Novel vs Short Story?

In my writing life, I've been confronted many times buy this age-old question: to write short or to write long. If you've followed my so-called career, you likely know that I prefer the longform writing. I suppose it's because in the longer format I have room to tell a full story according to my imagination. The short story format, in my humble opinion, is meant to present a singular incident. The longform presents a series of incidents. In that way, a short story could, if a writer had a mind to do so, be simply one of many incidents that could be expanded into a novel.

Let me give you a little history of my writing. In my younger days I had pen and paper to write my stories. That was a limitation: my ideas had to be short. When I gained the technology of a typewriter (first the Smith-Corona manual, then an IBM Selectric, an electric machine) I could write with more ease and my output expanded.

However, I still faced limitations. Hit the wrong key and you had to type the whole page all over again. I regularly typed my homework nevertheless. In high school, in fact, I typed out my ideas once in the form of a 66-page single-spaced rip-off of 1984. I stapled the pages together and let a friend read it. He passed it to other friends. Before I got it back, it probably had been read by half the school (a small student body in those days).

I planned a long epic book in middle school, started writing by hand in a notebook, made notes and planned the rest of it. With a typewriter, I could (a few years later) type out a screenplay version of the novel I had planned. It was a quicker way to complete the story, get it on paper, with the expectation I could novelize it later. (Still haven't done that!) 

So in my typewriter days, a short story was merely a novel in outline form. Later, with my first computer (Tandy 1000) - enabling me to save my writing and return to it later for editing - my stories gained length. I composed a pair of novellas (short novels), trying to write longer works. My advancement to a full PC machine with Windows 3.1 completed my transformation into a novel writer.

By then I knew I wanted to write books - not merely stories. I read a lot of novels (mostly sci-fi an fantasy) and knew I wanted to tell big stories. Epic stories. With my acceptance into an MFA program - where I'd hoped to learn how to get a break into the wonderful world of novelism - I was forced to write short stories. 

We crafted the New Yorker magazine's style of story: urbane, subtle, restrained, focused on thoughts and feelings rather than overt action. Translation: not much happens yet it devastates a character in the story. I got it: it was a fair exercise for learning to write fiction. I switched from sci-fi and fantasy stories (my mini-novels) to these "literary" fictions. I saw the light, as it were, and became a true believer. Characters before cool stuff.

Point taken. I switched from the cool idea being the center of the story to a main character who readers would care about and follow through the story as said character dealt with the cool idea. My MFA thesis was a novel I titled A BEAUTIFUL CHILL which is a fine example of literary fiction: the action is almost exclusively in dialog and sublime moments of relationship conflicts. I also tried to skewer the English department and its vagaries. It remains one of my most favorite novels.

But I did write short stories, measured by length of pages and number of words. Also counted by the plot or conflict in them: a single thing/problem/incident/episode/ moment-in-time. For me, the story idea came to dictate whether it would become a short story, a novella, or a full novel. I liked big ideas and that is why I've mostly written novels. However, I did write enough stories to fill an anthology. That may be my next or final project once this final volume of my FLU SEASON Saga comes out later this year with THE GRANDSONS.

As a Myrddin author, I've shared a few stories in the anthologies we've put out over the past few years (click on the covers for links). One of my better short stories was deemed so good (effective, compelling) that I built a whole novel around it. Another short story came from a prompt the anthology editor gave us. Others were more silly passages, humorous even, like a writing exercise and yet they were worth the reading. 

I fashioned a short story from 2 chapters in my novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL and titled the story "Lust" because it illustrates a variety of definitions of that word. So, again, the idea determines the format I use; most of my ideas require the larger format of a novel. I need elbow room to tell the complete story.

This is my one and only TEDTalk. Thank you for coming!

Oh, wait! There's more! Speaking of my final volume in the FLU SEASON Saga, I am deep into a thorough revision - usually the word count expands during this phase as I fill out scenes and make the narrative richer - and will set it aside for a month before returning for a close final edit. I expect the finished novel to be available by the end of this year (2025).

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