Short Stoies, Novellas and Novels, Oh My!
This year alone, I've completed a humorous Memoir, two novella's and nine short stories and I have two novels in progress, plus I edited a full-length novel for a close friend and I've been submitting short stories and flash fiction to competitions, so it's been a busy year so far, and all that while, I'm living as normal a life as possible, just like every one else. To say, I love what I do would be the understatement of the year, because I far more than love it. I eat, breathe, sleep, and even shower with it and I don't regret any of it. I find it takes a great deal of commitment to write daily and a ton of discipline, and I take the greatest joy in having deadlines. So I thought I'd take a few minutes to share with you what I'm learning while writing in different genre's and different styles as I travel along in this journey.
I'll begin with the short stories, and I'll tell you why I love writing them so much. At first, the process was frightening to me. Always being a wordy creature ever since I was a teensy child I thought I'd find it difficult to write something with a boundary, in most cases, of three-thousand words. If you're a writer, you know how limiting that can be, because it is, but here's the thing; a beautiful full-length story focused on a single issue can be shown in just three-thousand words. And it doesn't have to sound contrived. The organic process can flow just as easily here as it can in a full-length novel. The only difference is, the writing of short stories literally forces you to think about what the story is, and what it isn't. There's no room for the fluffy stuff if it isn't necessary and there's no room for useless words. It commands you to narrow your focus on the main intention of your story and for whom the story is about and what's their final outcome, and it forces you to cut those people or things that the story isn't about. And it can be as melodious or restricted as you choose; that is to say, it can be a beautifully painted portrait of your character and his or her dilemma, or starkly written and succinct. It's your choice. And I love too that I can play with multiple genre's here. So far, I've done human interest fiction, horror, supernatural, Christian fiction and non-fiction as well, and it's a fantastic feeling to have so many choices.
I've taken stories I've written that were much longer than three-thousand words, some as many as six-thousand words, and cut them to bare bones. Basically, I deconstructed the stories and built them back up to three-thousand words and I ended up with clean-as-a-whistle stories that no longer had useless words and information that wasn't necessary, but that still kept the tone and temperament of the original narrative. And one of those I worked on in that way was submitted to a competition and the results came back highly positive, just missing the top fifty finalists by a hairs' breadth. My story received high scores in every category with one category, a perfect score and though I didn't qualify as a finalist, it was one of the best decisions I'd made, because it became a motivator, seeing proof of what I need to work on more diligently. I was inspired to do better and I've learned something about myself too; I learned that I have the moxie to write! That's incredibly empowering. But, do you want to know what I really love about writing short stories? I love the immediateness of it. It's almost instant gratification. As soon as I finish one, I shoot it off to my readers for their reviews. I get instant feedback in almost every case from them and they're honest with their critiques, both good and bad. They tell me where I flourished and where I failed to emote; where it didn't make sense; a sentence they stumbled on, if they got lost (in a good way) in it, or did they have trouble following along and getting involved. Instant gratification, and I really love that!
And then there are my novella's. These are more time consuming and require a wider scope, even though there still isn't enough to show to create a full-length novel, but I think they're a valuable tool to a writer in many ways. Novella's have a leg in the short story process, and a leg in the novel writing process. There's definitely more freedom here, though the art of the short story still plays into writing a novella because you still need to keep it tight without using extraneous words and thoughts. But because it's a longer story, usually between twenty to sixty-thousand words, you're able to play more with the story line and create a deeper plot and it allows you the freedom to involve more characters where you aren't limited as much to a single focus. I find that writing a novella teaches me how to use freedom with restraint to achieve a story with an in depth story line and a few twists along the way that culminate to a satisfying conclusion.
I enjoy writing novella's for readers who may not, for whatever reason, be able to read a full novel, but want something more than a few pages. The novella serves that purpose perfectly. And for me, it's almost instant gratification.
And then there's the big enchilada, the novel. I'm still learning this process on a daily basis. My first novel, a non-fiction humorous memoir, its acronym TTITC took me almost seven years to finish! For me, that was a long haul, but it was so satisfying to finally finish it. I felt accomplished after it was completed and invigorated. It's behind me now as I focus on works of fiction in the horror/supernatural genre, and these won't take nearly as long to write since I've learned to write cleaner and to stop editing as I go along. And in case you're wondering, I haven't submitted TTITC anywhere yet, and its not for a lack of 'want to,' but more because the legal logistics have me a bit tense, so I'm sitting on it for a little while until I can figure out what to do about my dilemma, and that's okay, because I have a lot of irons in the fire. The day will come when I can submit my memoir and until that day does come, I'll keep writing; simple as that.
As for the two works in progress I have going on, I'm having a blast! I've been told that I may be a little strange for having two going on at the same time, but for me, I really like having multiple projects. If I hit a creative wall on one of them, I can move on to the other, and if I hit a wall there, I go and write a short story, or start a new novella, or I go and learn something I didn't know before. It all comes together in the end, I'm certain of it.
For me, the art of writing a novel incorporates all the things I've learned in writing both short stories and novella's. The shorts helping me maintain a keen focus while developing my plots; puzzle pieces, if you will, and keeping the narrative clean with the entire story focused and driven to the end goal. It also helps to keep my dialogue clean, but I find the main lesson is keeping that keen focus to drive the story to its conclusion, because it's easy to go off course in a novel when new story lines are developed or new characters enter the picture and so the short story process reigns that temptation in and pulls me back to the main focal point.
And the novella teaches me how to be more emotive and give the novel a more creative punch. It teaches me how to more fully develop characters with deeper back stories and delve deeper into plots and twists while still keeping the end in sight, so when the finale comes, you're left satisfied.
All these things add up to something good, in my opinion. I enjoy the different processes involved with each type of story I write, whether a short story, novella or novel, and I would recommend it to anyone who desires to be a more fully developed and well-rounded writer. And, it doesn't hurt to enter competitions and submit to Literary Magazines and Anthologies either because those processes alone are worth a million to me! It's great practice to get to know the submission process so that when I am ready to submit my novel to an Agent or Publisher, I already know how to present myself and my work, and it never hurts to get publishing credits and titles under my belt too. After all, what's our end goal as a writer? To be published, yes? We want readers to read what we've written, but for me it goes even deeper than that, and I'm sure it does for you too if you're a writer. I want to make my readers feel something; whether its love, anger, sadness, disgust or fear, whatever it is, I want my readers to feel what I've written, not just read it, but live it. I want them haunted by my words. And I have to confess, I do write for me too, because I love writing the pictures and ideas I see in my mind and bringing them to life; I have to tell my stories, I'm compelled to and when I do, I want to feel it, live it and be haunted by my own words! After all, I am a writer and I'm just me . . .
I'll begin with the short stories, and I'll tell you why I love writing them so much. At first, the process was frightening to me. Always being a wordy creature ever since I was a teensy child I thought I'd find it difficult to write something with a boundary, in most cases, of three-thousand words. If you're a writer, you know how limiting that can be, because it is, but here's the thing; a beautiful full-length story focused on a single issue can be shown in just three-thousand words. And it doesn't have to sound contrived. The organic process can flow just as easily here as it can in a full-length novel. The only difference is, the writing of short stories literally forces you to think about what the story is, and what it isn't. There's no room for the fluffy stuff if it isn't necessary and there's no room for useless words. It commands you to narrow your focus on the main intention of your story and for whom the story is about and what's their final outcome, and it forces you to cut those people or things that the story isn't about. And it can be as melodious or restricted as you choose; that is to say, it can be a beautifully painted portrait of your character and his or her dilemma, or starkly written and succinct. It's your choice. And I love too that I can play with multiple genre's here. So far, I've done human interest fiction, horror, supernatural, Christian fiction and non-fiction as well, and it's a fantastic feeling to have so many choices.
I've taken stories I've written that were much longer than three-thousand words, some as many as six-thousand words, and cut them to bare bones. Basically, I deconstructed the stories and built them back up to three-thousand words and I ended up with clean-as-a-whistle stories that no longer had useless words and information that wasn't necessary, but that still kept the tone and temperament of the original narrative. And one of those I worked on in that way was submitted to a competition and the results came back highly positive, just missing the top fifty finalists by a hairs' breadth. My story received high scores in every category with one category, a perfect score and though I didn't qualify as a finalist, it was one of the best decisions I'd made, because it became a motivator, seeing proof of what I need to work on more diligently. I was inspired to do better and I've learned something about myself too; I learned that I have the moxie to write! That's incredibly empowering. But, do you want to know what I really love about writing short stories? I love the immediateness of it. It's almost instant gratification. As soon as I finish one, I shoot it off to my readers for their reviews. I get instant feedback in almost every case from them and they're honest with their critiques, both good and bad. They tell me where I flourished and where I failed to emote; where it didn't make sense; a sentence they stumbled on, if they got lost (in a good way) in it, or did they have trouble following along and getting involved. Instant gratification, and I really love that!
And then there are my novella's. These are more time consuming and require a wider scope, even though there still isn't enough to show to create a full-length novel, but I think they're a valuable tool to a writer in many ways. Novella's have a leg in the short story process, and a leg in the novel writing process. There's definitely more freedom here, though the art of the short story still plays into writing a novella because you still need to keep it tight without using extraneous words and thoughts. But because it's a longer story, usually between twenty to sixty-thousand words, you're able to play more with the story line and create a deeper plot and it allows you the freedom to involve more characters where you aren't limited as much to a single focus. I find that writing a novella teaches me how to use freedom with restraint to achieve a story with an in depth story line and a few twists along the way that culminate to a satisfying conclusion.
I enjoy writing novella's for readers who may not, for whatever reason, be able to read a full novel, but want something more than a few pages. The novella serves that purpose perfectly. And for me, it's almost instant gratification.
And then there's the big enchilada, the novel. I'm still learning this process on a daily basis. My first novel, a non-fiction humorous memoir, its acronym TTITC took me almost seven years to finish! For me, that was a long haul, but it was so satisfying to finally finish it. I felt accomplished after it was completed and invigorated. It's behind me now as I focus on works of fiction in the horror/supernatural genre, and these won't take nearly as long to write since I've learned to write cleaner and to stop editing as I go along. And in case you're wondering, I haven't submitted TTITC anywhere yet, and its not for a lack of 'want to,' but more because the legal logistics have me a bit tense, so I'm sitting on it for a little while until I can figure out what to do about my dilemma, and that's okay, because I have a lot of irons in the fire. The day will come when I can submit my memoir and until that day does come, I'll keep writing; simple as that.
As for the two works in progress I have going on, I'm having a blast! I've been told that I may be a little strange for having two going on at the same time, but for me, I really like having multiple projects. If I hit a creative wall on one of them, I can move on to the other, and if I hit a wall there, I go and write a short story, or start a new novella, or I go and learn something I didn't know before. It all comes together in the end, I'm certain of it.
For me, the art of writing a novel incorporates all the things I've learned in writing both short stories and novella's. The shorts helping me maintain a keen focus while developing my plots; puzzle pieces, if you will, and keeping the narrative clean with the entire story focused and driven to the end goal. It also helps to keep my dialogue clean, but I find the main lesson is keeping that keen focus to drive the story to its conclusion, because it's easy to go off course in a novel when new story lines are developed or new characters enter the picture and so the short story process reigns that temptation in and pulls me back to the main focal point.
And the novella teaches me how to be more emotive and give the novel a more creative punch. It teaches me how to more fully develop characters with deeper back stories and delve deeper into plots and twists while still keeping the end in sight, so when the finale comes, you're left satisfied.
All these things add up to something good, in my opinion. I enjoy the different processes involved with each type of story I write, whether a short story, novella or novel, and I would recommend it to anyone who desires to be a more fully developed and well-rounded writer. And, it doesn't hurt to enter competitions and submit to Literary Magazines and Anthologies either because those processes alone are worth a million to me! It's great practice to get to know the submission process so that when I am ready to submit my novel to an Agent or Publisher, I already know how to present myself and my work, and it never hurts to get publishing credits and titles under my belt too. After all, what's our end goal as a writer? To be published, yes? We want readers to read what we've written, but for me it goes even deeper than that, and I'm sure it does for you too if you're a writer. I want to make my readers feel something; whether its love, anger, sadness, disgust or fear, whatever it is, I want my readers to feel what I've written, not just read it, but live it. I want them haunted by my words. And I have to confess, I do write for me too, because I love writing the pictures and ideas I see in my mind and bringing them to life; I have to tell my stories, I'm compelled to and when I do, I want to feel it, live it and be haunted by my own words! After all, I am a writer and I'm just me . . .
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