Creating short stories out of drafts of novel chapters

[msstice]

Hello friends!

I am considering taking some drafts of chapters of my novel in progress and turning them into short stories. Some chapters lend themselves to this somewhat gracefully with the appropriate addition of background information. In the novel I would take this background out. Have any of you done this? What has been your experience of this?

 

[The Judge]

I didn't take an already written scene, but I wrote a short for my then website that would probably have otherwise become a chapter for the not-yet-written sequel to my SF WiPs. I was pleased with it and it worked quite well as a standalone and received some gratifying comments (there was a moral issue involved), but it really was just there as something extra for the site to attract interest in the earlier books.

Why are you thinking of cannibalising the novel, though? Have you given up on the longer form, or do you think the WiP isn't working for some reason?

(As a by the by, I've done the opposite and used two 300 word stories from the Challenges to create much longer pieces which I've sold, and I'm pretty sure a couple of other members have created a novel or two out of Challenge entries.)

 

[Finch]

I'm happy to take anything from anywhere, to turn it into a short story. PK Dick and no doubt many others constantly recycled ideas into new stories. Originality is only the ambition of beginners.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Purely from personal experience and thinking, I am generally against this sort of thing! So I shall go to the No camp

As a reader I've read too many milquetoast short stories that have been clearly been lifted from upcoming novels (or it is explicitly noted in the introduction to the story by the editor), that essentially read like excerpts and adverts. I generally find them unsatisfying and poor short stories. Usually if I find a new author doing something like this, I will then avoid the later long form by said author. (Not through spite, but because there are far too many new books in the world and too little time, so I have to make harsh decisions!)

With my writer's hat on, and I must stress again, purely personal opinion, the reason I think this is that the short story form and the longer form have different tempos and needs. A short story should be 'hot', 'condensed' and 'complete'; cutting a chapter out of a long form manuscript rarely brings together all the elements that form a good short story.

Now it could be that a writer does long form by doing a bunch of connected short stories, so cutting off a chapter or two makes sense as a short story - I'm sure there are a few out there - but I can't bring any to mind at the moment.

@Finch Every writer recycles ideas and themes, but we are talking here about recycling whole blocks of text written for a different project. PKD never did that.

 

[The Judge]

I can see VB's point and I'd certainly be annoyed if I were reading a collection of short stories and it became apparent some of the tales were simply sample chapters from a novel as I know someone complained about recently. (Was that you, VB??)

I also agree that short stories and chapters usually have different requirements, and it would -- should? -- rarely be a simple question of retro-fitting backstory to explain who some of the characters are.

However, if a novel is being cannibalised for whatever reason, I can't see that it's impossible to create a good short story out of a good chapter, or perhaps a couple of chapters joined together. As with everything when it comes to writing, it's not the theory which is the problem, it's the putting into practice!

So I'd say go for it, if the novel isn't working or you're fed up with it, but be aware that it might not be as easy to create the shorts as you think, and then let your beta readers loose on them.

 

[Finch]

Purely from personal experience and thinking, I am generally against this sort of thing! So I shall go to the No camp

As a reader I've read too many milquetoast short stories that have been clearly been lifted from upcoming novels (or it is explicitly noted in the introduction to the story by the editor), that essentially read like excerpts and adverts. I generally find them unsatisfying and poor short stories. Usually if I find a new author doing something like this, I will then avoid the later long form by said author. (Not through spite, but because there are far too many new books in the world and too little time, so I have to make harsh decisions!)

With my writer's hat on, and I must stress again, purely personal opinion, the reason I think this is that the short story form and the longer form have different tempos and needs. A short story should be 'hot', 'condensed' and 'complete'; cutting a chapter out of a long form manuscript rarely brings together all the elements that form a good short story.

Now it could be that a writer does long form by doing a bunch of connected short stories, so cutting off a chapter or two makes sense as a short story - I'm sure there are a few out there - but I can't bring any to mind at the moment.

@Finch Every writer recycles ideas and themes, but we are talking here about recycling whole blocks of text written for a different project. PKD never did that..

Your assuming we are talking about , whole blocks of text , and you might be right . But the original poster did not say that.

 

[msstice]

Why are you thinking of cannibalising the novel, though? Have you given up on the longer form, or do you think the WiP isn't working for some reason?

I do want to finish the novel. Very much. I have a much, much sillier reason and it's good I'm speaking with experienced folks .

As I write the novel I looked at a few chapters and thought "Hey! That makes a cool short story too!" I just wanted to experiment and I took a chapter from the WIP and turned it into a 5000 word short story. I found it stood quite well after I craftily (so I think) inserted backstory into it. There is one more chapter where I think this will work too. So I was planning to do that, then I thought I'd ask you all before I did something I'd regret.

I get the points here. I'm still thinking there is a balance. It's not that I'm copy pasting chapters, it's more that I'm taking a chapter and adding / removing things to make it standalone. This is extra effort, but at least for my first experiment, I found it helped me think more sharply about conflict and plot and character since I had fewer words with which to paint a picture.

 

[msstice]

With my writer's hat on, and I must stress again, purely personal opinion, the reason I think this is that the short story form and the longer form have different tempos and needs. A short story should be 'hot', 'condensed' and 'complete'; cutting a chapter out of a long form manuscript rarely brings together all the elements that form a good short story.

This is important to consider. I have a related question for you. If you read a decent short story by an author, then you were reading a novel and it had similar characters and then you read to a point and said, wait the next chapter might resemble a short story I already read because the setup is familiar, would you get more excited to read or throw away the book.

My short story gives some inkling of the surprises in the novel and some parts of the world, but I'm not writing the novel as a twister. Rather my aim is to write so you as the reader kind of guess what's going on and you are yelling at the characters "No! No! That's a BAD decision!"

 

[Venusian Broon]

Your assuming we are talking about , whole blocks of text , and you might be right . But the original poster did not say that.

The original poster just said '...the appropriate addition of background information. In the novel I would take this background out.' so I think it was appropriate with just that information in the OP to assume that whole blocks of text would remain the same.

@msstice - as I've typed this out, I see you've added more detail, will ponder and reply in next post!

 

[Venusian Broon]

This is important to consider. I have a related question for you. If you read a decent short story by an author, then you were reading a novel and it had similar characters and then you read to a point and said, wait the next chapter might resemble a short story I already read because the setup is familiar, would you get more excited to read or throw away the book.

So I'm fine with short stories that are set in the same universe of a novel, and having the same characters as the novel can work well too (as long as you don't drop any spoilers!)

But for the situation you give above...if it becomes evident that I've read this before I fear it might take me out of the reading experience and break my concentration. I'll probably start skimming fast, just to make sure that the text follows what I remember and get to a 'new bit'. I would prefer, in general, to read a whole novel 'fresh', if you know what I mean!

However if I adored the original short story, then perhaps I wouldn't mind reading it again in a different form, although that comes with it's own pitfalls. For example there is Greg Bear's Blood Music. The short story came first and at the time I really loved it (this was 35+ years ago, so I am relying on my memory - no doubt if I re-read it I will be slightly dissappointed with it ). It ended on a rather dark beat. However he then expanded it into a novel and I couldn't wait to get hold of it and see where he took the ending....

...unfortunately he took it to a sort of 'Hollywood happy ending' that really dissippated the energy and power of the original short story. Meh!

My short story gives some inkling of the surprises in the novel and some parts of the world, but I'm not writing the novel as a twister. Rather my aim is to write so you as the reader kind of guess what's going on and you are yelling at the characters "No! No! That's a BAD decision!"

Yeah, been there and done that. Especially with War and Peace. My flatmates thought I was a bit odd shouting at a book, telling someone not to leave with the cad....

I get the points here. I'm still thinking there is a balance. It's not that I'm copy pasting chapters, it's more that I'm taking a chapter and adding / removing things to make it standalone. This is extra effort, but at least for my first experiment, I found it helped me think more sharply about conflict and plot and character since I had fewer words with which to paint a picture.

Fair enough. I think if you take it as a writing exercise, it's a great thing to try. And if it does come up with an exceptional story perhaps my fears and thoughts would be irrelevant!

I sort of went the other way, and originally learnt to finish short stories of about 2-2.5k words (Which can be really difficult. Two thousand words sounds like a lot, but to ensure you have a good plot, characters and standalone story, it can be taxing and, of course, I failed a lot .) However as I put long form manuscripts together I find myself writing ~2.5k chapters on average. I still don't write chapters like short stories though, just try and take some of the lessons on conciseness, brevity and clarity across.

 

[The Judge]

If you read a decent short story by an author, then you were reading a novel and it had similar characters and then you read to a point and said, wait the next chapter might resemble a short story I already read because the setup is familiar, would you get more excited to read or throw away the book.

My short story gives some inkling of the surprises in the novel and some parts of the world, but I'm not writing the novel as a twister. Rather my aim is to write so you as the reader kind of guess what's going on and you are yelling at the characters "No! No! That's a BAD decision!"

Ah, that's a different matter for me.

It's fine to write shorts which are set in the same world and with the same characters as the novel. But I would be unhappy to say the least if I had read a short which then turned up in much the same form as a chapter in a novel, and I'd be p*ssed beyond belief if I'd been inveigled into paying for that short in the first place especially if I suspected the story was taken from the novel and not vice versa. That is, I'd likely forgive a writer for taking a short story and then constructing a novel around it if both worked, but I can't see me forgiving him/her for doing it the other way around.

What were you planning to do with the shorts if you continued like this?

 

[msstice]

@The Judge

I was considering publishing any chapters that lent themselves to this, but from your reaction I see there is a moral problem here. I think I won't do this then.

I was going off this discussion here (Can I modify and turn my published short stories into a novel?) where it seemed like Charles Stross, for one, had done this.

Thank you!

 

[Biskit]

This!

A short story should be 'hot', 'condensed' and 'complete'; cutting a chapter out of a long form manuscript rarely brings together all the elements that form a good short story.

A while back I was looking at a project to write a sequence of short stories in the same world as my urban fantasy for someone else's site. The project never went anywhere for various reasons, but one big problem that I ran into was starting to write something in the same style of the novels but with a target length in the 2-5k range. That crashed and burned, because the pace needed to be quite different. There was no space for a digression about my MC's current relationship problems, or any sort of back-story relating to the novels, and still have time to tell the story of campaigning for dragon rights in a fast-food setting. The whole design needed to be completely different.

What has worked is writing flash fiction in the same world, in this case a series of letters from the MC to various parties. I can maintain something of the same style, the nasty humour, still tell a story, and achieve hot/condensed/complete.