PJ asks: “how to move from writing short stories to novels? First steps”
Short story to novel is a common path for writers, because short stories are, if not easier exactly than novels, at least less time-intensive. But as the question understands, novel writing, while a related skill, is a rather different beast. So how do you start thinking about novels when you’ve been thinking in a shorter format up to now?
Many of the challenges that come from writing novels, especially for beginning novel writers, stem from just how big a novel is. When you’re writing a short story, you know what it’s about, what the characters are doing, and you can stay focused on that for the time you spend writing the story. But a novel starts out far away from what the story is “about,” and meanders along, building up momentum until it gets to the point.
So, how to learn to embrace the novel? I have a few first steps that I’ve found helpful, and you may find them helpful in this or some other order:
Is your idea novel-sized? This is a tough one to navigate when you’re just starting out, because how do you know? You’ve never done this before! Well, one of the things I look for is whether the idea, the germ of the story, has relevance beyond just the main character. The story that became Out of Position was a short story about a guy who picked up a girl at a bar and found out mid-hookup that “she” was a guy in drag, and then he had to confront his feelings about sleeping with a guy (note: do not dress up in drag to trick straight guys into sleeping with you, please, this was fiction). That was it. Short story. But when I thought about what that would mean to his life, to the guy in drag, how their relationship would be affected by the profession they chose, how our current society would regard it and how they would have to navigate that…it became a novel. Well, five novels, but you get the idea. One of my writing teachers said that a novel can have up to four stories going on: the personal story (the growth of the main character), the interpersonal story (the main character’s relationship with other principal characters), the plot (the action the main character is taking in the world), and the world story (the changes the world is going through at the time). So in the OOP series, Dev and Lee both have character growth stories, their relationship is evolving, they are trying to define and establish their relationship in the world, and the world itself is changing in the way it regards same-sex relationships. So if you’re comfortable with short stories, start with a short story idea and then ask yourself, how else could this affect the characters and the world? Let yourself keep imagining how the situation came about, what else you could say about it. If your mind is excited by these possibilities, you might have a novel.
Write down the thing that excites you about this story/the core of it. As I noted, the main problem with novels is that they’re big. Really, really big. So for me, it helps to have a touchstone for each novel that I can refer back to when I get lost. Sometimes that’s the thing I call it informally (I’m currently working on “the spooky book novel”), sometimes it’s the message of the book, but there’s always something in there that reminds me why I love this story enough to spend a year or more working on it. There will be points in the middle where you are bored of your story and you can’t imagine anyone else liking it, and at times like that you need to be able to look at your inspiration and remember, “oh yeah, this is why I’m doing this.” In the furry fandom, we can also get an artist to draw something that represents what we love about the book—I have this picture of Kip that was important to me throughout writing the Calatians series but was never published in any of the books (art by Culpeo Fox):
Make an outline. The next step to managing the size of a novel is to plan out how you see the story progressing in your head. Do this however your mind works best. Some people might want to write the big plot points first and then fill in the between stuff; others work chronologically. You might want to work backwards from the end! Do whatever works for you. But having a document that plans out your novel can be a huge help, even when your characters drive stubbornly off the edge of the outline into no-man’s land.
What does an outline look like? Whatever you want! You can write it out in prose (this is how I more often do it), like:
Start with Kory, a teenager going to the pool, but not his usual pool because something’s happened to him. He bumps into Samaki there and they go out for hot chocolate. Samaki is flirty and Kory doesn’t know what to do with that.
Or you can make it a numbered outline:
Scene: Kory at the pool
Why: running from something
What happens: Samaki bangs into him
What results: Samaki offers to take him to Starbucks
Impact on story: Samaki is flirty; Kory doesn’t know what to do
Do whatever helps you organize the story best in your head!
And I think those are the big first steps I would recommend. Oh, and also set aside a year of writing time and make sure you have a support group for when you feel despairing about your novel. You’ll want beta readers too, eventually, but that’s way later on in the process. For now, get all that set up and then start writing your novel!
I'd love to know what qualifies as 'Really, really big' for you. I often thought novels were beyond my current abilities...until someone pointed out that a fanfic I began in 2015 was already close to 'Lord of the Rings' in length (60 chapters and 379,490 words approx at the time I finally got as far as I could with it) so that gave me pause to consider that my idea of 'big' is not quite the same as others. XD
It has incentivized me to finally start on a proper novel though. :)