Young Writers Society

When writing short stories I prefer to keep description of the setting to a minimal. It isn't the most important element of the story as I try to build up suspense or menace through descrption of characters or speech, rather than the surroundings.

What about everyone else? Does the setting have to be as descriptive as the character?

I guess it's more true in short stories that one must make every word count -- you can't waffle or go off the point too much, with long lengths of description. So I'd have to partially agree -- settings/description don't become neccesarily less important, but you just have to write them in more succinct ways that don't distract from the main theme of the story, as it were.

That's probably true of everything in a short story. Bah, probably why I can't ever write them.

It depends on the character and what's happening. For instance, "The Lady and the Unicorn" went overboard on description compared with "The Death Parlor" as far as setting goes, but that makes sense, considering both stories.

It depends. Sometimes, if they are in a room, I go as much as the furniture and the feeling of the room.

Other times, if its very important, I get deep, but with as little words as possible. It's a short story, so description probably shouldn't take up too much of the word count.

(Of course, my short stories are always 2k or less so I never have much room to work with.)

It's hard for me cause i have a hard time with short things. Usually i give the bare minum details of a setting to get that basis so the readers imgaination can see somthing. Everyone tends to see something different in my stories.

I guess depending on where and what the setting is is when you decide how much to describe it.

I guess it's more true in short stories that one must make every word count -- you can't waffle or go off the point too much, with long lengths of description.
You can't do this anyway. A waffle is a waffle, right?

Your prose should be as tight in a short story as they are in a novel. As for setting, it's important when it's important. Sometimes the scene takes a back seat, other times it's driving. It all depends, I think.

- FoY

Waffle was the wrong word. I just mean long descriptions. Lots of authors have lengthy prose.

What I meant was that I'm usually more forgiving of a novel that has lengthy descriptions (as long as they're interesting and good) compared to a short story. Thus, I like to see short stories with tighter prose.

I can see your point that it should be the same in short stories as novels but that would be assuming the art of writing novels is the same as writing short stories, which isn't something I agree with. I think they're totally different mediums. Novels can have the liberty to go off the point and wander, because they have further to go to get to a conclusion and hence more freedom to get there. Short stories have to be sharp and to a point, in my opinion, to truly work.

I find when writing a short story I can describe my settings in more depth than in longer stories because I find that my mind gets tired of describing settings in a long story.

keep writing guys and =) happy reading (=