Do novel writers/readers want more background in short speculative stories?

[Guanazee]

Do you guys find that writers who typically write and read novels want more background in short stories?
A critiquer mentioned adding more background before jumping into the plot of my short story, but he also assumed the excerpt was for a novel (I told him I write shorts but I guess he forgot).
So, what do you prefer as writers and readers of genre fiction, for short stories that would appear in genre specific mags? Background info explaining how or why the speculative setting is the way it is, or just details showing the way things are without explaining how it got that way (assuming that part isn't relative to the plot)? Do you read many short stories or stick to novels?

 

[Biskit]

How long is a short story?
Quite by accident, I've written quite a few flash fictions lately, so stories loosely in the 1000 word or less range, which allows very little space for background exposition. For longer short stories you would have more room, but my preference is to present the background as a part of the story. I also prefer that in novel writing.

 

[Guanazee]

I'm talking about stories in the 2k-5k range. So, for instance, if the writer established a setting do you really want to know how it got that way? If the writer did a good job establishing a general idea of technology level, class hierarchies, the population, etc., what kind of background would you expect for a story under 5k words?

 

[Guanazee]

@Biskit Yes, I agree the background should be incorporated throughout the story and not as an info dump in either novels or shorts.

 

[Wayne Mack]

if the writer established a setting do you really want to know how it got that way?

It really depends. If there is a back history that drives the plot, then yes. Most settings, even in novels, just expect the reader to accept the world as given. There might dragons, or magic, or colonies on distant planets.

Given the alternatives, I would rather read a story that is a little sparse on background rather than one that is filled with extraneous details.

 

[Biskit]

It's very subjective about what you would call providing background, but I just did a quick check on four of my longer shorts . The shortest of them, 1.4k, could be argued as having background information delivered during the first 260 words, so nearly 20% of the way in. However, that is already intertwined with the story getting going.

After that I have 2.9k (a created warrior reporting back to its creator, and won the BFS short story competition, yay!), 3.7k (set on an intersteller hibernation ship) and 4k(the cybernetically coupled operator of a tunnelling machine), all dumping the reader straight into the story with zero initial explanation.

So, overall, I would say I do the absolute minimum background, preferably none, and just get on with the story. Other than that, I would echo @Wayne Mack - get on with telling an interesting story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

As @Wayne Mack says, it depends on the story—and on how much the story depends on the background.

However, I will say this: When we talk about things like explanations and descriptions most people envision something lengthy. However, it is often the case that both can be accomplished in a few carefully chosen words. We see this sometimes in the Writing Challenges, where whole worlds and histories are suggested in a handful of words.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Choice of word is crucial in short stories. They have to do a lot of heavy lifting. That’s how you can give a dense background.

Writing and shorts is a different beast to producing a novel in my experience. I spent years when I joined Chrons writing shorts from 300 - 11k thinking it would be good training for my first novel. But in terms of structure, pace, and dynamics. It wasn’t as helpful as I anticipated.

 

[Guanazee]

@Phyrebrat. Yes, novels and shorts are very different. I like that short stories let me explore a bunch of ideas without taking a bunch of time.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think the easiest way to establish backstory in a story is to make a lot of the backdrop quite familiar, and to introduce one unfamiliar element that becomes the core of the story. In a story like, say "Beyond Lies the Wub", the Wub is the unfamiliar element, and the spacemen are fairly typical spacemen from a fairly-near-future story of that time: they come across as essentially normal Americans, probably vaguely military. In a way this is unrealistic, as by the time humanity was able to explore the galaxy far enough to find the Wub, people's attitudes, names and technology might be very different, but it gives the reader something to hang on to.

I don't think you need all that much backstory, if you can tell that a character or setting is "that sort of thing" and go from there. I think a lot of writers find the backstories of their medieval fantasy kingdoms and galactic federations more interesting than the readers do.

As Phyrebrat says, there is a lot of lifting to be done by individual words. If someone writes "The sorcerer Ibn Raschid lived alone in the Tower of Zhur", I've got a mental image from those four nouns of a magical grand-vizier-type guy in a stone tower with a dome on the top. If for some reason it isn't that sort of thing, then the author needs to do some work to push against the mental image that he's created. If the author has created the wrong mental image, then it might be worthwhile using different words in the first place and not having to explain them later.

 

[Guanazee]

@Toby Frost Thank you, that was helpful.

 

[Toby Frost]

No problem. Just my thoughts but I hope it helps!

 

[Biskit]

Yup.

This:

make a lot of the backdrop quite familiar, and to introduce one unfamiliar element that becomes the core of the story

And this:

I think a lot of writers find the backstories of their medieval fantasy kingdoms and galactic federations more interesting than the readers do.

 

[AlexH]

For short stories in particular, I think it's about writing doing double duty. For example, how can you describe the world in a way where it has an impact on the character and/or shows us how the character is feeling? Different people notice different things based on their beliefs, job, hobbies, mood etc. Does walking uphill tire a character out? That could show us the character is unfit, and that there's a hill. How you describe that hill, even with a single adjective, could show us even more about the world and character.

I often mention Beholder by Sarah Grey as an example of lots of great things.

Someone else could analyse this better than me, but the opening paragraph:

The girl behind the counter is a waif with mottled cheeks, swaddled in a blue barista’s apron [ great character detail in the opening sentence ]. Her nametag, scratched half-bare [ shows us no one cares about her ], tells me only that she is a trainee. She offers me a timid smile [ she's shy but tries - shows us she cares ], thin sparkle-glossed lips closed tight. She wears augmentation lenses [ we know this is set in the future/sci-fi ], red plastic frames that glitter, a cheap [ shows us something about the girl and the PoV character ] pair that clash with her yellow blouse and leave her looking like a deflated circus tent. Through them, she squints at me, perhaps seeking common ground, but more likely gauging the level of customer service I’ll expect.

So even though that's a character description, it shows us so much about the world without an ounce of a background info dump. If you can get certain details in, I think many readers fill in the blanks themselves.

 

[Astro Pen]

To me a short story is about communicating an idea and is not normally about character development* or background.
What I want from a short story is that it makes me think in the sense of providing a new perspective.
Borges was a master of that. You can't read one of his without getting a little philosophical brain tweak. I don't find out much about the character of the protagonist in The Library of Babel but the concept of the library and its implications are burned in. It was quite delicious and it buzzed around my head for days.
*(Now I admit I have occasionally contradicted that and written a short character sketch as a stand alone. I do that for the pleasure of it. Whether they constitute meaningful shorts I don't know. )

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think a lot of writers find the backstories of their medieval fantasy kingdoms and galactic federations more interesting than the readers do.

No doubt. But think of all the most popular epic fantasies; the authors put in lots of backstory. So it's not how much, but whether they are the kind of backstory and worldbuilding that appeals to readers. You can load in the details, but if nobody cares it does you no good. On the other hand, if it catches the imaginations of readers it is nearly impossible to put in too much.

But this, of course, does not apply to short fiction. If a reader is in the mood for an epic, they won't pick up a story of a few thousand words.

 

[Guanazee]

Thank you everyone for the many useful insights.

What about larger scale background for a futuristic society? If there are multiple alien species interacting, class hierarchies, space travel, and bigger background stuff like that, do you as a reader want a bit of info about that or is a sense that these things are there enough?

I'm wondering if I'm running into an issue of the critiquer perhaps not being very familiar with sci-fi. I've noticed I get very different feedback from sci-fi writers compared to those outside the genre. What you all are saying aligns very much with the way I feel too (and hopefully with the way I write).

 

[Astro Pen]

What about larger scale background for a futuristic society? If there are multiple alien species interacting, class hierarchies, space travel, and bigger background stuff like that, do you as a reader want a bit of info about that or is a sense that these things are there enough?

I think that with that kind of thing it is easy to slip into cliché. Just mention these things as components. important things like telepathy need to be in but not the predictable comedy of manners between alien cultures. ( eg Men, Martians and Machines) Something implicit like "The two day hop to Centauri" is fine in a short we don't need a description of the FTL technology.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Thank you everyone for the many useful insights.

What about larger scale background for a futuristic society? If there are multiple alien species interacting, class hierarchies, space travel, and bigger background stuff like that, do you as a reader want a bit of info about that or is a sense that these things are there enough?

I've just finished reading a book of SF short stories self-pubbed by quite a big Youtuber and I think quite a lot of them had expositional background stuff. I found it a tad off-putting, although in general I quite enjoyed the stories themselves. IMHO - they were too stand out and intrusive, and it gave me 'amatuer' vibes.

Again personally, background is fine if it's pertinant to the plot and it can be intrusive and stand out on occasion (if it's truly interesting!), but I prefer quite a lot of the worldbuilding to be handled delicately - leave some stuff mysterious, build up the readers understanding with a smattering of a few choice words/phrases over the whole piece, focus on what your characters would find interesting in the situation and describe that - not the run-of-the-mill stuff they see all the time (i.e. if aliens are common and interacting with humans, would your character launch into a 'two page' description of the minutia, history and culture of them when they see one - or might they just 'mention' that its stench was particularly pungent today, say ?)

I'm wondering if I'm running into an issue of the critiquer perhaps not being very familiar with sci-fi. I've noticed I get very different feedback from sci-fi writers compared to those outside the genre. What you all are saying aligns very much with the way I feel too (and hopefully with the way I write).

Depend doesn't it. If you are intent on finding a market for your story, then it pays to know your market. Making a SF story for a non-SF reader may have problems if put in front of SF readers.

 

[tinkerdan]

Definitely this:

As @Wayne Mack says, it depends on the story—and on how much the story depends on the background.

However, I will say this: When we talk about things like explanations and descriptions most people envision something lengthy. However, it is often the case that both can be accomplished in a few carefully chosen words. We see this sometimes in the Writing Challenges, where whole worlds and histories are suggested in a handful of words.

Long ago most novelist got their experience doing shorts. It's a formula for putting the most on the page with the fewest words and it paves the way for writing well when the time comes to expand into novels.
You need to write what needs to go into the story and then you need to edit it and clean up all the clutter without losing the essentials.