I've had this recurring problem with writing short stories and I'm not sure if I'm the only one. I can handle writing chapters for a novel fine, but for some reason my narrative voice completely dissipates when I write short stories. My first drafts are always very mechanical and I find it difficult to insert appropriate descriptions. Basically, it doesn't flow out of me, neither does the story flow in general. I really do want to write a really good short story, but I'm really struggling with voice at this point. This only happens with short stories and I'm not sure why? Any help?
What’s your normal approach? Do you outline and then write, or do you wing it completely? I’d suggest you switch that up. If you like to outline, abandon that. Just think up an interesting character in an interesting situation and go full blown stream of consciousness. if you normally do that, maybe trying sketching out the basic plot and characters and see if that gets you in the story better.
Tell yourself, "This will be a cool self-contained part of a novel," but then -- and here's the trick -- don't write any more of it. Seriously, though. You could try experimenting with how self-contained you can make a chapter -- consider it's a prologue or an extended flashback or something like that, somewhat disconnected from the main plot. Teach your brain to see that they're not that different to write.
I don't know how to help with voice, or exactly what you're looking for in this thread. You might find some good advice on the short story thread we've been compiling recently: Need help to write my first short story
I have to disagree with the suggestion that there is no difference between writing a short story and a novel. I've done both, and they do have a very different rhythm to their writing. With a novel you have time to develop and characterize, the narrative voice carrying the reader along. When I'm working on a short story, plot and dialogue do much more of the heavy lifting, but if I do get really stuck I switch to a first person narrative, which can disguise a multitude of sins, though sometimes feels a bit lazy, even to me. If I'm honest, I find that a story rarely "flows out of me" - writing is work, and it usually feels that way. There is trial and error, working and reworking, editing and polishing - I try not to worry about flow and voice on a short story initially, I just get it down as best I can and them move on to the next one (I tend to try and do 5 or 6 in quick succession), and leave the more considered writing until the first edit. The distance you create by leaving the story alone and doing another one can make a huge difference to how you see it when you come back to it, and that's the make or break for me. If I read it again after a few months and it still has something, then I'll polish it up and spend time on it. If not, then it goes into the recycle bin. I'm currently doing me personal "Bradbury Challenge" - I think I made that up, so I may copyright it - which is to try and write 52 short stories in 52 weeks, based on Ray Bradbury's assertion that the way to improve your writing is to write a lot of stories rather than spend too long on one (and he was of the opinion that if you write a story a week for a year you're bound to have a good one, as nobody can write 52 bad stories in a row). For me, one of the joys of the short story form is how quickly you can change things that aren't working, without then having to work through 100,000 words to deal with the butterfly effect! (a term that is often wrongly credited to a Bradbury short story).
