Tag: how to write a short story

5 Tips for Turning Your Short Story Into a Novel

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I already posted some tips on keeping your short story from turning into a novel, but what if you want to turn that literary appetizer into a five course meal? Here are five tips to get you all the way through desert.

1. Second-guess yourself.

Some stories just aren’t meant to be 300 pages long. Some are perfect at ten, or five, or even two pages. Ask yourself if you feel satisfied after reading it. If so, leave it short. But if you want to know what happens in the story next, move on to tip #2.

2. Write forward, not backward.

If you followed the advice from my last short story post, you wrote the climax of your would-be novel, and that scene became your short story. Logically, then, you should go back and expand on the parts that lead up to that scene, right? Wrong. If you are writing just to drag out the beginning, that’s all it will be – a drag. Instead, try picking up where you left off at the end of the short story. Ask yourself what happens next.

3. Treat each chapter as its own short story…

I got this advice from someone else; naturally I can’t remember who, but it stuck with me because the idea was intriguing. Imagine a book so tightly constructed that each chapter could stand alone. No extraneous plot exposition; no wasted words. It would be incredible.

4.      …But make them flow together.

No. 3 is great advice if you’re used to writing short fiction, but remember; you are writing a novel, not a collection of short stories. It needs to flow like a single story. If each chapter has buildup, backstory, climax, and conclusion, readers will feel full after only the first course and won’t want to keep reading. Experiment with the placement of your chapter breaks; try ending a chapter at its climax, and beginning the next chapter with the conclusion, cliffhanger style. Once you’ve accomplished that, it’s only a matter of flowing that conclusion into the next part of the story.

5. Read good books. [a.k.a. Writing Law #1]

Two books come to mind when I think of short stories transformed into novels, and they are both by Ray Bradbury. Each is a different take on the process:

The Martian Chronicles

Each chapter follows a different set of characters; each is complete in itself, but each is also a glimpse of a greater whole. Together, the chapters give us a “wide-shot” of the story – complete, because it shows us the big picture, yet less personal, because there is no single protagonist for us to follow throughout the whole story.

Dandelion Wine

Almost the opposite of The Martian Chronicles; although each chapter tells a story in itself, they all follow the same character, and all of the chapters serve a common purpose: the growth of the protagonist. We get a narrower, yet more personal perspective; a “close-up.”

Do these summaries seem vague? Read the books! You’ll learn far more than I could ever teach you in a blog post.

Plot Exposition, Muppets, and Cannibalism: a Writing Lesson from the Movies

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There’s a scene in the Great Muppet Caper, in which Lady Holiday explains to Miss Piggy the backstory for the entire movie.
Miss Piggy: Why are you telling me all this?
Lady Holiday: It’s plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.

The Muppets are a classic in my family, and whenever we catch serious movies forcing blocks of plot exposition into dialogue for convenience, we roll our eyes at each other and quote Lady Holiday.

It’s a good rule of thumb to make sure you Show Don’t Tell by giving everything you write the “how can I translate this to the big screen?” test, but shoving all your plot into dialogue and all your character development into voiceover is cheating – and it will show in your work. Perhaps a better way to remember the rule is “Imply, don’t state.” Let’s switch to an example of Imply Don’t State done right in a movie.

The Book of Eli opens up in a forest, gray with fog, where lies a decaying human body. A skin-and-bones cat is picking at the carcass. A few feet away, a hunter waits, aiming a crossbow. He sees the perfect moment, shoots the cat, picks up the dead creature for his next meal, and leaves the human body.

This seemingly simple first scene conveys everything we need to know in one fell swoop. Something terrible has happened in this world. Times are desperate. And even though we don’t yet know the main character’s name, or where he comes from, or where he is going, we know he won’t eat human flesh, even if he is starving. He also doesn’t bury the body, but thanks to the previous fact, we know this is not due to a lack of respect for human life. Either he’s seen too many human bodies to bother burying one of them, or he has more important things to do. Or both. We also know that he has patience and skill with a weapon.

We learn all this in less than five minutes, without hearing a word of dialogue. And it’s brilliant. Approach your novel (or short story) the same way.

Help! My Short Story is Turning Into a Novel! – 3 Tips to Get It Back on Track

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Too wordy?

 

Those of us who write (or read) mostly novels are used to dragging out the story over several scenes and chapters. We set the stage, introduce characters, infuse the narrative with backstory, build plot, build plot, build plot, write very dramatic death scenes at the climax, then finish up with a brief but satisfying summary of what happened afterwards. The problem is, we approach short stories as if they are mini-novels…then wonder why we can’t make it work. Here are three things I’ve learned about writing the perfect short story:

1. Find the right place to start. Picture the whole story in your head, as if it were a full length novel, and identify the climax—the moment the hero makes his or her ultimate decision, and people die or escape or kiss or whatever. Write that scene. And only that scene. Now, read it. Does it make sense by itself? If not, add backstory in small amounts until it does. If you really have to add additional scenes, add them, but only before the climax, never after—and keep your red pen ready.

2. Build the story like a joke. Whether it is a comedy or not, think: Setup. Punchline. Open with a punchy first sentence and build quickly to your climax; your last sentence is your punchline.

3. Cut extraneous details. No more than three main characters, and that’s pushing it. Don’t describe whole landscapes; only what your character notices in the heat of their passion, fear, grief, whatever. If possible, don’t even include character names. Look carefully at every sentence, every word. If it can be cut, it should be—you will find the phrasing hits harder the more concise you are.

The Three Laws of Writing

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There are dozens of rules in writing – ones you should follow and ones you should break – but there are three basic tenets at the core of good fiction that you ought to know. I’ll expand on the Three Laws as we go along. For now, here’s an overview:

Law #1: Read good books. Garbage in, garbage out. If you want to write well, feed your mind with excellent writing. You’ll learn a lot just by osmosis. Start with the books that defined your genre. If you write fantasy, read Tolkien. If you write sci-fi, read Wells. If you write mystery, read Doyle. Then branch out and read in other genres; Dickens. Carroll. Bradbury.

Law #2: Show, don’t tell. You’ll hear this one a lot, because it’s true. But it’s not always explained well. Here’s a short example: “she was beautiful” is telling; “her large, indigo eyes peeked out from behind a mess of curling flaxen locks” is showing.

Law #3: Write from your gut. You’re trying to write a dramatic scene and it sounds cheesy. It’s happened to the best of us – because we were trying to be poetic instead of just writing from the gut. Hopefully, we haven’t experienced the same tragedies that we inflict on our characters, but we’ve probably felt, to some degree, the same emotions. You’ve never lost your entire family to Martian invaders in a single day, but maybe you had to put your dog to sleep. Latch onto that feeling. Try to remember every detail – how it felt in your chest and in your fingers, the thoughts you didn’t want to think, the things you wished you could say. Avoid using fancy words; just write as plainly and as honestly as you can, and from the rawness of your emotion, beauty will naturally emerge.

Is your work Three Laws Safe?