Spin off short stories?

[Finchbearer]

I am considering writing ‘Tales from Eirland’, short stories that would focus on individual characters, lore and the world in which my series in set in as a fun project to develop my understanding of it, as the whole thing is quite a big project, and maybe I’m not ready to write it in its entirety just yet.

It will be my first proper foray into what I would describe as epic fantasy and I don’t want to produce work that is ill-conceived.

Has anyone else done something similar?
What was your word count per story?
Did you compile them all into one book or keep them separate?

 

[Insolent Lad]

Every time I've started something like that the stories have had a tendency to turn into novels. But there are well-known authors who've done it, e.g. Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea stories, Andre Norton's many Witch World tales, even Samuel Delany with the Neveryon series.

If I could write enough of them, I would certainly think of putting them into one book. It needn't be a particularly long one, I think; readers don't expect a collection of short stories to reach epic lengths.

 

[pmmg]

Part of my plan is to have short stories that go along side the bigger tale. But...I am completing the bigger tale at present.

My short stories tend to be 10K or less. Usually in the 6-8K range.

And I have written more than a few Short Stories over the years. Most a loosely related to the larger tale, but the reader probably don't know.

 

[Mad Swede]

I do this in my setting partly because it's a way of fleshing out the backstory for many of the characters. Those backstories wouldn't be enough for a novel for each character, but they let me describe key events that explain why characters are the way they are. I started doing it for myself, but my editor liked them so much that they became a book of short stories.

 

[Finchbearer]

Every time I've started something like that the stories have had a tendency to turn into novels.

yeah, I can see how tempting that would be.

 

[pmmg]

Along the lines of Mad, I would say, my brain tend to think in terms of series's and not one offs. There was a time when it would have been nicer to have one off ideas.

I saw on Reedsy, they have story contests and prizes. I thought I might do so after the series is finished.

 

[Finchbearer]

I need to find a platform to showcase my stories to an appropriate audience, maybe find some beta readers too eventually. Short stories may be more likely to get people reading.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

GRRM has shorts from the Seven Kingdoms that turned into a book. I've got bits and pieces laying around, so someday maybe... but most things I write go long... sometimes running way out of the end zone.

 

[ThinkerX]

I am considering writing ‘Tales from Eirland’, short stories that would focus on individual characters, lore and the world in which my series in set in as a fun project to develop my understanding of it, as the whole thing is quite a big project, and maybe I’m not ready to write it in its entirety just yet.

It will be my first proper foray into what I would describe as epic fantasy and I don’t want to produce work that is ill-conceived.

Has anyone else done something similar?
What was your word count per story?
Did you compile them all into one book or keep them separate?

That was how I developed my world prior to writing my six volume 'Empire' series.

Partly on my own, and partly through writing contests here, I wrote one short story after another (along with the occasional novelette and novella) set in my world, exploring different regions and characters. True, only some of these characters appeared in 'Empire,' but writing these stories went a long ways towards fleshing out the world.

The last one I wrote was 'Moving Pictures,' which, when edited, will be bundled with 'Leave' and 'Inheritance' in 'Empire: Southern Heat.' Hopefully, I'll get that out in a week or two.

I also have one or two other anthologies lined up for that world.

 

[pmmg]

I need to find a platform to showcase my stories to an appropriate audience, maybe find some beta readers too eventually. Short stories may be more likely to get people reading.

I think there are many ways to accomplish getting short stories out there. Contests, and short story publishers exist. Also anthologies,

There are many websites to post up stories, I dont know them all any more, but wattpad, and now Reedsy.

And, of course, you could set up your own little corner of the web.

You might also put them on amazon as KDP giveaways, if there goal is to drive interest.

 

[Gurkhal]

Its a project I haven't actually carried out but something I've been thinking about for a long time.

I would probably keep them separate and only attempt to gather the shorts together when I've reached some number of them so I got some material to organize in the first place. But that's from a purely theoretical point of view.

 

[skip.knox]

James S.A. Corey did this with the Expanse. Casting back a few decades, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles began life as short stories.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Tolkien did it for the Silmarillion. Sort of. The first Witcher book is also a collection of short stories.

It's also very common among indie authors. Spin-offs have an immediate audience, in people who read the series and want to know more. They're also great to give away to people who join your mailing list. You can collect them in novels (Stephen King has several of those). And you can put them up as stories on platforms like Wattpad or Kindle Vela to grow an audience.

If you've got a story to tell, then tell it. As for how long they should be, that as How long is a piece of string type question. They can be anything from a few hundred words short story to a 30k word novella. Only you can answer that question. In general I feel that a story should be as long as it needs to be. A few things to keep in mind:
- practice writing what you want to write. If you want to write novels, practice longer forms. If you really enjoy short stories, write those.
- practice writing what you read. If you never read short stories, then writing those might be harder than slightly longer works.
- if you want to practice writing a scene, then go for short stories. If you want to practice writing longer tales, then go for a novella.

If I were you, I would go for novella length stories (so 15k - 50k words, give or take). The reason is that you practice everything a novel requires. You need some structure, you need to weave scenes together, you get a character arc etc. But at the same time it's still a manageable length. 25k words is 2 months of dedicated writing. You can see the end of that when you start. Which makes it easier to finish than a novel. And finishing is an art in itself...

 

[Finchbearer]

Last night I got all my ideas down on paper, well my laptop, wrote a working title for each and the tale I want to explore, thought it might be fun to share the titles just to share the flavour of what I’m going for. Even now I feel more inspired about my world and the stories I want to tell about it.

So we have:

Tales from Eirland

The Miner’s Tale
Ire of Afallon
The Edge of the World
Three for a Girl
A Rule of Court
The Crofter’s Tale
The Dryad of Dalríada
A Spriggan of Thorns
The Winding River
An Arcane Oath

Aiming for up to 10,000 words for each.

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

I am considering writing ‘Tales from Eirland’, short stories that would focus on individual characters, lore and the world in which my series in set in as a fun project to develop my understanding of it, as the whole thing is quite a big project, and maybe I’m not ready to write it in its entirety just yet.

It will be my first proper foray into what I would describe as epic fantasy and I don’t want to produce work that is ill-conceived.

Has anyone else done something similar?
What was your word count per story?
Did you compile them all into one book or keep them separate?

I do this. They aren't always stories per se as they sometimes focus more on slice of life than actual conflict and drama. They're just to get a feel for the characters and the world they inhabit.
Or I'll have them go on a standalone adventure completely unrelated to the main story, so whatever happens in the spin off doesn't affect the main story.

 

[Pegzy]

I have based most of my short stories in the world I created for my novel. Can't remember what came first though. They are good way to extend the world and get to know it. I think with each story I discover some aspect of the world. Currently I'm dealing with its favorite foods, bookstores, and books.
Your list looks intriguing.

 

[L.L. Maurizi]

I have definitely planned quite a few short-story spinoffs of my novel (a high fantasy or epic fantasy if you prefer)

I laid them out and planned them and will start writing once my book is waiting for response from agents.

I think short stories can add to your lore, enriching your main world, as well as giving insight to its history, politics, etc.

As for the length, I never really though about a limit, but I guess I'd keep myself in the 10k range (a very soft ceiling)

 

[MamaMorrigan]

So, first thing to note - short story compilations like that are a hard sell in the market if you care about that. But if not, it can be a lot of fun. I've done it myself!

The stories differed. Some actually had chapters, forming about ~10k words, whilst some were about 3k. The first draft (the only one I completed) wound up about 35k. They were all in one book.

What I will say is that these things don't tend to get a lot of attention. And the answer why can be quite simple - When we create epic fantasy, we are going for making a world that feels extremely well-fleshed out, immersive, and well, epic. Through that lens, we can sort of see how the tone and the narrative are unaligned. Yes, in every way but narrative, this is epic fantasy. And epic fantasy comes part-and-parcel with an epic story. Not small stories.

So as someone who has ambitions for my personal projects, I came to realise that I was slipping the between the two markets, not combining them. When we see short story collections, even from massively successful epic fantasy sagas, they don't do that well in contrast. And you know most of the people picking it up came from the bigger story, not the other way around.

And this it tough, because short stories do feel more accessible. Epic fantasy is, in my opinion, the hardest genre to write, and requires a lot of experience, foresight, planning, all sorts. Which sucks, because when writers start out, it's EXACTLY what they want to write. I'll say that I only just got comfortable enough to really take a crack at epic fantasy!

 

[Finchbearer]

You’ve got some good insights there Morrigan, I agree with your points. I think where authors successfully market a book of short stories is where they might have had success with a full length novel, or series of novels from my experience as a reader.

This epic fantasy story / stories that I’m creating is taking a longer time than my other writing for those reasons you’ve outlined. It’s tricky ensuring that my world is immersive and isn’t contradictory in any way, especially when you have created a magic system, lore and character family trees etc.

I’d be interested to know what subjects you’ve explored in your writing?

 

[MamaMorrigan]

You’ve got some good insights there Morrigan, I agree with your points. I think where authors successfully market a book of short stories is where they might have had success with a full length novel, or series of novels from my experience as a reader.

This epic fantasy story / stories that I’m creating is taking a longer time than my other writing for those reasons you’ve outlined. It’s tricky ensuring that my world is immersive and isn’t contradictory in any way, especially when you have created a magic system, lore and character family trees etc.

I’d be interested to know what subjects you’ve explored in your writing?

Yes. Now imagine ALL of that on TOP of managing a plot and characters that span a whole novel!

What do you mean by subjects? Prose style, themes, genres, tropes, characters?