On running before we can walk – short stories and the novel
JA
January 31
If novels are like a tall drink of water, then short stories are a sip. Novels are marathons, short stories are sprints; a book is a house, the short story a room. The comparisons go on and on.
First up, let me say I love both forms, and this is not going to be a post in which I debate which is better. Rather, I want to consider a question that arose (perhaps unintentionally) from two pieces I read over at the Millions last week by Cathy Day and Sonya Chung – namely whether one needs to write short stories in order to get to the ‘albatross’ novel.
In her post, Day tackles the relationship between education and literary output, contending that many new writers today are taught only how to write short stories at an undergraduate level, leaving the debut novel in dangerous territory:
Today, most writers are raised in the creative writing classroom, where the fundamental texts are stand-alone poems and stories … At both the graduate and undergraduate level, most fiction workshop instructors use the short story—not the novel or the novella or the novel-in-stories—as the primary pedagogical tool in which to discuss the craft of fiction.
She goes on to note that this is a matter of practicality:
… it’s easier to teach short stories [rather] than novels, and it’s easier to annotate and critique a work-in-progress that is 10 pages long as opposed to a story that is 300 pages long. It’s advantageous for students, too. Within the limited time frame of a semester, they gain the sense of accomplishment that comes with writing, submitting for discussion, revising, and perhaps even finishing (or publishing!) a short story. It’s a positively Aristotelian experience.
Clearly, Day is writing from the American perspective, and the situation may well be different for courses here in Australia. It’s been a while since I studied creative writing at university level, but most classes I undertook certainly emphasised the short story above longer works. This is not in itself a bad thing – in fact, it’s an immensely good thing that shorter fiction gets the attention it often lacks – yet is it a given that short stories somehow form the building blocks of a novelist’s career? Should all new writers cut their teeth on shorter forms before leaping into the longer?
It almost goes without saying that you should stick to whatever works for you, but discovering the best context for creativity can take time, and is often a matter of trial and error.
For me, I’d say that yes, starting off by writing short stories was what I needed. As Sonya Chung observes:
I wrote short stories earlier in my writing life because, well, that’s what. They told us to do. And they were right. You do need to work on several stories, soup to nuts, to hone craft and process, narrative structure, revision skills; to experiment with voice, point-of-view, subject matter. Of course you can practice and develop all these by writing a novel; but it will take you much much longer. Consider how many story drafts get partially or completely tossed into the literal and/or virtual garbage as you figure out what you are really writing about; how many novels do you want to write and trash as part of your learning process before your stamina gives way to defeat? Practice works best on a manageable scale.
Short stories for me were fertile ground for experimentation on a micro level. The majority of these I’d cringe to look back on – riddled as they were with mistakes and over-the-top metaphors – but they did help me eventually settle on a more grounded pace and tone (one or two have even formed the basis of the novel I’m working on). More importantly, they taught me to appreciate compression – sentences that were distilled, characters that were only glanced at, endings that left you abruptly and without mercy.
That said, I’m beginning to think that a grounding in short stories can only take you so far down the novelistic road. The novel I’m working on grew out of short fiction, yes, but the more I redrafted, the more I came to realise how vastly different the two forms were. Think about it like a short film versus full length movie, or a single TV pilot versus the entire series. Both are demanding creatively, but for the former, you can often get away with more blank spaces, more unknowns, whereas the latter demands an immense amount of planning and forethought. Much of my re-editing involved actively breaking the habits I’d accrued over the years – letting myself linger over background characters for example, giving information that I was tempted to erase, slowing down the pace from a frantic flutter to a more regular heartbeat.
Day takes it a step further, arguing that while some writers can master both forms, others learn better with one or the other, much like being naturally left or right handed:
Ideally, a fiction workshop meets at a conference table. But most of the time you wind up in a classroom with desks scooted into a circle, and most of those desks accommodate the right-handed short story writers, not the left handed novelists.
Often, left-handed novelists don’t even realize they are left-handed, because as soon as they start fiction school, their teachers place the pencil in their right hand and say, “Write.” And when the 15 pages that emerge are woefully incomplete, a real mess, the teacher says, “What are you doing? That is not a story. Write a story.” And gradually, the left-handed novelist learns how to write a right-handed story, even though there’s always something about doing so that feels a little off.
So then, what say you? Are you a right-handed novelist in a left-handed classroom? Or are short stories a firm bedrock for any writing endeavour?
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Comments
31 Jan 11 at 9:57
At RMIT Prof writing & editing at least, the short story and novel forms are taught in completely different classes (and by different writers). It seems to me that the bones of writing are common to both forms, but the flesh quite different – making short story and novel different beasts with different appetites. And flash-fiction another kind of short story again. I agree that the short story must have a strong ‘sense of the whole’ so that the ‘blanks’ are seamlessly filled by the imagination of the reader – if not with specifics, then with a sense that it all ‘makes sense somehow’ – that the back-stories exist. In the novel, the sense of the whole is just as important, but blanks, rather than carefully crafted oubliettes, come across more as gaping holes in the narrative. But aren’t short stories an impulse of their own? Like poems? The best come from a place of inspiration, surely, of and for themselves – rather than some kind of ‘conscious preparation’ for a larger work.
...31 Jan 11 at 16:32
I can’t comment on finished novels, as I’m not in that club, but I can say that it is a far easier and streamlined process to fail at a short story than a novel.
That said, I think failing at either is probably a unique experience – meaning you would learn different skills from each.
...31 Jan 11 at 19:39
Personally, my writing of short stories is one of practicability. I can conjure and maintain the scope of a short story in my mind while still working my day job, keeping up with social obligations, writing my thesis. I’m not sure that I could do the same with a novel.
That said, I believe short stories to be important as tools for learning how to craft a story. Experimentation is best performed on a small scale before rolling out mass production. I think if I ever did try my hand at writing a novel, I’d need to keep a few short stories going ‘in the background’ in order to have something different to work on at the same time. Keeping the same world in my head for the years it would take to write it would be a bloody tiresome thing, methinks.
...01 Feb 11 at 15:52
I’ve never done any formal writing education like at uni or whatever, aside from like one or two workshops but I started for the reasons started above: manageable training and the time to practice a heap of different things but I certainly agree that a novel seems harder to me because of this, because I’m so used to skimming over bits, leaving assumptions to the reader, and avoiding detail in every nook and cranny.
Though I’ve noticed a lot of novels now do tell more than show more than I remember and it’s as if it’s written like a short, but more stuff happens rather than there being more detail – if that makes sense.
...01 Feb 11 at 17:16
Interesting essay and comment string.
To me it’s all about weight: a novel is such a weighty thing to produce, so much has to be carried on the novelist’s shoulders, and for an extended period of time, up to a decade for many books.
Short stories, on the other hand, appear to me to be less weighty, which doesn’t mean easier to produce, just less harrowing for the producer.
Of course, however, a short story’s PUNCH can outlive a novel’s!
On a practical level, I agree with Phill that it’s good to have a few short stories on the boil while a novel is being written – if only for the sanity they offer. In other words, it’s far easier getting a short story into print than it is for a novel, which is close to impossible for most mere mortals.
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