There are many different aspects to consider when writing a short story, and a novel. They are two completely different genres which require their own unique style in story telling. Personally, I think of short stories as exercises which one can do in order to get in that culture of finishing a piece, whether its 1K words, or 10K words or even a 100K one.

One of the main challenges when writing a novel is to actually flush it out in a way that is still engaging. Any sentence you write should build up for something larger or give hints towards something that needs explaining; you simply cannot get away with writing fillers in a novel (stuff completely irreverent to the story just for the sake of increasing the word count).

In short stories, you can actually get away with a lot of things, for example you can skip an entire battle or a change in sequence… moving forward with the story in just around 500 words (something that cannot be forgiven in a novel). Some might argue that this does not reflect good practices, to which I say, who the hell sets the rules for writers? We ourselves do.

Think of it like this: in a short story, you can sum up a huge event with its outcome and just proceed to the aftermath. In a novel, you have to explicitly describe everything that happened, no excuses!

Writing short stories is always fun, as you essentially get the culture of actually finishing a project, and that momentum is what gets you going when you’re writing a novel. You will never improve if you keep writing in your comfort zone… you have to extend it and explore different genres in order to increase your vocabulary.

Until next time,
Write On.