Writing short stories for practice and exposure

[Swordfry]

One thing I have often considered is writing up a couple short stories, and hopefully get them published in magazines or any other short story publications that will pay. This would not only help me develop my writing skills, but also get my feet wet in the actual publishing world while I work on my novel and have something to add on my portfolio.

The only problem that I have heard about this is that writing short stories may get me too used to just short stories, and struggle in expanding it further in a full novel.

I have several good ideas for stories much smaller in scale unrelated to any of my novels I have planned. I am also not worried about having to condense the story into a small scale.


Does anyone think this is a good idea? Working on a short story or two while writing my main novel and getting it published as practice and exposure?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Short stories are a great way to learn craft. Writing for contests and magazine that have word count limits can teach you to make every word count and use descriptions that do more than set the stage.

Further, and this is the most important in my view, you learn how to finish a story. Starting from nothing and writing through until you type, "THE END" teaches a lot that you'll be able to apply to larger works when you feel ready.

Plus, sometimes short stories are just plain fun, and not so daunting a task .

 

[Chessie]

Some authors do this, and some don't. If it's something that you'd like to explore, then go for it! Really, it comes down to whether or not you prefer writing shorts or longer fiction. They are different in structure and require their own set of skills to tackle.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

They are different in structure and require their own set of skills to tackle.

Your experience is different than mine.

I still use the same structures when writing a short story or novel, the shorts are simply more compact and deal with one plot issue and few characters compared to the much larger cast of a novel and layered plots/subplots.

Further, I think the skills learned writing shorts can be additive toward writing larger works. Starting with 1-5k stories for example, then moving to larger shorts (10k range), then novellas, then single POV novels, then multi-POV novels, etc.

Writers are very different, and no two approach their craft in the exact same way. Their experiences with growth, like this one, will also differ greatly. The only way you'll know what works for you is to sit down and try. Write a short or two. What have you got to lose except time? That time will pass regardless of whether you're writing or not. Might as well use it toward something to want to achieve.

 

[skip.knox]

I wound up writing three stories as I've been working on my novel. I didn't plan it; they just came barging in, claiming they only needed a moment. One came in at 8000, on at 14,000 and the third at 18,000 words, and they took weeks and even months to get to done.

That said, I'm glad I did it. I probably learned some writing skills, but I'm a lousy judge of that. What I did learn, though, was the post-first-draft process, from rewriting to editing to publishing (self). These stories forced me to shop editors and artists, to research Smashwords and the rest, to think in pragmatic terms about marketing. Plus, I now have three tales to put out in front of the novel.

Do it if you've a mind to!

 

[Svrtnsse]

I started out writing short stories and I did it just for fun. I had no plans on writing a novel and then I ended up doing just that anyway. It was good fun, but several times during the process of writing the novel I found myself wishing I'd written a few more short stories first so I could have learned a bit more.

What could I have learned from writing more short stories that I didn't learn from the first two dozen shorts I wrote?

The key there is feedback. The first stories I wrote in sort of a vacuum. I sent them to a friend of mine who gave well-meaning feedback on content and on grammar and spelling. According to her, I did pretty well on the things she read, and she also pointed out when I did wrong, so I felt pretty good about it.

It turns out there's a difference between writing a story and writing a grammatically correct text though. I didn't end up here on Mythic Scribes until after I'd started on the novel, and it was here I got feedback on my storytelling skills for the first time (and that was not pretty).
Getting feedback on my novel taught me a lot about writing that I didn't learn from writing the shorts.

What I wish I'd done was keep writing shorts and asking for proper feedback on them. I think that would have been very beneficial for me, and it would have saved me a lot of headache and frustration.

 

[Chessie]

Your experience is different than mine.

I still use the same structures when writing a short story or novel, the shorts are simply more compact and deal with one plot issue and few characters compared to the much larger cast of a novel and layered plots/subplots.

Further, I think the skills learned writing shorts can be additive toward writing larger works. Starting with 1-5k stories for example, then moving to larger shorts (10k range), then novellas, then single POV novels, then multi-POV novels, etc.

Writers are very different, and no two approach their craft in the exact same way. Their experiences with growth, like this one, will also differ greatly. The only way you'll know what works for you is to sit down and try. Write a short or two. What have you got to lose except time? That time will pass regardless of whether you're writing or not. Might as well use it toward something to want to achieve.

I agree with what you've said but allow me to clarify. It's been my experience that writers who focus on one story form vs the other will usually master that form faster. Therefore, writing shorts handles a different way of approaching things. Short stories don't have room for long prose so wording must be more direct, plots are shorter so there's less pinch points, etc and those are just two examples. I prefer to write under 60k because it's faster and I've practiced that more. How is it different than writing a novel? Less elements go into writing shorts and if you're used to writing novels, there's going to be a learning curve involved as to what works in short fiction and what doesn't, because long and short forms are highly different.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Okay, I'll clarify too...

What I learned here on these forums were things such as tension, active and passive prose, close and distant pov, terminology, voice, confidence.
Actually, that last one was a really big deal.

EDIT: I actually still didn't quite learn all those things, but I learned of them and I learned some respect for their importance - and I think I could have learned that regardless of whether I was writing a novel or short stories. I just think it would have been a less big undertaking to go with short stories for a bit longer.

 

[Incanus]

This is pretty close to what I've been doing--minus the submitting for publication part, for now. I spent the last year or so working on shorts, and a novella, to build up chops and experience for tackling my first novel.

My idea was to finish the novel, and then go back to the shorts and tweak on them a little more before thinking about sending them out. I figure that way I'll have even more experience to draw on by the time I try to polish up the shorts. When I finally begin to submit things, I want to be putting my best foot forward.

 

[Trick]

I never had any interest in short stories until some contests here on Mythic Scribes. I think I wrote a few for school but that was it. It turns out that I love writing them! Also, I learned a lot from writing for the contests and being critiqued, which is easier for a short stories. You get feedback on the whole story, your craft etc all wrapped up in a nice little bow. And short stories will continue to teach me things forever, I suspect. Recently I've been reworking a prologue for my WIP. I did a poor job on it but liked the bones of it. BWFoster and others helped me tear into its flaws and it's getting better. During all this, I took a step back and realized that it's basically a short story or even flash fiction, at only 1600 words. In the vein of GRRM's prologue for GoT, it is a setup/backstory tale that does exactly what I think a prologue should do but I wasn't pulling it off. After writing short stories, I feel more prepared to get it right. I honestly didn't think there was anything wrong with it until I re-read it after writing for the contests on here. It subconsciously bothered me in a way it didn't before.

So, after the blather, the point is that short stories made me a better writer in general even though I still just want to be a novel writer. I'll write more of them for sure.

 

[Swordfry]

Thanks for all the feedback.

Currently I am planning on writing and submitting my horror short story I have been posting about a little bit here. I am going to submit it first to Tor who will begin accepting short story submissions again beginning October 1st. So I think submitting by Halloween should be a good goal for myself.

 

[JCFarnham]

You're not necessarily any more guaranteed to gain a name for yourself by publishing short fiction first than jumping straight in with the novel. They're great practice sure, but it's not a clear cut path recognition like it used to be for Dickens et al.

If what you really want to write is a novel, rather than short fiction, it might be worth just going for it. It's all down to what you prefer as a writer and author like others have said.