Short Story Is it harder to write short stories than long ones?

The point is that the number of words on a page has nothing to do with it's quality. A big part of creating quality work is editing and concision and knowing what NOT to include.

If you just think that MORE is better then the best sculptures and paintings would be the the ones which are simply biggest and we know that's not the case.

 

Usain Bolt is no less of an athlete than Haile Gebrselassie, and I don't imagine either thinks of the other's sport as easier.

 

But the original question says nothing about quality. Let's face facts, the vast majority of us here will produce material of a lesser quality, be that novels or short stories, but I believe it's far easier to write a short story of reasonable quality than it is do the same with a novel. Another analogy would be to say which is easier to build from Lego; a four-block house or a replica DeLorean from Back to the Future?

But that's what your original source is saying; that short stories are harder than novels. That a novelist is a failed short story writer. Even the thread title is a direct question asking which is easier.

 

But yet again your analogy suggests one thing that is complex and intricate and one thing that is not. It is incorrect that just because there's less words in a short story that it's somehow more simplistic a creative process. A short story can be far more intricate than a novel as the writer is forced to put blood and sweat into carefully carving the thing out so that only what is essential is included.

To add another analogy, is a brick wall harder to paint than the Mona Lisa just because it is bigger and involves more paint?

 

But a novel is more complex than a short story. That's my whole point.

Quality aside, if short stories are harder to write, explain to me how I've managed to write dozens of the things, and yet not even so much as a first draft for a novel?

And your analogy doesn't stand up because the brick wall would be the short story, the Mona Lisa the novel.

But look, this could go on forever. I firmly believe the novel is much harder to write than a short story. I'm not going to be moved on that, and vice versa.

 

Why is Mona Lisa the novel? If the difference is quantity then the wall takes up more space and uses more paint - just like how a novel requires more words to be typed.

A short story writer must be very selective to make their story work, just as Da Vinci was with his canvas.

I'm not sure your question makes sense to me. Maybe short stories carry the illusion of being easier because people mistake hitting a word count with crafting a work of art.

There is more to writing stories than typing out the required number of words.

 

I made the assumption that, since we are on a writer's forum, we are all striving to produce good stories. That not all of us will succeed all the time is neither here nor there.

My source being William Faulkner, the 1949 Nobel Laureate in literature, and one of the most famous writers in American history, probably has some insight on the subject.

As for the comparison, I made it because you compared the stairs to Mount Everest.

As to which is harder, well, the comparison is apt in more ways than one. A 100m athlete has next to no room for misstep. One wrong move, one stumble and he's out. He has to run a flawless race to succeed. A marathon runner has many chances to redeem himself if he makes a mistake over 26km. So personally, I'd say the 100m is harder to succeed in.

In fact, if your argument is that the very act of producing many words makes the story better, then that rather proves the point, doesn't it? That a higher percentage of novels will be better than the equivalent percentage of short stories.

 

I don't think William Faulkner would have called himself a failed poet if quality wasn't part of the equation. What's hard is perfecting a piece of writing, creating something that comes across flawless, which Faulkner knew a thing or two about.

It's a little strange that no one here is saying poetry is easier than other types of writing, but the short story must be easier than the novel. I think this is because maybe not a lot of you are reading poetry. And it doesn't seem like everyone here is reading much in the way of short stories. They are not just shorter stories. There is an art to writing in short form just as there is poetry. They are complex with multiple scenes, developed characters, setting, plot. It's all there. It's not just shorter, but the material is handled differently. I think this will make sense to short story readers. I think what Faulkner was saying does ring true.

I'm not going to say novels are easier. I'm not going to call anything involving writing easy. But novels can be more forgiving. Flaws don't stand out the same way in longer works as they do shorter works.

And writing always comes down to quality. A short story you wrote freshman year might have been easy. And maybe even everyone liked it. But I think Faulkner and many other successful writers know that good isn't always good enough. It's perfecting our work which is hard and part of writing. But I kind of think you need to be an avid reader of the different forms and have really tried them many times for this conversation to go anywhere meaningful. I wouldn't be so quick to challenge what Faulkner was saying. I think it's better to learn from it.

 

That's just shows you suffer with Authority Syndrome. I couldn't give a tiny rat's arse who he is or what he's achieved. It doesn't mean his opinion on something should be shared by everyone.

When did I say more words make a story better?

Because it's more complex and difficult to paint than the brick wall.

 

I'm sorry, but this is a horrible thing to say. There is no authority syndrome. Faulkner was a brilliant writer and we should consider ourselves lucky that he shared some insight. If you don't get what he was saying, that's one thing (and I don't think you really do understand what he was saying), but to bash a truly great writer and diminish his literary accomplishments and wisdom is just wrong.

 

I understand fully what he's saying... and I still don't agree.

Try looking up the term. Authority syndrome has absolutely nothing to do with diminishing or bashing anyone's accomplishments.

 

That's quite a laughable comment actually. If you're not going to pay attention to the best writers, you're not going to get any better.

You don't have to agree with what he says, but you don't simply dismiss it because you think you know better.

 

You seem to be implying it strongly.

 

We have an enormous brick wall that requires a lot of paint to complete. It represents the novel because a novel is longer and requires a ton more words. Then the mona lisa (representing the short story in my analogy) is a small painting. It takes less paint but lots of focus.

This is the difference between a story and a novel. There is less of it but lots of work goes into deciding what not to include. In fact, the hardest part of shorter form work is knowing exactly what it is so you can remove everything it isn't. That's just as hard as bashing out 10,000 words in it's own way.

I don't necessarily think just getting to 60,000 – 80,000 words regardless of quality is necessarily hard either. You could write a stream of consciousness 'experimental' piece of that length in a few weeks without breaking a sweat or die of boredom while your MC decides to ruminate on every single name in the phone book. The real hard part comes with editing, cutting, and focusing the work. Whether that's a novel or a short story.

There is a lot more forgiveness for a novelist to go off on tangents and sub plots and even waffle unrelated to the plot just to reach that word count. I think that's why some might say it's easier.

They are of course both difficult in different ways but I think the discipline required to pull off the short story - and the lack of patience in readers for anything extraneous - is why it could be seen as more difficult.

 

For me personally, I find flash the most demanding prose form. I really don't understand what makes good flash fiction. I tend to treat them as shorter short stories and that just doesn't work.

I can't comment on poetry because I don't write or consume it. I don't think I have the imagery or the basics to execute it well.

I'll go back to Stephen King and Isaac Asimov. Their short stories and novels are completely different, and they were masters at both. Roald Dahl could certainly write novels, but all of his novels are, IIRC, for children (Danny The Champion of the World started life as an adult short story, I believe). Yet his adult short stories are superlative.

 

If the Mona Lisa is the short story, then I'd say Banksy is the master of flash.

 

Having your own opinion on something doesn't imply you think you know better. It simply means 'I think differently'. And I'm not dismissing his opinion, either.

You were the one who asked the question, and you've had my answer. I think writing novels is harder than writing short stories. Now is there any part of that you need me to clarify?

 

I wasn't being dismissive of Banksy. I think his work has great artistic expression, but I imagine each one takes a fairly short time to execute - but not necessarily a short time to conceive. That's what I meant by master of flash.

 

Have you ever written a novel, to compare that to "painting a brick wall"? Are you serious? Why on earth aren't all members of this forum published authors with book deals already, if it was that crude, mindless, and downright easy? To say there's not the level of meticulous work involved in the Mona Lisa within a novel is, well, frankly rude. On a writing forum, no less.

Stream of consciousness of low quality can happen in any sort of writing - to say it can't happen in short stories is nonsense. The reason for seeing more low quality novels and more high quality shorts probably has more to do with the sheer popularity of the medium, rather than a reflection of its difficulty. There are simply more novels because it s a more popular medium, which means more of those get published and so more of those get read and known and talked about. The more there is of something, the higher the chances that something of lower quality may slip through. The gatekeepers of shorts are probably stricter because shorts make less money so they better be 110% sure it's damn good before publishing it.

 

I'd imagine that has something to do with the fact that it's harder to get a single short published than a novel. With novels, you can always self publish, with shorts, there's no equivalent clearly defined route, although you can always publish it on your own website or blog. But it's harder to get readers to come back for the next short story, if it's unconnected to the previous one.