Common writing advice that makes me cringe every time I hear it!
‘If you want to write a novel, start with short stories’
There is a lot of advice out there for aspiring writers. Unfortunately, not all of it is good.
It may sound like good advice on the surface, it certainly seems to make sense… especially when it comes from someone who seems like they’re in a position to know what they’re talking about. You trust your dentist when he tells you how best to brush your teeth. Equally, you trust someone who has finished writing a novel when they tell you their best method for plotting character arcs; after all, they’re in a position to know, aren’t they? There’s some advice you hear over and over again—in fact, you hear it so much, it simply has to be true, doesn’t it?
Well, not necessarily.
Not all advice is created equal—that is to say, not all advice is good advice for everyone…
That’s not to say that writing advice isn’t given with the best of intentions—authors want to help other authors! Editors want to help authors level up their manuscript before it gets to them. The writing community is a close-knit, welcoming place, on the whole. However, sometimes, we get so used to hearing a certain piece of advice, we start passing it on ourselves without first stopping to ask ourselves, is it even good advice in the first place?
If you want to write a novel, start with short stories
A common piece of advice given to aspiring novel writers is to start with short stories. This may be a controversial opinion due to the ubiquity of this statement, but I don’t completely agree… I can see where this idea comes from, and I guess it makes sense in some respects, but I don’t think it’s applicable in all cases.
If you’re eager to start sharing and publishing finished work (competitions and literary magazines, for example) then short stories are a great place to start, since they’re much quicker to write than lengthy novels. But what if you’re not a ‘short story’ fan in general? What if you’re not interested in creating a ‘short story’ fan base? Writing short stories doesn’t mean you’ll be taken more seriously by agents and publishers when you come to shopping that novel later. So why put yourself through it?
Writing a novel is a large undertaking—with frequently upwards of 50,000 words, and even over 100,000 in the fantasy genre, novel writing can seem daunting. Where do you start? How do you get to the finish line? For someone with little experience, common advice is to start small and build up, so it makes sense that aspiring authors are old to start with short stories, since they tend to encompass the same story elements as novels but in a much smaller, more manageable size. Usually around the 10,000 word mark (or less for publications) you can practice finishing stories, which is a common problem amongst many new authors who dive right into the novel. Once you can finish a full short story, you then move onto longer works when you have the experience.
The problem is, although technically a short story should have the same elements as a longer novel, they’re not the same. Everything is condensed. You don’t have the same amount of time to develop your story. Your characters have to be engaging from the start; their development has to be more pronounced, happening over a shorter space of time. That inciting event, the major life-changing moment that propels your protagonist into action, has to happen much sooner. There’s no room for backstory, for build up, or world building. That three-act structure has to be squashed and the prose has to be extremely concise. You don’t have time or space to explore multiple characters or plot arcs… I could go on.
I’m not saying, don’t start with short stories. I’m saying, if you do, understand that it’s not a short-cut to writing a novel. You’ll still have to learn how to create a story spanning over five times as many words as you’re used to writing, and all that it entails. When dentists start out in school, they don’t spend the first couple years only working on baby teeth before they graduate to adult teeth, because baby teeth are smaller and more manageable. Medical doctors don’t start training on pets before graduating to people, because they’re similar but smaller and easier to manage—that’s why we have vets! Short stories and novels can be thought of as specialisms under a broader umbrella—they’re similar, but require different knowledge and experience. So, as a writer, why start with a short story, when what you really want to write is a novel?
Writing a short story is a skill in itself, just as is novel writing. So, yes, you might learn how to finish a project and it’s certainly going to give you experience honing your prose, and handling rejection (if you’re aiming at publication). But writing shorts is not just something to be ‘got through’ as part of the process of becoming a writer—it’s a different beast entirely from being a novelist. And just because you’re good at one, doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at the other.
Any kind of writing practice is good when you’re first starting out. And if you want to write short stories then that’s great! Go for it! But there’s no rule that says you’ll develop novel writing any quicker if you do, or that you’ve more chance of having your novel published if you write shorts first; it’s the quality of the novel which attracts an agent and a publisher, since that’s what they’re selling (not your previous record of short-story submissions).
If you want to write novels, you’re not a big short story fan, and you’re not in competition with someone to see who can get published first, then don’t write short stories. There, I said it. There are plenty of other ways to get writing experience and hone your craft, such as having alpha and beta readers or critique partners, right from the start of your novel-writing process. There are writing coaches and mentors out there if you can afford them, and even free instructional videos on YouTube by published authors and independent editors alike, which can help you learn how to avoid the common pitfalls of newer novelists.
Ultimately, if you want to be a best-selling novelist, the best way to do that is probably to just write a novel in the first place.
