Hello! I’m Kelley Armstrong, and I’ll be your guest blogger for the next three days 🙂 For more on me, check out the signature below my post…
I was answering questions for an interview last week, and one was about short stories. I said I started with short stories, and love the opportunity to do shorter fiction (novellas or short stories).
In September, Stephen King wrote an essay in the NYT Book Review on short fiction “What Ails the Short Story” For those who like short stories, it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know . . . or suspect. The patient is sick, and not likely to recover any time soon.
One might think that the decline of short fiction seems odd in a world obsessed by time. Shouldn’t a book of twenty short stories be ideal? You can read one and put the book aside for later, without losing the story line as you would in a novel.
I think that’s too simplistic a view. Yes, we’re strapped for time. But entertainment seems to be the one arena where shorter isn’t always better. We’re happy to plunk ourselves in a movie theatre chair for three hours. We’re fine with six hundred page novels.
As an author, you’ll get more complaints if your book is short, and I don’t think that’s all about bang for your buck. A novel or a movie sweeps us away to another world and, if it’s a good one, we don’t want to leave it too quickly. We want to linger and savour.
Some ideas just aren’t novel length, so I love the flexibility of switching to novellas and short stories. I used to do an annual online fiction offering, primarily novellas, in e-serial form. One year I switched to a short story a month (which, let me tell you, is much tougher than a twelve chapter novella!)
The general consensus, though, was that while readers appreciated seeing dramatizations of backstory, they really preferred novellas. And, if they had their way, I’d make those into full-length novels.
When I ask why people don’t read short fiction, the most common answer is: “It’s too short. I get involved in the story and I want more.” Many will say that short fiction doesn’t emotionally engage them the way novels do.
Short stories are often more concerned with ideas than emotion, plot over character. Is the answer there, then? Do we crave emotional satisfaction over intellectual stimulation? Or, again, is that too simplistic?
Having said how much I love to read and write short stories, I have a horrible confession to make. I don’t read nearly as many short stories as I do novels, and it’s not for lack of material. Intellectually, I enjoy them. A well-written short story can move and stimulate me in ways novels don’t. But when I curl up, tired, at the end of the day, I want to lose myself in a story I’ve been enjoying for a while. I want a novel.
What about you? Do you read short stories? Novellas? Why or why not?
Kelley Armstrong is the NYT bestselling author of the urban fantasy series, The Otherworld. For info on her novels or to read sample chapters, check out her website at www.KelleyArmstrong.com.
November 12, 2007
Categories: guest blogger . Tags: bestselling author, bestselling authors, bestselling books, chick lit, kelley armstrong, nadia stafford, otherworld series, short stories, supernatural, supernatural books, supernatural novels, women of the otherworld . Author: blogguest . Comments: 11 Comments