Thanks for this. I'm working on linked short stories in which each protagonist is a Displaced Person arriving on the same ship in New York in June 1951. Most have been published. One story wanted to expand to a novella and then when I tried to condense, it expanded to a novel. I don't want to write a novel.
Can you please say more about your workshop process?
I read your story that came out in Folio. Great stuff. Love the references to TVs as these weird image boxes. I have a story in my novel of someone arriving in the US from another country. In my case that is the mid point of the novel. It's supposed to be when everything turns nice, since she arrived to the land of the Free. But that is not what happens, she develops PTSD, and what had happened to her starts to show its hairy ugly face.
Take a look at your own story. It that the beginning, the middle or towards the end? What elements in the past that are relevant are already in the story? Are there elephants in the room? Why not go there. The problem in turning those elements into a novella is that the dramatic arc will not be consistent with the dramatic arc of the other stories. Are you allowing yourself to switch POV? Be willing to ask yourself difficult questions.
For instance, in my novel, I realize that people demonstrated against the government, political and economic turmoil, violence. So I asked myself, what would someone from the government think. I began to write that story from the government's point of view, and turned out to be so dark, that I decided not do do third person limited, but go first person and use the unreliable narrator. The story, covers some of the events in the previous stories but now under his eye. Because we are dealing with short stories strung together, the switch to first person didn't break the patterns already in place in the whole work.
The key is cause and effect. The dramatic arc of the new story may be unique, but in the new story you may find out why a person behaved in a particular way, or the origins of something else. Maybe a character that was liked in a previous story, is despised in the new story, thus creating conflict and curiosity.
Short stories are gems that linger in the reader's imagination and heart. Woven together in a novel, they also allow a freedom as well as a dose of reality. Some conflicts may not be resolved; some young adults may never come of age; some cougars may stay on the prowl.
I'm currently working on a book that is actually four connected short stories. It is hard. Like you said, there's no room for drawn out backstories, you have to get right to it and cut out what isn't necessary.
Well said. Well written. and a major boost to those of us who love short stories with maybe a little shorter attention span. Thank you for your insights.
This is a terrific craft article for anyone interested in either short stories or novels, or linked short stories becoming novels. Like some of the earlier commenters have noted, I’ve always considered Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and James Joyce’s “Dubliners” as collections of short stories that share common themes rather than novels-in-short-stories, but maybe I should re-read both. It’s been a while.
Earlier this year, I read Tommy Orange’s “There There,” which, like “Oscar Wao” and others mentioned in your post, interweaves the stories of multiple characters from multiple perspectives. I’m now reading “Wandering Stars,” which is a sequel of sorts, and builds on the multiple-perspective approach Orange used in “There There.”
Luis, I can't even begin to express how much I love this! Several chapters from my two published novels, Maranatha Road and The Good Luck Stone, were published as short stories first. Like you, I tend to think (sometimes) of each chapter as a short story. Your essay is so validating and encouraging! And thank you for mentioning such great examples as well. I look forward to reading your work.
A very good craft article on writing short stories and how that is different from a novel. BTW, I have always wondered why there isn't a bigger audience market for short stories. Perhaps it's the lack of things like reviews or marketing for individual stories, as opposed to collections, something that that you have for novels, films, and plays.
This is a very good point. Because I enter my stories in many lit mags, I have subscriptions to about 50 of them. They proliferate like gerbils in my house. So I went to the library to donate. I was in shock to realize that many libraries do not take lit mags. They only organize by author, or they have a wrack with the daily periodicals, but not lit mags. Maybe that is part of the problem. People do not know they are here.
I have a similar problem and would guess that the purpose of many litmag contests to not only generate revenue but drive subscription and circulation. But, as I suggested, the underlying problem is that the content of many litmags doesn't attract a lay audience even relative to the serious literary novel market. As for libraries, the only partial exceptions to what you say that I know of are university libraries and member only libraries like Brooklyn's Center for Fiction and private club libraries that have a few litmag subscriptions.
Interesting time for this to come up (and I very much enjoyed this piece). I'm currently reading Ursula Hegi's "Floating in My Mother's Palm," and I felt that one reason I found it disappointing is because it claims to be a novel but is really a collection of short stories. It feels like there must be a line between "a novel in stories" and "a collection of interconnected stories." The Hegi book definitely feels like the latter to me. It's been a long time since I've read "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," but I don't remember feeling the same way. And I love "Dubliners," but I'd never think of it as anything close to a novel.
One thing that might be part of my problem with the Hegi book is that I don't feel driven to get to the next chapter - and I think that's because there's no sense of "I wonder what will happen to these people I've grown to care about." Hegi is a good writer - I love "Stones From the River" - but this collection isn't really working for me. And I wonder if I'd feel the same way if it weren't labeled as a novel.
What an excellent observation. I would say a technique that many of these writers, such as Jennifer Egan and Junot Diaz use, they only expose part of the elephant in the room. They use suppression of outcome to keep you intrigued. So by the time you finish the story and feel happy with that particular dramatic arc, your head is twisting, wondering what happened to so and so. What is going to happen to x. And when down the road you are reading another story, by a different POV suddenly you go wham, here's that character. So this is what others really think of her. In my novel something horrible happens to my protagonist, but towards the end of the novel, she gets together with the guy who used to be her boyfriend. So I purposely switched the POV to him, and what happened to her is never mentioned in the story. Yet at the end, you can put two and two together. Now, as a novel. You read the beginning and know what more than likely is going on. But when you send this out to a lit mag as an individual story, it still has to work. It all happens not by what is said, but what is not said.
Good points. I need to reread Diaz and read Egan and just generally spend more time thinking about how this works.
Salinger didn't present his Glass family stories as a single novel, but when I first read him, there was a kind of delight in seeing characters in short stories then come up in longer works and thinking about how it all fit together.
I have delayed writing a novel for exactly the reasons you mention here. I love the short story form and have a novel-in-short-stories I’m working on now.
I'm writing a novella-in-flash which is morphing into a novel rather than a novella - I worked with Michael Loveday and can highly recommend him plus his craft book on the subject - thank you Luis for this refreshing and encouraging post! As a reader, I love to jump from characters to different themes or times - as a writer, it's so nourishing to write in this way. I also think fragmented pieces (meant positively) are so much more real and true to our experiences - I mean who has a life that plays out like a well-crafted novel? 😂
My latest book, Cybill Unbound, about the sexual adventures of an older woman, is really a novel in stories. What I love about the form is that it combines the shapliness of a short story with the narrative drive of a novel. What happens next?
Thank you for your article, Luis. I don't think I have a novel in me to write and very much prefer to write short stories. I think your idea is great. I read a book by Maeve Bincy -- "Whitethorn Woods" -- in which she connects a collection of short stories with a common theme and common characters.
I wrote two of them. The first one, The Bride Wore Red, was put together with the help of the editor at Bridge Works Publishing, who brought out the hard cover of the book. I'd tried writing conventional novels after it was published, but I missed the short story form. When I went back to short stories, I decided to write a novel in stories from the get-go--that is, not the different stories that got made into a novel in stories in The Bride Wore Red but a novel that started out being a set of stories about the same family, spread out all over the world, with stories of their own, most of which connected with other stories about their brothers and sisters, cousins, children. That book is called Fifty-Fifty. I had a lot of fun writing it, moving from kid to kid in this family until I got a sense of the family as a whole. Now I'm back to writing stories, not so much linked.
I love it. In a way, I am approaching the next novel in the same way. My novel was about a Venezuelan refugee arriving in the US. I didn't want to write about her yet, because the political scene in Venezuela is still pretty horrible. Then it hit me. A story from the point of view of the protagonist daughter (who was not even born on the novel). And then other characters, keep pooping into my head and taking over. The fun part, is when you have that overlap, and the reader goes, yeah, I remember that in the other story.
Luis,
Thanks for this. I'm working on linked short stories in which each protagonist is a Displaced Person arriving on the same ship in New York in June 1951. Most have been published. One story wanted to expand to a novella and then when I tried to condense, it expanded to a novel. I don't want to write a novel.
Can you please say more about your workshop process?
I read your story that came out in Folio. Great stuff. Love the references to TVs as these weird image boxes. I have a story in my novel of someone arriving in the US from another country. In my case that is the mid point of the novel. It's supposed to be when everything turns nice, since she arrived to the land of the Free. But that is not what happens, she develops PTSD, and what had happened to her starts to show its hairy ugly face.
Take a look at your own story. It that the beginning, the middle or towards the end? What elements in the past that are relevant are already in the story? Are there elephants in the room? Why not go there. The problem in turning those elements into a novella is that the dramatic arc will not be consistent with the dramatic arc of the other stories. Are you allowing yourself to switch POV? Be willing to ask yourself difficult questions.
For instance, in my novel, I realize that people demonstrated against the government, political and economic turmoil, violence. So I asked myself, what would someone from the government think. I began to write that story from the government's point of view, and turned out to be so dark, that I decided not do do third person limited, but go first person and use the unreliable narrator. The story, covers some of the events in the previous stories but now under his eye. Because we are dealing with short stories strung together, the switch to first person didn't break the patterns already in place in the whole work.
The key is cause and effect. The dramatic arc of the new story may be unique, but in the new story you may find out why a person behaved in a particular way, or the origins of something else. Maybe a character that was liked in a previous story, is despised in the new story, thus creating conflict and curiosity.
Short stories are gems that linger in the reader's imagination and heart. Woven together in a novel, they also allow a freedom as well as a dose of reality. Some conflicts may not be resolved; some young adults may never come of age; some cougars may stay on the prowl.
I'm currently working on a book that is actually four connected short stories. It is hard. Like you said, there's no room for drawn out backstories, you have to get right to it and cut out what isn't necessary.
Luis,
Well said. Well written. and a major boost to those of us who love short stories with maybe a little shorter attention span. Thank you for your insights.
This is a terrific craft article for anyone interested in either short stories or novels, or linked short stories becoming novels. Like some of the earlier commenters have noted, I’ve always considered Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and James Joyce’s “Dubliners” as collections of short stories that share common themes rather than novels-in-short-stories, but maybe I should re-read both. It’s been a while.
Earlier this year, I read Tommy Orange’s “There There,” which, like “Oscar Wao” and others mentioned in your post, interweaves the stories of multiple characters from multiple perspectives. I’m now reading “Wandering Stars,” which is a sequel of sorts, and builds on the multiple-perspective approach Orange used in “There There.”
Yes, we all have our tastes and preferences, and these words are an example of it. Good!
Luis, I can't even begin to express how much I love this! Several chapters from my two published novels, Maranatha Road and The Good Luck Stone, were published as short stories first. Like you, I tend to think (sometimes) of each chapter as a short story. Your essay is so validating and encouraging! And thank you for mentioning such great examples as well. I look forward to reading your work.
A very good craft article on writing short stories and how that is different from a novel. BTW, I have always wondered why there isn't a bigger audience market for short stories. Perhaps it's the lack of things like reviews or marketing for individual stories, as opposed to collections, something that that you have for novels, films, and plays.
This is a very good point. Because I enter my stories in many lit mags, I have subscriptions to about 50 of them. They proliferate like gerbils in my house. So I went to the library to donate. I was in shock to realize that many libraries do not take lit mags. They only organize by author, or they have a wrack with the daily periodicals, but not lit mags. Maybe that is part of the problem. People do not know they are here.
I have a similar problem and would guess that the purpose of many litmag contests to not only generate revenue but drive subscription and circulation. But, as I suggested, the underlying problem is that the content of many litmags doesn't attract a lay audience even relative to the serious literary novel market. As for libraries, the only partial exceptions to what you say that I know of are university libraries and member only libraries like Brooklyn's Center for Fiction and private club libraries that have a few litmag subscriptions.
Interesting time for this to come up (and I very much enjoyed this piece). I'm currently reading Ursula Hegi's "Floating in My Mother's Palm," and I felt that one reason I found it disappointing is because it claims to be a novel but is really a collection of short stories. It feels like there must be a line between "a novel in stories" and "a collection of interconnected stories." The Hegi book definitely feels like the latter to me. It's been a long time since I've read "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," but I don't remember feeling the same way. And I love "Dubliners," but I'd never think of it as anything close to a novel.
One thing that might be part of my problem with the Hegi book is that I don't feel driven to get to the next chapter - and I think that's because there's no sense of "I wonder what will happen to these people I've grown to care about." Hegi is a good writer - I love "Stones From the River" - but this collection isn't really working for me. And I wonder if I'd feel the same way if it weren't labeled as a novel.
What an excellent observation. I would say a technique that many of these writers, such as Jennifer Egan and Junot Diaz use, they only expose part of the elephant in the room. They use suppression of outcome to keep you intrigued. So by the time you finish the story and feel happy with that particular dramatic arc, your head is twisting, wondering what happened to so and so. What is going to happen to x. And when down the road you are reading another story, by a different POV suddenly you go wham, here's that character. So this is what others really think of her. In my novel something horrible happens to my protagonist, but towards the end of the novel, she gets together with the guy who used to be her boyfriend. So I purposely switched the POV to him, and what happened to her is never mentioned in the story. Yet at the end, you can put two and two together. Now, as a novel. You read the beginning and know what more than likely is going on. But when you send this out to a lit mag as an individual story, it still has to work. It all happens not by what is said, but what is not said.
Good points. I need to reread Diaz and read Egan and just generally spend more time thinking about how this works.
Salinger didn't present his Glass family stories as a single novel, but when I first read him, there was a kind of delight in seeing characters in short stories then come up in longer works and thinking about how it all fit together.
I’m teaching a short story course this fall. Many of these thoughts will be very helpful! Thank you!
I have delayed writing a novel for exactly the reasons you mention here. I love the short story form and have a novel-in-short-stories I’m working on now.
I'm writing a novella-in-flash which is morphing into a novel rather than a novella - I worked with Michael Loveday and can highly recommend him plus his craft book on the subject - thank you Luis for this refreshing and encouraging post! As a reader, I love to jump from characters to different themes or times - as a writer, it's so nourishing to write in this way. I also think fragmented pieces (meant positively) are so much more real and true to our experiences - I mean who has a life that plays out like a well-crafted novel? 😂
My latest book, Cybill Unbound, about the sexual adventures of an older woman, is really a novel in stories. What I love about the form is that it combines the shapliness of a short story with the narrative drive of a novel. What happens next?
Thank you for your article, Luis. I don't think I have a novel in me to write and very much prefer to write short stories. I think your idea is great. I read a book by Maeve Bincy -- "Whitethorn Woods" -- in which she connects a collection of short stories with a common theme and common characters.
I wrote two of them. The first one, The Bride Wore Red, was put together with the help of the editor at Bridge Works Publishing, who brought out the hard cover of the book. I'd tried writing conventional novels after it was published, but I missed the short story form. When I went back to short stories, I decided to write a novel in stories from the get-go--that is, not the different stories that got made into a novel in stories in The Bride Wore Red but a novel that started out being a set of stories about the same family, spread out all over the world, with stories of their own, most of which connected with other stories about their brothers and sisters, cousins, children. That book is called Fifty-Fifty. I had a lot of fun writing it, moving from kid to kid in this family until I got a sense of the family as a whole. Now I'm back to writing stories, not so much linked.
I love it. In a way, I am approaching the next novel in the same way. My novel was about a Venezuelan refugee arriving in the US. I didn't want to write about her yet, because the political scene in Venezuela is still pretty horrible. Then it hit me. A story from the point of view of the protagonist daughter (who was not even born on the novel). And then other characters, keep pooping into my head and taking over. The fun part, is when you have that overlap, and the reader goes, yeah, I remember that in the other story.
Absolutely inspirational. And each reference led me down a new rabbit hole of learning.