The Length of a Story

[sarillia]

Is there a way to tell before you start writing whether an idea is more suited to a short story or a novel? I seem to be completely hopeless at judging this right now and I’d like to get better at it. It feels like it should be obvious but somehow it’s not for me. I look at a few of the novel-length stories I've written, and I don't know what made me think that the idea would sustain a novel, even though it did work. They could have just as easily been short stories or novellas.

I got my start in writing with National Novel Writing Month, so novels sort of became my default. Now I'm trying to write more short stories and I'm shifting my thoughts so that I assume each idea will be a short story unless it feels like it should be a novel. But I'm not sure how to judge that.

Comments

[inevitableentresol]

I am so bad at judging length of a story. It's the one thing I need to work on next.

I think the suggestion above about going by how long the action in the story takes place over might be a good rule of thumb. I'll use that the next few times and see how it goes.

[splinteredstar]

totally unrelated but your icon~ Bravely Default has sort of taken over my soul over the last few months.

[inevitableentresol]

I played it to death and gave it a rest for a while. Now I'm back on it again.

[splinteredstar]

Yeah, I tend to go in phases? Like, I'll inhale it and then get bummed out by the fandom (I'm in the second half which doesn't help) or annoyed at losing a fight to deRosso again, and then leave it alone for a few days.

Think I'll try deRosso again, actually... Love him, don't love fighting him.

[inevitableentresol]

DeRosso is a creep, ugh.

I got burned out when I got a little into the second half and realised I had to do all the battles all over again... pffft. I took a few months off before I picked it up again. Now I'm mostly just grinding because I like it, rather than doing the battles I'm supposed to.

There's a fandom? Where? OMG there are 77 fanfics on AO3 now! When I last looked there were about 3. I might post my own one now.

[splinteredstar]

DeRosso? Sure you don't mean DeRosa? DeRosso is the not-a-vampire who is like the only sensible person in the game. Where as DeRosa is the date-raping creep. Two very different characters with unfortunately similar names. (I clarify because I love not-a-vampire a whole bunch)

I'm enjoying the little differences in the timelines, myself, but I can see how it might be a pain.

Yes! There is a fandom! it is tiny and a lot of it is on tumblr, and a lot of it is ranting about how the second half is dumb. And the rest is Ringabel/Edea instead of any of the lovely femslash pairings possible. I haven't worked on any fic yet, but I have been liveblogging my play through on tumblr. Link yours when you post it?

[inevitableentresol]

Yeah I meant DeRosa. I've met DeRosso briefly only, but he was ridiculously cool. Why did they have to give them such similar names?

I just found some of the fandom. Most of it does seem to be Ringabel/Edea, but I also found the kink meme

http://bravelykink.dreamwidth.org/

And this lovely artist:
http://adalheidis.tumblr.com/tagged/bravely-default (warning some porny art)