As I understand it, a short story needs to be very contained. There can't be many layers of conflict because they all need to be addressed at some point; why is he mad at him? Why did he end up doing that? Why doesn't he believe me when I say this? And so on. I usually go deeper than I ought to when I write stories. I need to find all the nuances and motivations of each character, and when I do, I end up burying myself even deeper, finding new characters and layers upon layers of story. How do you go about writing a short fiction? Can you decide when it's a short tale before hand?
Read more short stories. Read contemporary ones in solid publications. Short stories have layers and tons of complexities. You can do a lot in twenty pages. But if you have these sort of questions, I really think the answer is just to read more of them. Nothing said here will come close to helping you out compared to the benefits of reading like crazy. If you read enough, the answers will come to you.
Short stories don't need to be contained unless you have no desire in writing another installment. Plenty of authors write short stories as companion works to larger novels and there's nowhere does it say short stories can't form a narrative when read back to back... some books I've read would have benefitted greatly from being a series of connected short stories rather than a long form narrative, so it's really up to you. The Lord of the Rings is broken up into three volumes but each volume is broken up further into sections. These sections are essentially short stories with a clearly defined ending, that narratively link up. And what you said about going deeper, so do I. My debut novel started out as 3 sides of A4 and turned into 337 sides when I was finished with it. You shouldn't set yourself the task of writing a short story, just write stories. When one presents itself to you, you'll know if it's long form or short story. I have a particular companion short piece to this debut novel in the works and mapping out what happens in it has produced 5 chapters and an ending, so no chance of making that long form. If you want to go deep, go deep, just don't restrict what could be a kick-ass novel or novella because you wanted to write a short story. Restriction is not the game we're in. Hope this helps, happy writing friend!
My method of writing short stories is to put down the bones (telling not showing) and come back and with flesh and scene. For me it flows along one story line and I keep from getting sidetracked. I am trying to add a few short stories to my website for a free read to those that visit.
To an extent, I think the OP's concern is navel gazing. @Stammis, have you unsuccessfully written several short stories, or are you just worried about something you haven't tried? I'm personally not a big fan of short stories, because they often feel like a basic joke - premise and punchline. They (mostly) can't do more than one thing - solve a mystery, reveal a character, tell the downside of a technology, horrify the reader by a single act. If you approach short stories as an opportunity to discuss one thing you are less likely to go down the rabbit hole of two much detail.
I don't know. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is a pretty layered and complex... and rage inducing...
Ouch! Some of us are short story writers without telling a joke or thinking there needs to be any sort of punchline.
I'm not being pejorative, I'm making an analogy. To do what short stories must do effectively in a relatively few number of pages, they have to have a much simpler structure than a novel. They are more to-the-point.
Well, as another short story reader and writer, that's okay. But if you would like to discuss why you disagree, that might be interesting.
Look at the short stories in The New Yorker or The Paris Review or (my person favorite) The Gettysburg Review. These were my first teachers when it came to writing short stories. They are full of layers and complexities. I can't see how someone who reads such publications can think otherwise of short stories. And I have sold stories to some well-known publications. Those stories were filled to the brim with layers and complexities. From where I stand, those are the ingredients for a successful short story.
Mark Twain is an extremely good teller of short stories: too good in fact. I was on a plane reading a collection of Twain's short stories and half way through I had to stop-- the emotional reaction he evoked in one story was too strong, too painful. I put the book away, and just sat there, reeling, until the flight ended. I never opened that book again. I was afraid of it.
I don't disagree that they have layers and complexities. I said that a novel can have considerably more structure that allow multiple plots, development of more characters, the ability to support more themes than a story ranging maybe 1% of the page count. That requires a more direct approach, even if all the subtleties of language remain.
I learned to write short stories first, so now even when I write longer fiction, I kind of approach it like several short stories then interleave them. Which is probably why plotting works so well for me. But, yeah, narrow your scope. Every character adds lots of words if you want them to be relevant, and if they're not relevant they should be cut or become a prop character that doesn't need characterization. Find sentences that do only one thing, like move action or develop characters, and try to make them do more than one thing. Also, figure out what type of story it's going to be, like if it's an action story or an introspective, and stick mostly to that. And do research. Kurt Vonnegut and Chuck Palahniuk are my favourite short story writers, but I also keep subscriptions to magazines like Azimov's and every once in a while you can find some pretty amazing stories in there. Keep practicing and I'm sure you'll get the hang off it eventually.
You can show layered personalities, conflicts and societal structures by implicit ways. P.G. Wodehouse is good example of this.
Depends on the genre, and if you can lean on tropes. Adventure stories are exempt from what you are talking about.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that you should not decide beforehand how long the story should be. However, as a Tolkien fanatic, I have to correct you that he wanted to publish the whole series as a single book. It was the publishers decision to break it up.
Yes I know, I should have clarified that. What I mean is, and this applies to the extended version of the films too, that the six 'books' defined in the larger piece are all the length of a good short story and each feels like a short story when read from front to back. As a narrative construct, writing six or seven short stories to form one epic novel when put together is really exciting, even more so when you consider the quality that each volume would need to contain, given it's reduced size compared to a novella or novel.
