Should I Start Writing Short Stories or Novels?
As one does when procrastinating on their creative writing, I was scrolling through social media. While doing so, I stumbled on an interesting X debate about whether you should start writing short stories before novels.
It’s a good topic to discuss considering how many MFA programs I can think of that tend to structure their craft courses around the short story and focus on the art of writing the short story. But how inevitably so many fiction students actually write a novel for their capstone projects. As a result, it’s not too much of a stretch to understand why people may consider the short story to be the stepping stone to writing novels. Although, I would caution that it’s not that simple. The two forms share commonalities but are very much two different animals.
The obvious difference between the two forms is their length. With short stories, you have way less page real estate to work with. Most short stories land between 1,000 and 5,000 words. But some short stories are longer (8,000 to 10,000 words). As a result of the short word count, the scope of your piece has to be very narrow and you’ll want to stick with one narrative thread and character arc. On the flip side, most novels are about 80,000 to 95,000 words (more if you’re writing fantasy) and can therefore accommodate multiple narrative threads and character arcs.
But these differences don’t really give a clear answer to the X debate: Which one should you start with to get better at writing? Does starting with short stories make it easier to write a novel? Or visa versa? To cut through the noise and get to the root of the debate, people are ultimately asking this question because they want to learn how to get better at writing. If this is the goal, the answer is simple: write. Despite what so many newsletters, books, workshops, and webinars will tell you, the only way to get better is to read a lot and write a lot.
Rinse and repeat.
However, if you’re wondering when to choose one form over the other the answer is less simple. It really depends on the story and, I would argue, the writer. Some writers gravitate toward one form over the other. For instance, while I will write short stories, most of my work is novel-length. When I get an idea, some questions I like to start out with when starting a work are:
How many scenes do I imagine for this story right now?
How many characters are there?
How many of those characters will have arcs?
Will the characters be staying in one place? Or traveling too much?
What is the main narrative thread of the story? Are there any “side missions” or additional threads?
Is this going to be plot-driven? Character-driven? Or somewhere between the two?
Keeping these questions in mind as I brainstorm helps me determine whether something will be a short story or a novel-length project. There isn’t a clear map for if I answer these questions this way or those questions that way then I’ll know what form I should be writing in. Rather, it’s to help you begin to think critically about how much real estate you’ll need to tell this story.
And after all that thinking you’re still not sure? Don’t wait. Go off what you have and start writing. It will come.
