Novel When are you ready to start a novel?

Discussion in 'Genre Discussions' started by marina, Nov 23, 2008.

  1. Mr. M

    Mr. M New Member

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    Perhaps some of the discord on the subject comes from a lack of definition of terms.

    If we were to try to conflate successful novel writing with that of producing publishable short stories, the skill sets are not necessarily transferable. To echo some here and paraphrase Pascal at the same time, ""I am sorry for the length of my letter, but I had not the time to write a short one." Short stories are, by definition, taut. World-building, character development, intertextuality and extraneous sub-plots are eschewed. Conversely the ability to deeply involve readers in the lives of characters great and small, to set scenes and tend to timelines are not always the metiƩr of more terse writers. Chekhov hardly seems the stuff of Tolstoy and vice-versa.

    Still, budding writers might hone their craft through short stories or vignettes. Dialogue, character development, landscaping, and voice are certainly skills that must be learned and improved. If we do not add the qualifier "publishable" to our requirement, there is no reason that writing short stories cannot extend that education.
     
  2. DrJoe

    DrJoe New Member

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    I'm ready when I'm ready.
     
  3. ManicParroT

    ManicParroT New Member

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    Well, I don't want to stretch the analogy too far. However, I think it's a valid analogy, and I'm going to expand on it.

    Painting and drawing have techniques. Perspective, light, shade, texture. They differ as your tools change - a pencil is not a paint brush - but learning the rudiments of form and shape with a pencil is a great idea before you embark on oil painting. It's not absolutely necessary - you COULD learn to paint without ever doing any drawing - but by thunder, I bet it helps.

    As for the fact that you can go back and change writing, I don't think that it substantially affects my argument. Any novel involves a lot of revision (maybe some great writers have done entire novels in one long drive, but most of us aren't like that), but it's safe to say that a good grasp of technique is essential to writing a good novel. If you don't understand character development, ten thousand revisions will not give you good characters. You can learn on the job, but it'll take a lot longer, and spotting the object lessons will be harder. If you finish a short story you can go back, look it over and see the problems a lot quicker and a lot clearer. Bad prose is hard to hide in a 1000 word novel. Mary Sue characters have less scenery to hide behind.

    Short stories and novels are different as you point out, but good short stories and good novels are both well written. The techniques are similar (even more than sketching vs oil painting, I reckon), and short stories are a great place to learn those techniques.

    I'm not seeing a lot of great counter-arguments to this notion in this thread - just assertions that "Well, I'm a good writer, and I can't write short stories worth a bean, so that's just wrong. My novel's gonna be awesome!"
     
  4. KP Williams

    KP Williams Active Member

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    All I'm saying is that writing something short and to the point is not the best preparation for writing something longer with more branches. I can't write a short story to save my life, because I always come up with so many different things I want to do with the characters/plot/whatever, and so I refuse to intentionally limit myself like that. I'm not going to be writing short stories years down the road (or at least, I don't want to), so practicing with short stories seems rather useless.

    Character development, plot, attention to detail--all of these things are not the same in short stories and novels. Character development requires more time in a novel; if you put as much time and energy into it as you do in a short story, and give it the same amount of space on the page, it's just going to seem like you rushed it. Same for plot and detail, and probably plenty of other things I'm not thinking of in this half-asleep state of mine. There are better ways to practice. You could write longer pieces as practice. Nobody has to see them, so if it's terrible, so what. It's getting practice with the same sort of writing you're going to be using later on. Instead of just knocking some of the barriers out of the way with a short story, you'd be knocking most of them out of the way at once.

    Was I always writing novels before now? Nope. But I still wrote longer pieces in the form of fan fiction. I know that the way I work out plots wouldn't be the same had I started with short stories, and nor would my tendency to look ahead in the story and frame things out beforehand. And as an added bonus, because what I wrote during my fan fiction days was posted online as soon as the quick grammar and spelling check was done, I usually get things the way I want them the first time I write them down. I'm not saying anybody should start off writing fan fiction, or any other style. I'm just using myself as my example.

    And that's about all I've got.
     
  5. lipton_lover

    lipton_lover New Member

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    Each person is ready at a different point in their writing life, I think. Some people were born to write novels, others like me were born to write short stories, so we might have a tougher time getting into it. I certainly can't write a novel yet... but I actually like the short stories I've written.
    That being said, you can still write novels to see if you're good and to practice, so eventually you could be a great novelist.


    Not sure if any of that made sense...
    Nate
     
  6. kehl

    kehl New Member

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    For me writing short stories is much easier. Note-I said for me. I've never been able to write more than a few chapters for a novel because i've always liked getting to the point rather than "development". The way I see it is you can develope a character with a mere sentence or two.

    "Baby shoes for sale: Never worn"

    I'm not sure if that's a word by word quote but my point is that different people are better at different things. Is a complex band like Tool better than a simple band like The Pixies? I don't think so, both are creative in their own right. While I would say Tool has a better grasp of musical technicalities, I would also say both bands are equally abstractly creative. Have you heard Tool's short songs? They suck.
     
  7. ManicParroT

    ManicParroT New Member

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    Oh yeah? Name one.

    *folds arms*
     
  8. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    The six word story was:
    It was written by Ernest Hemingway, to fulfill the challenge he once boasted he could meet.
     
  9. Jupiter

    Jupiter New Member

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    Meh. IMHO it's more a case that Tool's music has got better as they have grown and matured... like all writers. Doesn't matter if the first novel, or the first ten novels, suck. There are two types of writers: good writers, and those who gave up before they became good.

    Perfectionism never got anyone anywhere...
     
  10. laurelin

    laurelin New Member

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    I say you should start one when you think you have a really good idea that you can build upon heavily. Of course, forcing yourself to write never works, so you should only do it whenever you feel like it, and that way the quality of the end product will more likely meet your expectations (which is why I don't like the idea of NaNoWriMo).
    I just got started writing a story based on something else I wrote a while ago, but am not happy with because I feel the quality of my writing has improved drastically since then. So while I am not so much simply revising the story I originally wrote, and not starting something completely new, I am using the older work as a skeleton for the new one, and I am quite pleased with how it's turning out so far.
     

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