How Long Should It Be?
"The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer."--Victor Borge
I remember classes where we were assigned a paper, and someone would ask, "How long should it be?"
Sometimes there was a set answer: "Oh, around 3-5 pages" or maybe "I won't read anything after page 7." But sometimes the teacher smiled enigmatically and said, "Make it as long as it needs to be."
When you're writing an essay or paper, this can be frustrating. How much detail should you put in? What's the scope? If you're assigned a paper on China, good luck making it "as long as it needs to be." (This happened to me in 5th grade, writing about Chinese history. I think the expected length was around five one-sided pages. I turned in 20 pages, double-sided, and count myself lucky to have gotten away with a survey that brief. Either the teacher was feeling sadistic, or--being used to the eyeblink that is U.S. history--didn't realize what she was getting me into.)
I don't have any easy answers for you in the academic situation, except to decide how much you're willing to slave over a paper for a class that, after all, is probably a one-time-only deal. Talking to your classmates and professors will be more helpful than anything I can say.
In sf/f writing, on the other hand, I might be able to tell you something useful.
The first thing to consider is: what comes most naturally to you? Do you find yourself working on epic sagas, or do you find writing anything longer than 10 pages a chore? I've heard it said that most people have a "natural length" (or three) that they're most comfortable writing. My sister writes best in the novella/novelette range. I seem to be able to do flash (definitions vary, but call it 1,000 words or fewer) or longer short stories or the occasional novelette, but I have trouble writing in the 4,000-5,000 word range. As for novels, it's too early to tell.
Another gauge might be: what causes the most interruptions? Do you keep getting sidetracked by nifty short story ideas while you're slogging away at your novel? Or do you find short stories tedious and escape to novel-writing?
If you're one of those lucky multi-range people, good! Write whatever you feel like.
If not, you have two options:
Train yourself to write the other form, long or short. (That seems to be the major division, anyhow.)
If you have trouble writing novels, try writing a series of stories about the same characters. Instead of tying up all the loose ends, leave a few dilemmas open and explore those in the next story. Hint: pick characters you can stand to write about for more than a month. (Unless
If you have trouble writing shorts, take one of your many novels, pick some minor character, and write a scene about that character. Work your way up to writing a full story. Didn't you always want to tell the story how that scullery maid in chapter 3 found True Love, anyway? Sound too easy? Probably. But it's a place to start. (Of course, the scullery maid may end up with a novel of her own.)
Note: Beware of the temptation to pad a perfectly good story into a 50,000 word (or longer) monstrosity, or the opposite, squeezing a novel's worth of material into three pages. I think in terms of "density": the ratio of essential ideas to wordage. If you have a 50,000 word adventure in which Your Hero slogs through monster after monster in an endless dungeon, only to wrap everything up in a bad pun, the story's not dense enough. (Possible exception: comedy.) If you're exploring incest, the kingdom's power structure, technological revolutions, redemption, and coming-of-age in three pages, the story's probably too dense. (Some people pull this off, though.)
Never add unneeded wordage, and never subtract needed wordage. I am not being flip. The hard part is determining what's "needed" and "unneeded," and that's something you'll have to determine for yourself, with practice or help from friendly critiquers.
Or: Give up on the other form until you want to handle it (if ever). A cop-out? Not in my opinion. I don't write romance because I don't want to write romance. I didn't major in chemistry because chemistry doesn't interest me that much (and I never took it in high school). You don't need to write anything that isn't fun for you to write. There's nothing wrong with being a novelist or a short story writer (but see below for some dis/advantages of both).
Or maybe your problem is that you're fine writing long or short stories, but you can never tell which one a given story is supposed to be. You start writing a novel but it wraps up much too quickly, or that vignette balloons into a 600-page monstrosity. Here's the question again: "How long should it be?"
Here's where "as long as it needs to be" does make sense. A few rules of thumb that might help you figure it out:
What's the story look like right now? If your would-be vignette has already ballooned, then you know it's really a novel--the hard way, to be sure, but it's better than not knowing.
How many characters do you have? If you have a short story with more than 10 characters, there's a good chance it's going to balloon. If it has more than two or three POV characters, the same is true. (Alas, the converse doesn't hold. It's been a while, but I think One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was claustrophobic in scope, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who's read it.)
What's the scope of the setting? If you've spent a year coming up with a world from the birth of its star to the history of its peoples, you may be gearing up for a novel. If you only know about a slice of your setting, maybe it's a short story. This criterion is pretty iffy, though, because you can set novels in a small geographical area, and a detailed world can spawn many short stories.
Plot structure: Are there only a handful of dilemmas, or are there a slew of catastrophes, each with their subsidiary consequences? Is there one climax? Several? A short story can only take so much excitement before falling over, whereas a novel has the leisure to explore many issues (if the author so desires).
Some of you might suggest another: how long did it take you to write whatever the current draft is? I suspect this varies from writer to writer. In my experience a short story doesn't necessarily take less time to get ready than a novel. A novel requires more sheer verbiage, but a short story may go through many revisions. It's harder for me to "diagnose" what's wrong with a short story. Maybe that's just me.
Maybe you hate short stories but you want to write them because you feel it's easier to break into the market. I don't actually have a novel worth submitting yet, let alone sold. My feeling is, however, that you can be right and you can be wrong.
From what I hear, short stories help you build up a name for yourself before you attempt the wide world of novels. On the other hand, if you write lousy short stories and wonderful novels, the novel has a better chance of selling. A lot of fantasy writers seem to go directly to novels, possibly because there seem to be fewer outlets for short fantasy (especially high fantasy).
What method do I use? 90% of the time I know from the beginning what length a piece should be. (I do screw up occasionally.) When I write a short story, I have a clearer idea of what the plot is and what the conflicts will be, and what characters will appear. When I write a novel, I have a sense of overall but not specific plot elements, an idea of the major conflicts, and the main characters. I tend to make up walk-ons and interesting but non-POV characters as needed, not at the beginning. I write to the length a given idea asks for, and that's that.
Short form of the above: if it comes down to market considerations, your own capabilities and comfort matter more. Some writers are known for their short stories, some for their novels, and some for both. You are what you are.
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