Short Stories Aren’t Easy (for me)
I rarely write short stories, but I’m currently trying to write a few. And it’s hard.
Some people excel at writing short stories and do so beautifully.
I’m a novelist. Always have been. Short pieces are a struggle—my ideas are always too expansive, too intricate for a short story format.
I did some research on the word count. Most sources claim anything between 1,000 and 7,500 words is typically considered a short story, with “some outliers” up to 10,000. Beyond that, the piece should be considered a novelette or a novella.
My current project is what I’m referring to as the “Epilogue Tales” for the Relics of War. They’re for-fun stories featuring characters from the series that I will probably release to my newsletter eventually. As I’m writing this post, I’m working on the first one of the set. My goal was to keep each story within a framework of about 5,000 words.
Well, it surpassed that already. I’ll be lucky if I keep it under the 10,000-word mark. I am not good at keeping my stories short. I’m equally bad at keeping track of word count (I usually learn word count for my novels only after the draft and revisions/editing are complete.)
But I am trying with the short story format, because it’s an aspect of my writing I’d like to conquer. I have a plan for 6-8 stories in the “Epilogue Tales,” so I’ll have more opportunities to write true short stories. And I think some of the others will actually fit within my word count goal. (We’ll see once I start working on them!)
If you’re interested in the forthcoming epilogue tales – or whatever I ultimately decide to call them – I’ll share them to my newsletter eventually. They won’t be posted to my blog.
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