Episode 020: Find the Right Length for Your Story, Pt. 2
The Rookie Writer Show - A podcast by H. Dair Brown, The Rookie Writer Show Host
Categories:
Reasons to Write Short Fiction
1 It’s a Great Place to Start – Build Your Skills – Confidence Builders – Great Training Ground
* Writing short stories is a great way to build your understanding of genres and audiences. For instance, Mark Twain published short stories in his local newspaper more than 20 years before his first novel, helping him to develop his inimitable voice.* Writing short will help you to learn pacing, structure, and spare writing. You’ll learn to make every word count while working to make a character or a setting to come alive. All these skills also come in handy during novel revision time.
2 Test or Flesh out a Character and/or Story Idea – Clear Out Writing Distractions
* If you’re not sure about whether the project you’re considering (or working on) is a story or merely a premise or interesting subject, write a short story about it and see where it takes you. Hemingway reportedly wrote dozens of stories featuring a character named Nick Adams both before and after his first breakthrough novel was published. * If you want to know more about a character’s backstory, consider writing a short story about it. * It helps you deal with the distractions caused by the other stories that are scratching at the door (or what Eric Knabel referred to in his interview as “Shiny Project Syndrome”). There’s a quote by some famous writer that I can’t find when I need it, but it goes something like: “Having been assigned to write on Vermont, I find myself obsessed with Mississippi.” Deal with your “Shiny Project Syndrome” by taking a little of the pressure off. Take a couple of hours and write up a draft of a short (or a short-short) story. Then put it aside to get back to your main project.
3 Discoverability – Gain visibility – Resume Builders
* You can get published sooner. There are more than twice as many literary magazines that publish short stories as there are book publishers. More than twice as many ponds to fish in. Stephen King famously had a stack of rejections on his wall when he was getting started. But eventually, he had some acceptances, too. And that was enough to keep him writing. Which is why a lot of people urge writers to go for 100 rejections a year. because you’re likely to get some acceptances mixed in there, too. It’s like Ray Bradbury said: if you write a short story a week for a year, you literally can’t write 52 bad stories in a row. Some of them are going to be exactly what a publisher is looking for.* Plus, agents and sometimes