The short story vs the novelWhen I started writing, I started by writing a novel. I was advised to start with short stories, but I didn't find it remotely useful because I've always found short fiction to be the most difficult form.
A novel gives you room for a certain amount of bagginess and there is pleasure in that. There's pleasure in redundancy, slowness, in repetition. Good novels can hold all of that.
As such, my relationship to each form is different. The reason I love short stories as a reader is very different from the reason I love novels.
With a novel, you can get inside that world and live there and engage with the characters in different ways. You can read a bit on Monday, but when you pick it up again on Friday you've changed your mind about things. You're in a different mood and a novel is with you through all of that.
A short story is a completely different experience for me. It's a distilled hit. Like a shot of something. The intensity relies on brevity and concision. Everything on the page has to be precise and deliberate because everything relates to everything else.
IdeasWhen I have an idea, I know whether it's a short story idea or novel idea. I don't have that many novel ideas – maybe one every four or five years.
When I write a short story, all the imaginative work that is required for a novel is also required for a short story. You have to know the entire world and all the characters' backstories and what they would say if they were given the microphone, just as you would with a novel. The difference is that, with a short story, you choose which bits of that you're going to relay to the reader – and that's a lot harder to do.
1The short story vs the novelWhen I started writing, I started by writing a novel. I was advised to start with short stories, but I didn't find it remotely useful because I've always found short fiction to be the most difficult form.
A novel gives you room for a certain amount of bagginess and there is pleasure in that. There's pleasure in redundancy, slowness, in repetition. Good novels can hold all of that.
As such, my relationship to each form is different. The reason I love short stories as a reader is very different from the reason I love novels.
With a novel, you can get inside that world and live there and engage with the characters in different ways. You can read a bit on Monday, but when you pick it up again on Friday you've changed your mind about things. You're in a different mood and a novel is with you through all of that.
A short story is a completely different experience for me. It's a distilled hit. Like a shot of something. The intensity relies on brevity and concision. Everything on the page has to be precise and deliberate because everything relates to everything else.
IdeasWhen I have an idea, I know whether it's a short story idea or novel idea. I don't have that many novel ideas – maybe one every four or five years.
When I write a short story, all the imaginative work that is required for a novel is also required for a short story. You have to know the entire world and all the characters' backstories and what they would say if they were given the microphone, just as you would with a novel. The difference is that, with a short story, you choose which bits of that you're going to relay to the reader – and that's a lot harder to do.