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

[graychalk]

It would indeed be heartbreaking to take out stuff, but then I also believe in the necessity of knowing way more about a story than what ultimately gets written. The tricky part then becomes picking and choosing which strands to include that would fill the story without having it feel like important bits were not expanded upon and such.

I... think short stories are harder for me in this sense, because it becomes a matter of revealing enough so that there's depth but not so much that it leaves the readers feeling dissatisfied because something felt bare or was not wrapped up well enough. I'd keep fretting whether the short story was too simplistic, which is ironic because it shouldn't be too complicated - otherwise it'd be a long story like you said. :S

It's like the part about finding out that you need more ideas when you're writing. I keep feeling that way when I set out to write a "short" story, even when I probably shouldn't be adding more stuff if I'm trying to keep it short. So I guess at the end of the day, my problem is making the short story interesting enough within its limits.

What you said about the difference lying in how tightly you want to focus on a specific problem makes a lot of sense. It's definitely a major consideration, I would think, when deciding on a length. I'm going to have to keep that in mind for future attempts.