Short stories vs novels: The subject seems to be controversial, especially from a profitability or marketing standpoint. Of course I want to get paid for writing my fiction, and hopefully paid well enough to survive, however I remain organic in my approach to writing. As I may have mentioned in my introduction, I prefer writing short stories over novels. My love of writing started with short stories, reading the entertaining short fiction in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine as a teenager. The stories in that anthology took me places and heightened my imagination. Combine that with my fascination with episodic TV dramas, fiction in short doses were sealed in my brain.
Online research is at once a blessing and a curse. The topic of short stories vs novels seems endless. Some believe the short story is worthless in the form of financial success for the author while others believe short stories are the “New Novel” due to digital downloads and shrinking attention spans. In my romanticizing mind I’m not finding much on my research about the story itself. Whether it’s a novel or short story, shouldn’t the story matter? I’ve read great novels and short stories, enjoying them equally and size didn’t matter (no pun). I didn’t ponder over word count when I sat back and took perspective of what I enjoyed reading.
Irwin Shaw’s Rich Man, Poor Man. I saw the TV mini series as a pre-teen in 1976. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. In the early 80’s out of curiosity I read the 800 page novel of the same name. I was apprehensive about reading a book that large, but once I started reading it, the number of pages didn’t matter. The story was truly engrossing and after finishing such a large book, I found myself wanting more. The Jordache family stayed with me to this day.
As for short stories, I’ve read many, and that’s the great thing about them; how many you can consume. I’m sure I haven’t read as many novels. Recently I read a great short story, “Piltdown Man, Later Proved to Be a Hoax” by Ralph Lombreglia. I was fortunate enough to have met this talented author. He was my customer at my day job in Boston. He was a tall, handsome gentleman and very down to earth. I regret I didn’t take him up on his offer to check out some jazz clubs in Beantown, but I was crazed at the time, in the midst of moving back to Chicago. His generous going away gift to me was his collection of short stories in “Make Me Work” which included Piltdown Man. The stories were incredible and again, word count had no bearing.
I carry them with me for inspiration.
The business side of me thinks, Novel, write that novel to get more money! But the true part of me always wins out. I truly believe somewhere down the line I’ll write another novel, but I’ll have to be inspired to do so. I just can’t turn out work for profit. I’m a short story writer and it won’t change. Either I’ll be read or I won’t. For those of you on either side: team short or team novel, you might be missing out on some great storytelling; after all, isn’t that why we read?
The End
