in the long run, isn't necessary because it's already been done in the longer works. The drawback is that not everybody is going to read the longer works, thus the short stories I write are often rather mystifying to newcomers. They don't stand well on their own.

It is FAR easier for me to write a huge story with hundreds of thousands of words than to write a decent short story. And it's practically impossible for me to write a short story not in any of my existing storylines, so I just don't bother anymore. My stories have a very psychological angle so of course character development is something that takes a lot of time with me.

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PageOfCups

I think you guys might be trying to do too much with short stories. Trying viewing them as the writing equivelent to a photograph with a full movie being like a novel.

A photograph can't say as much as a film can, it can't show entire characters with every aspect of their personality and past, but it can entertain, it can be beautiful, it can be thought provoking.

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kip

Quality over quantity. Too many people mistake logorrhea for introspection. If you don't understand your character (or don't have a plot), don't try to hide the lack of either in 100,000 words when a few thousand will do. It's just a pretentious way of killing trees.

I increasingly believe a great many people write novels because they allow their authors to get away with having nothing to say. Or more diplomatically, they let their authors hide ten page stories within 300 pages of padding.

PSFoster

Short stories are more centralized. Mine are centered around one specific event. Most of the time it isn't necessary to give any more information than is needed for the story.

One of my stories involved two 12-year-old boys on a farm. One of the boys is telling the story, and his name is never mentioned. Their parents' names aren't mentioned. What state the farm is in isn't mentioned. Only the details of what they did that July day.

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Heid

I started out writing short stories not necessarily because it was easier, just because I wanted to write but I didn't want to dive straight into a big project (novel etc.). The good thing I find about writing short stories is that they are akin to writing just one scene of a book or film or something. They are central to one character and one event and one setting (usually) so as I don't have a lot of characters or scenes to work on I can concentrate on fleshing out my one and only character which can easily be done in 5000 words. Most of my short stories are around 2000 words anyway.

tehuti88

Well, I wouldn't go quite THAT far. :/ That's rather like saying, "Most people write poetry because they aren't good enough to plot out a real story."

Some people can't write novels. Some people can't write short stories. This doesn't necessarily mean that the writing which they DO produce sucks in any way, or that they're lousy with their characters, it just means different people are better with different formats.

I can't write poetry to save my life, for example, but I like to think (admit I can't be sure) this doesn't mean my novels are lousy!

I won't say it never happens (because surely there are plenty of padded, empty novels out there), but to indicate that it's happening more and more kind of cheapens the efforts a lot of people put into writing longer works. And while "quality over quantity" is DEFINITELY true, it seems to unfairly indicate that the more words something has, the worse it is, when this is not always the case. Again, some stories need only a thousand words to tell them properly, some need 100,000. Or more.

And not all of us are killing trees.

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"No canoes...no maple sugar...this place is horribly uncivilized."--Manabozho

Writer of long online fantasy/mythology serials. Always looking for interested readers.

lisajane

I prefer writing short stories rather than novels.

I don't flesh out my characters in the short stories. There's no time for it. I find the plot to be more important in short stories, and I toss in a couple characters to push the story along it's way. Any detail given about the characters is usually only there to push the story, and there are certaintly no giant paragraphs detailing the character's life up until that point.

I see the short story as a snipet of my character's life, and as such, I just jump right in to the actual plot itself.

As for reading short stories, I don't. I only read novels.

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