January 28, 2006

The long and the short of it …

There used to be a time when all I wanted to write were short stories. I had ideas written away on a million scraps of paper and stored on many different files scattered across my hard drive. I didn’t think I was capable of writing a novel because I didn’t think that I could come up with a plot that could span the length of an entire novel. Then, I wrote my first novel a year or so ago :p

Now, I don’t think I can write a short story 🙂 I have plenty of ideas for novels now. In fact, my current story line spans 7 novels at the moment. But a short story? Oh no! I don’t think I can do it because I don’t know I can tell a good story at that length. Some of my scenes take around 8-10 pages and a short story could be done in about 3 of my scenes! Or, that was my excuse till yesterday.

Yesterday, I dusted out one of my old short stories and took a look at it. I could certainly see where it needed work. I could also see how green I’d been and how much work the story needed in certain terms. I had about 4 pages of story and I sat down with the intention of writing a short story of about 35 pages. Horror of horrors! I suddenly discovered that I didn’t seem to know what to write and how to fill up 35 pages. Here I had been claiming that I could do a 350 page novel with no problems at all and there I was, stuck on a 35 page short story :p So in the end, I guess the length does not matter. In either format, you could get stuck just as easily or you could stop worrying about the length and just write the story and see where it takes you. I think that’s what I’ll do – try telling the story and see where the story takes me. It worked for me with a novel, so why not a short story? 🙂

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Posted by Fahim at 8:14 am  |  No Comments