Young Writers Society

I enjoy writing novels because I get to spend more time with my characters. Right now I'm working on several projects, one of which is a "novel" but is really a series of 5 novelettes about five different people/locations. Even though they're technically short stories, I'll end up posting the work as a whole in the novel category.

I do, however, love short stories. I recently finished Jack McDevitt's collection, Outbound, and it was superb. But it was still from an author famous for his novels. The big problem with short stories is that they're not percieved as being profitable. There are no more Raymond Carvers, sad to say, and it seems that the title of "professional writer" is becoming more like "part-time writer, part-time barista." With short stories, you can't even write them part-time.

P.S. All of the Ch. 1's are particularly annoying because a good half are abandoned at 5,000 words. Wait til its finished to post.

One thing i would argue is that the short story is not dead. Firstly because that one reason it is not quite a popular as the novel is because of its size and lack of depth. Novels are often good at those particularly on the depth of a character and due to the size, the reader may be able to relate themselves to the character of a novel more than the characters of a short story.

I loved novels and for more than a decade, I had planned to make a novel though all of the plans failed and as a result, I went to short story writing and one thing I had found out that perplex me is the notion of the mundane. Now, novels also brings out mundane in their plots but in a short story this mundane is limited to a certain scenes.

For example is character A walking to the street where A meets someone they know. Now on a novel, there is mundane that exist before this takes place and is often describe more when the event happens but for a short story, it is limited. rather than showing the background and context, it is limited on describing the meeting. Interior monologue, free indirect speech and character expression are somewhat expressed. In a novel, these would either be replaced by dialogue but because a short story cannot greatly go in depths with dialogue except for a few exceptions, they are somewhat focused on a combination of the exterior and interior where little or no dialogue is involve and that reaction is simply based on the expression.
But there is another reason for short stories to be good and that is surrealism. In novels, when surrealism is involved it often goes to the path of fantasy but in a short story, surrealism is bounded and linked to realism. The event may possessed surrealism but if there is a context of realism it cannot be placed on the genre of fantasy. Thus short story is also a good way to explore imaginations and to move one self from stereotypical genre codes and conventions.

Now as a whole, short stories are an excellent way to prepare oneself for a novel because of the process involved and to have depth on a particular event, scene or character but for me I am happy to stick with short stories rather than a novel.