Young Writers Society

Over the past year, I've seen an increasing number of chapter works. For one reason or another, it seems like no one is writing short stories anymore, which to me is absolutely ridiculous.

I kind of blame NaNoWriMo for this. It's put too much emphasis on just making a novel, rather than on the art of writing itself. This then carries over to those who don't even participate and may have even never heard of NaNoWriMo.

Unfortunately, I could be about to make the problem worse but part of my job is in keeping with the trends rather than trying to buck them. Yet, please take some advice from me: stop trying to write a novel.

I've noticed this trend as well. I've even seen it in myself. My works are starting to be longer and longer.

Personally, I think it is because I am trying to work more on developing characters throughout the course of a story, and am still unsure about how to do that with the limited space one has in a short story compared to a novel. I don't think I would be unable to develop a character fully in a short story, I just think that I need a lot more work on it before I can adequately do that.

And, I am also having a hard time coming up with good ideas for short stories. Everything just seems novel length to me lately, haha. I am also attempting to work on this, but at the moment I just seem to be in a phase for writing longer works. This will probably change when I get back around to reading short stories again though. Lately all I've been reading are novel length things, and what I read tends to be reflected in what I write.

I loves me some short stories; I think it's a thriving art form, if not here, then at least in the world at large :p. There are more competitions, more magazines and anthologies out there looking for them...it just happens to be incredibly competitive and hard to master.

For YWS, I actually think it's because young writers today don't read very many short stories today. It's mostly novels for them.

Sometimes a story is just meant to be told in a shorter form. I have a whole collection of short stories I've written or waiting to be finished laying around.

As difficult they are to write, I find them much easier to finish than a novel It also makes me feel good that I've actually completed a story of sorts.

And come to think of it, with all the novels being posted, I never know how the story is going to end

I really don't think young writers are reading anything all that different these days than before, so I don't think that explains it. Indeed, most of them have probably read more short stories in the past year than I have. Although, it may have something to do with the publishing mentality; that is, the "if I only write a novel, then surely I'll get published." You see it in full force on sites like Inkpop and Mibba.

I think I'm going to start an anti-novel crusade... the amount of chapter 1's and 2's on YWS is getting simply too ridiculous.

I love short story's, and have several collections of them which I have collected. I like writing them, but I find it hard to get a storyline which isn't to big.
I know this technically isn't true, because any idea can be turned into a story - long or short - and it does feel better because you know that it's something that you've finished.

Maybe people would write more if there was a short story's board?

I think it has something to do with the emphasis on being "deep." As in, tackling something psychological or social that only fits a longer work. Short stories feel "fluffy" to some; you just can't take a lot of character development ad cram it into a short story. You have to go with some lighter topic, unless you've got the skill to whittle a bit topic down. Even then, you're only taking a small part of the issue at hand. Not all of it.

I've noticed in a lot of the "this is my idea" posts done, there's some underlaying theme that's pretty big. Something really hard to cram into a short story. The author might think it looks bad to just work on light short stories all the time, without tackling anything bigger.

And let's not forget both Twilight and Eragon. Both by new writers and both made the authors practically household names. That might also have something to do with the "novels are better" mentality.

What, no love for the not-so-unhly marriage between the two forms, the short story anthology (especially if there's a frame story invoved)?

For me the anthology works best because it combines the snappiness and simplicity of a short story with the chance to delve deeper into an overall world/set of characters. And it's much less ambitious. I'm thinking especially of Asimov's I, Robot. Each story is self-contained but there's an overarching frame.

Don't worry Nate, I have quite a few short stories written, but I think we should all try to focus inspiration into a short story instead of expanding on it. We all aspire to be something great but we don't NEED to write a book.

I agree the number of Chapter 1,2+ posts are... greater. Though I'd like to apologize that I can't help with it yet. I do not know how about others, but with my latest idea I'm not looking to being famous or whatsoever, I'm writing it for myself, putting my past, writing my wished future. Because in short stories you do not get to know the characters that much, I just expand the chapter, writing a lot, trying to make a certain picture of the characters, meanwhile doing some chemistry and trying to make it still complicated. ( Well, I haven't posted the complicated part yet ) => thus novel length stories are logically better for such a case.

Though with all the chapters, I think that the most reviewed area though is Poetry. I never fail to see many new poems there and a few hours later already reviewed. You can see many of those "novel length" chapters in Fiction being still unreviewed.
+ There are still people who write short stories so it's not dead =) I remember clearly reviewing one short story yesterday.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:I think it has something to do with the emphasis on being "deep." As in, tackling something psychological or social that only fits a longer work. Short stories feel "fluffy" to some; you just can't take a lot of character development ad cram it into a short story.

These people have never read Niel Gaiman's short stories. (I'm sure there are other superbly talented short story writers, but Gaiman's my favorite.)

Anyway, you've got an interesting point about NaNoWriMo, but I think the idea that novels are the more "serious" literary endeavor goes back before that. Maybe because short stories are usually in collections, so their names are rarely on the front cover (unless it's an anthology of one person's work, of course) and none of the new big authors got famous on short stories alone. I also think schooling might be related to this; I remember having to write short stories for English class, so everyone has done/can do that, but "real writers" are more "serious" about their work and write novels.

(I admit, I'm in the middle: I write a series of interconnected short stories that, read in chronological order, could probably form a rough draft of a novel.)

Unfortunately, I could be about to make the problem worse but part of my job is in keeping with the trends rather than trying to buck them. Yet, please take some advice from me: stop trying to write a novel.

Well, I'm sorry, Nate, for attempting to write long projects. Yeesh. What did novels really do to you and/or your loved ones? I mean, do they honestly deserve to be ratted on merely because short stories are not being written anymore? Can I just say something?
The short stories are normally in 'Other Fiction' and 'Romantic Fiction'.
Amazing, yes, I know. I think that, generally, that's where the shorts you're looking for are, because Fantasy, Sci Fi, and the big, hard-core Action/Adventure generates the idea of a fully blown-out novel rather than short stories.
Sorry if I offended anyone. Or trolled anyone. But, honestly, are novels really that bad that they must be crushed by the admin? Or is there some other, novel-inspiring reason for Nate's dislike of novels replacing short stories.

I'm onto you, Nate

I think short stories can be just as deep as novels; they're limited on how thorough they can be, but I've read plenty of short stories that address themes and larger ideas more effectively in a small space than I've seen an author address in a novel. Personally, I just find that short stories are infinitely harder to write for me. I've been writing for a long time and just this past semester, I wrote a short story I was actually proud of. Up until then, my portfolio was full of failed short story attempts.

I think part of the reason a lot of people write short stories is that novels or at least parts of novels have more space to work. With the beginning of a novel, I might notice the characters are slightly flat, mention it and say to myself, 'but they have a lot of time to fix this'. With a short story, however, if the character is flat, the writer had better go back through and pummel in that character development, because there is nothing else. It's hard to create a manageable story arc, vivid characters and pay the appropriate attention to individual sentences when writing a short story. Not to say novels are easy to write, because they're not, but, at least for me, short stories make me much more nervous than novel-writing.

I really can't explain why the number of novels have gone up lately, but I think for some people, the short story is, ironically, more intimidating than writing a novel. And this is a great push for us to try and tackle them anyway!

hero, nobody's trying to "crush" novels. He's just trying to split the novels from the short stories so they're easier to navigate.

I think short stories are still alive. Novel are still my ultimate goal, though -- I find them more satisfying. Perhaps I don't read enough good short fiction, maybe it's hard to find. Either way, I think, when I was a young writer I always believed the novel was the true calling.