Tuesday, September 13, 2011

I've Broken My Short Story Bone

Between working on In the Memory House and revising Borrowed Saints (which will have a shiny new cover and new title, coming soon), I've broken my short story bone.

I started a piece for Rainstorm Press's Mutation Nation anthology, but after two-thousand words have realized I'm writing a novella. Huh?

Waaaaay too much back story. I definately started in the wrong place.  This has never happened to me, and I'm struggling a bit with making it work.

Anyone else have similar issues when switching between longer and shorter writing?

8 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

I appear to have broken all my writing bones. We'll mend though, right?

Anthony Rapino said...

That happened after I wrote my first novel. The first few shorts I wrote after the novel all ended up being around 8,000-10,000 words long, and you know how difficult it is to find a short story market willing to take anything over 5,000 words.

Martin Rose said...

I think I've thrown the towel in on short stories -- and it's a direct result of spending time exclusively on novels. Not only can I not seem to make the switch to a shorter format, but there seems to be greater benefit, professionally and personally, to writing novels.

When I attempted to flex that short-story muscle and start submitting again, the general problems rife in the smaller short fiction presses promptly had me running back to novel country without regrets. I'm thinking of building a summer house there . . .

Aaron Polson said...

Cate - That's what I'm told.

Tony - My problem exactly. Maybe it's a sign...

Martin - I might be looking for some prime real estate.

S. Williams said...

I have yet to graduate to the respected novel land. But I like the short story neighborhood and don’t mind dwelling there.

R. Scott McCoy said...

Nope. I seem to be able to switch back between both and my short stories have been landing between 2-4K. Not sure why, but I seem to use a different part of my brain for each. A short story idea is usually limited from the premise on.

Anonymous said...

My first venture out of short story land was aiming to be at least a 7,500 word novelette, but so far finds me revising a 16,500 word novella and it's growing with each draft. So far I'm enjoying flexing out and it seems my newer ideas are getting bigger. Novella size MS might be just right for me. At least for now.

Danielle Birch said...

Yes, this usually happens to me when the characters come to me first and then the story comes later and keeps coming and coming...