Novelist. Start with Short Stories

Writing a full novel is an amazing feat and as a young reader, I used to be envious of all those who got to see their name printed on bold, beautiful covers in my local stores.

I thought that authors must have some gift for being able to tell such intricate stories across multiple books without losing track of what was going on and making everything flow seamlessly throughout the whole series.

Little did I know this is more so the work of a well-made outline than just natural storytelling skill.

It would take me longer than it should have to figure out that jumping in headfirst with an attempt at a full-length novel with no real storytelling experience was just setting myself up for frustration and failure.

The art of storytelling is just that, an art, but just like a painting you wouldn’t have your first work be on the largest canvas you can find would it?

I hope not.

It’s the age-old saying of needing to learn to walk before you can run, the same thing can be said when you're starting out as a writer.

Starting small will give you multiple benefits when it comes to writing your novel.

When you start with short stories you learn all the intricacies that go into a story. We all know what a story is, but learning to tell a well-thought-out one without plotholes or losing the audience in some inane way is hard to do the first time around. Important aspects such as plot, setting, character development, pacing, point of view, and most importantly keeping your tenses consistent (The most common mistake made by new authors) are learned best by reading and practicing.

When you start your craft writing short stories you’ll get a feel for writing and practice just how to weave together a well-thought-out story structure. From there you apply everything you learned and stretch that for a few more thousands of words to turn it into a novel.

You can even use this short story as your outline for your novel if you feel the medium of the short story didn’t give you the amount of space and detail you believe it deserved.

My W.I.P. at the moment is a story based on a short story I wrote in one of my creative writing classes. Not only did I believe the story needed so much more than the limited space of a short story could give it, but it needed a full-length sequel as well. I’ve been able to use the short story as a guideline for the full-length novel and it’s taken a lot of the outlining stress out of writing by knowing where my story is going and how I need to get it there.

If you’re new to writing start small with short stories before tackling the novel. It makes the process much less daunting.

No matter what you write the only important thing is that you just keep writing and you don’t stop for anybody if it’s what your heart truly desires.

With love,

B.K. xo

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This story was originally posted on Medium.

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