One pet peeve about short stories... · 1:57am Mar 14th, 2016
...vs novels or multi-chapter stories.
You know what's really annoying? When some reader pretends to educate you on writing (regardless of whether you know what you're doing, if you're doing intentionally or not) and gives you bullshit advice that doesn't apply to the medium you're using.
Yeah. I said it.
One thing that a LOT of people here seem to believe (in comments and even blogs) is that when you're writing a short story it's supposed to be some sort of mini novel. Well. It isn't. Short stories were never meant to be mini novels and never will be.
Paraphrasing Jenny Swift, "short stories are about nuance". In other words, you intentionally don't cram too much information into what you're writing. You have some sort of expectations as to the mental capacity of your readers... you expect them to be sophisticated enough to grasp things that are not said.
This is not a thing a lot of people are fond of. Reading comments it almost feels like some people are actually saying: "You expected me to think about this shit?" Well... yes? I mean, I get that most of you look down on fan fiction (despite the fact that you are, in fact, here reading just that) because it's somehow less legitimate even if it isn't any less legit than printed words encased by pretty pictures and a price. Sure. You can think that. But, you're spending time here reading words, regardless of that, and so some level of basic mental processing is perfectly normal to assume.
A short story can arguably be improved or clarified, that is on the author, but no story, novel or short story, is supposed to be done in a specific way and read like a manual to do all the thinking for them.
-A short story doesn't have to spend too much time developing a character. Much less here where the basics of most characters are known to just about everyone.
-A short story doesn't have to cover stuff that is not relevant to it. It doesn't have to justify stuff that is not the point of it. It doesn't have to have bigger, meta character arcs. It doesn't have to answer the question of where and what secondary, tertiary and incidental characters are doing or have been doing all this time unless it's relevant to the point.
-A short story doesn't need to think for you and solve all the problems and tell you all the answers. It's a short story. It's short. It's within an amount of words that is very, vastly inferior in count to a novel or a series.
So again, if you're going to give advice/criticism about a short story, don't treat it like it's supposed to be a novel. Once again, don't try to turn the story into something it isn't, just because you want it to be something else.
One needs to take note of this.
It's quite true.
...Now if only I could convince myself of listening to exactly that I might actually write something for once.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Well said.
Holy fucking GOD this. Every word.
I can't begin to tell you how many times someone's posted this kind of crap on one of my stories.
A million times YES!
The goal of a short story is that it's supposed to, briefly, explore an idea. You should be able to either appreciate it's brevity or think about what it means. It's a "what if?" situation. It is not world-building, or a study of character development. And since it is just the exploration of an idea, it can be vague or nonsensical or anything else, provided it explores the idea it's meant to.
And seriously, why don't flavor of the week fics get the same treatment? Like the million "X is a changeling" one-shots, or all those Peach stories?
The highest praise I can give a short story or one shot is "I both want to read more of this and want it to stay completed."
The fact you managed to make a short story so amazing that I want more of it is great, high praise even.
The fact I don't want it to continue means that it was so well written that adding more to it would lessen the impact and importance.
This being true doesn't stop the lack of every detail being annoying to readers, or at least me. I can consciously acknowledge that if the story went into detail about how Luna wasn't able to intervene because she was too busy dealing with space zombies instead of implying it, the story would be boring, but it's still annoying. I'm pretty sure there's an actual known psychological thing called the Completion Principle or something like that that makes people want to know all the details and have them fit perfectly.
Makes sense, but surely there's a level of vagueness that too much even for a short story, right?
Who are you even talking to with this post? Probably nobody that's going to read it.
In my opinion a novel is made up of several short stories. I know there is arguably a 100,000 words = novel rule, and drabbles range anywhere from a page to a few sentences. So, I suspect a short story is distinct from a story that can be read within five minutes or a chapter is that it has roughly 20-40 ish pages in length, with an article being anything less than 20 pages. I've seen Children's books roughly 90-200 pages in length, so that hardly counts as a novel in my opinion. Basically, length and not the level of detail is what makes a novel. I'd hardly consider Candide a novel, but as a satire it was one hell of a summary work and could probably be used as a bible for a series of novels if the publishers were interested, or if the artist (Voltaire) hadn't written it in supposedly three days. At a generous 20wpm without the use of computers or typewriters Voltaire certainly had a busy weekend, I honestly wonder if it (Candide) was written in shorthand or if he ate anything at all.
Thing is, not even novels necessarily need to cover everything. Novels often leave spaces in themselves because there is no reason to include information about X, Y, or Z. Was Dumbledore gay? You could read it that way, but you don't have to, as it isn't terribly important to the story, and JK Rowling not going into it didn't mean that the story was worse for it (though it might have added more depth to his characterization - who knows?).
3806833 3806891 yes, sometimes you have a level of vagueness that is too much, and that's on the author's side. However, the point here is, to use an analogy, that if you have an apple tree, you shouldn't expect it to give you oranges. The quality of the apples not withstanding.
The Completion Principle, btw, doesn't mean that the author has to do the thinking for you. It implies that your mind will want to make sense of things so it fits... but the task is for the mind to complete something not it demanding in any way that things are given to it already completed.
3806897 maybe not, but maybe there might be a reader that might benefit from this knowledge. Besides, as much as I wish I could pin this on one person only, it happens all over the place and is something a lot of people do.
3806929 Indeed, but it is a particularly important factor when it comes to short stories. Nothing has to cover 100% of every possible scenario.
3806954
I dunno; something about this blog just gets my hackles up. It makes me feel apprehensive at the thought of giving criticism, which isn't a feeling I particularly care for. It seems a bit silly that everybody should be scared to point out things they found lacking in a piece, and besides, everybody thinks they're right. The people doing the things you complain about don't even realize they're doing it, and they likely never will unless they happen to mature on their own. And while the blog post may have been meant to inform authors who might have to deal with inappropriate criticism, it doesn't come across that way. Rather, it just seemed like you wanted to complain, and while that isn't wrong in-and-of-itself, it does strike me as a little tasteless.
Then again, this is all coming from my own idea of how authors—and people in general—should present themselves in order to maintain a classy image that general bystanders can look at and respect.
3806995 That's fair enough, but in the case of someone commenting not knowing about this kind of thing, it comes to attitude. I don't think
there's anyonethere's that many authors here that will stump down a reader for saying something about why they might have not liked their story. But, the complaint here isn't about them, it's about the people that presume to lecture authors about stuff that they know nothing about. You've seen them. The people that come into a story and list the reasons its wrong somehow.They don't present it as an opinion. They act as if what they're saying is fact. And sometimes, these people's opinion-as-fact-comments cracks down on short stories for doing exactly what short stories are supposed to do. And that is what the complaint is about. They're throwing arguments at authors about the completely wrong thing, they're doing it condescendingly and aggressively and are also proving themselves to be completely uneducated as to the craft of writing beyond, possibly, grammatical knowledge or maybe, whatever they learned from their Literary Analysis class. (And for the record, most of the Literary Analysis is pretty much circumstantial, BS and completely biased.) Those are the people that I'm complaining about here.
3807013
I generally ignore them because they're idiots who, nine times out of ten, wouldn't know a comma for direct address if one murdered their parents.
3807016 That is arguably the best way to deal with it.
I've just seen too much, man. Done too much...
You seem irritated. For good reason, though.
As someone who writes short works of literature, I like what you're saying.
3806995
Well-observed.
The least fun part of opinions, at least to me, is when you think you can change someone's. It almost never works.
I agree with your point. Some people just don't get that type of writing.
However, I'd speculate that there are also authors who will take any question about their work as a demand on themselves when it was just a simple question. Sometimes I ask an author a question about some detail or background information of their story, but I don't necessarily even expect an answer. I'm just posing the question for them to answer, if it suits their fancy to satisfy a reader's curiosity.
If not, that's okay. 
I know for a fact that some people feel like they have to reply to every comment on their stories because they either have an overly zealous desire to defend their work or feel like they're letting people down by not doing so.
That's the kind of pressure no one should be putting on themselves. It leads to dead stories. 
I just hope that writers know that there's no need for that and, as a reader, I want them to write at their own pace, enjoy what they're doing, and not take in all the hate and criticism that the internet can generate. It's part of maturing to learn to distinguish those who genuinely have your best interest at heart and those who don't merit your attention.
Cast not your pearls before for the swine, pearls being your precious time and energy, swine being the people I think we all know them to be. 
Anyway, like you I'm just writing this for the benefit of whoever might happen to read it. You're not that type of author, and I'm pretty sure you know not to become one, but I did also feel the same way as 3806995 about this post, though I still maintain my agreement.
Edit: 3807016 Exactly.
Well thers ur problem, WD! This is de internet, not sum clasy plase were peeple now stufs
3807117 In my endless optimism, I'd rather hope my readers can put 2 and 2 together and discover that one or two can't, than assume none of them can and just spoon-feed them everything.
This is a cause of frustration in general. Too many authors feel compelled to write as if their ponyfic was going to be read primarily by people who don't know Rainbow Dash from a zap apple tree.
3807016
In all fairness that's not entirely the writers' fault. I can assure you that as a product of the public school system they focused primarily on Spelling and DOL exercises. The only thing that really advances for the public if you aren't gifted is the reading material, the list of words in your personal lexicon, and the expectation that what you're producing is good enough for the workplace. Advanced (moderate?) expressions of Meaning and Logic were things I learned after I graduated college, and even then I'm absolutely sure I come off as more ignorant than Napoleon Hill using the word emotion in place of motive, desire, needs, or affect. I'll even use affect in place of impact, becasue I know others do the same. Not to mention, all they (instructors, specialists, teachers, or whatever) have you do if you're deficient in any area is have you do more DOL exercises or similar. It doesn't really address the problem or make one a better writer if you're blind to your conveyance of communication issues in the first place.
For example, figuring out the eight basic emotions are adjectives, or that concepts like Joy are nouns, is a bit beyond the understanding of a middle schooler. Regardless, it should still be taught at some point. Plus, if an editor uses something like (Pons) and you have no flipping clue that they are referring to a logical fallacy you aren't going to figure it out without referent context. Even then, I would have to look up what I'm saying to be sure the concept I'm expressing is the appropriate one. As for the professionality of writers, in my opinion unless you have postnomials you're considered a paraprofessional. Then again, I've read the work of PHD's that have me questioning the fairness, psychosis, or logic of the academic system as well.
Once more, wholeheartedly agreed.
It's pretty sad that a lot of people forget about what you just wrote.
On a personal note, I run into this sort of thinking with every single Write-Off, when it comes to reviews. If we are doing a mini-fic round of 400-750 words, it is impossible(or at least extremely difficult to do in a satisfying way) to do a full fleshed out story. But the first thing that gets brought up each and every time is some form of 'it's not a story,' or 'it feels like a scene for something larger', etc.
Well...of course it isn't! It's 750 words, for crying out loud! It's a character defining moment, or it's a choice being made to hell with the torpedoes, or something similar. It is a thought barely completed, but if I don't provide the whole 'hero's journey' format it gets shit no matter how nuanced it might be.
I can see this. I mean I find a flaw of a LOT of short stories is that they Rush things or don't develop things enough, but there is a difference between not expanding on something enough and not expanding on something that doesn't matter because it's a short story/one shot.
As a writer of numerous short stories and one-shots, I have to agree. Pointless details detract from, rather than enhance, the narrative imo because it feels shoehorned in when people assume you have to account for every single character and every single possible angle on that character.
I gotta disagree with you here. Not on your main points, but rather on one specific area. You're supposed to expect a level of sophistication from your audience. I sadly must disagree here. I learned long ago, way back when Mass Effect 3 came out and all the moronic hate towards its ending was drawn up, to never expect readers, watchers, listeners or players to ever have the temerity to grasp subtext or nuance. I have since consistently learned to expect my audience to be barely functioning morons. Spell out EVERYTHING, in excruciating detail. The hate you will receive do to your lack of subtlety will pale in comparison to the hate you will receive if you don't explicitly say how your characters got off the planet swarming with shuttles with cloaking devices and back onto the space cruiser, also with cloaking, as an example.
First, I would like to say images.wikia.com/glee/images/a/a7/CLAP.gif#standing%20ovation%20gif
It's about time someone adresses this. I honestly hate when people explain everything. I like filling in the blanks on my own. I leads to some amazing interpretations. A perfect example would be Dune's ornithopter. It was given minimal description and as a result there have been some very unique and creative artwork made of them.
3807345 I agree that people can be stupid, but the truth is that there are more people that are intelligent and sophisticated enough, it's just that the morons are far more vocal.
Every type of media is just as legit as another. (/thread)
3807124
Hey, hey, hey. You keep your crazy numbers shipping to yourself. God intended for even and odd numbers to be paired together, not crazy even/even pairs.
R.I.P. Harmony Needs Heroes. Like a pearl before swine.
(Not to call any of you fine Writeoff folks swine, per se.)
3807345 I think you've fallen into a bit of a trap there. If a story fails to get itself across to its audience like ME3 did, it's not because it tried to be subtle, it's because it tried to be subtle and did it wrong. Subtlety works all the time, but you don't notice it as much because it's subtle and you're smart enough to pick up on it.
ME3 didn't fail because it didn't have enough pieces for the audience to put together, it failed because it didn't have the right pieces.
3806911
Actually, there's another way of looking at it that you might not have heard of. And everyone else could probably benefit from this, as well.
Orson Scott Card teaches something he calls the "M.I.C.E. Quotient." M.I.C.E. stands for Millieu (setting), Idea, Character, and Event.
The idea of it is that these are the four things that can be focused on in a story. Modern novels almost always involve all four, while short stories have less.
One will usually be more important than the others, but all four will be given attention as a focus of the story in a novel, and short stories will not give any attention to the ones they don't use.
Take Harry Potter, for example.
M: Hogwarts/Wizarding World
I: Harry is special for some reason
C: Harry's character/personality/relations
E: Something bad/mysterious happens
(Event being the main focus is arguable, but it has my vote)
And... what's a good example of a short story? Uh... The Tell-Tale Heart. (Read it here)
M: The guy's house? not a focus like Hogwarts is.I: Guilt is driving this guy crazy.
C: This guy's craziness.
E: The guy killed the other guy, the police are here.
Tell-Tale Heart doesn't have to have a Millieu focus, because it's not about the setting, and that's okay because it's a short story. But it focuses very much on Character, more than Idea or Event.
Novels use the M.I.C.E. Quotient to tell a story.
Short stories tell the story of an aspect of the M.I.C.E. Quotient.
That's the real difference, when you get down to it. Short stories can afford to focus on one aspect to the exclusion of one or two or even three others, and novels have the length and complexity to use all four together.
3808423 ME3 had more than enough for me. I had absolutely NO issues grasping things.
3808423
Thank you so much! : ) I do like acronyms. They help with memorization, especially under the fugue of anger and stress, and typically help one make connections and coordinate information that much sooner in a crisis. MICE has joined BASIC, GOTE, KWL, and... wait, I'll remember it in a bit.
I've been collecting nuggets of information about writing theory from video games (like lionhead studios The Movies referenced below). All stories have an intro, and all games have a meeting what distinguishes the genre's has to do with the type of events leading to the resolution. The resolution determines genre as well, in a game the resolution is a cliffhanger, in a tragedy death leads to a happy end... when it ends with a music video or curtain call it's a cartoon.
Romance>intro>meeting>problem>time apart>reunion>argument>resolution
Action>intro>skirmish>investigation> fight>preparation montage>battle>resolution
Horror>intro>shock>pursuit>encounter>preparation>big fight>resolution
Fantasy>intro>encounter>survey>fight>pursuit>showdown>resolution
Comedy>intro>problem>pursuit>challenge>preperation>conflict> Resolution
For an Interpersonal Analysis of character I could use the format of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Wolverine Origins dossier...
Values>history>territories>allies>paramours>enemies>travels*>supporting data> conflicting information
*why this isn't linked to territories I have no idea.
Background Screening:
Social security background verification>credit check>property ownership>corporate records>civil action background>marriage records>Phone number>motor vehicle search>professional licenses>education verification
Then of course there is a Psychological Evaluation...
Name>DOE>DOB> Identifying information(name, age, appearance, reason for referral)>Procedures Administered (interviews,records, psychosocial and physiological tests of skill and ability)>Behavioral Observations>Appearance and Style> Attitude and Personality> level of maturity and tolerance for ambiguity> functioning and functionality>brief history> results and recommendations.
OCEAN! that's it, that's the other one. I forget it at times becasue it relies on the 'either or' fallacy.
Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
are ideal personality traits on a scale of simplistic opposition, except for that last one which was only organized that way to spell out something recognizable.
Once again thank you for sharing!
F.Y.I. Phillia is not Synergy.
____________________________________
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
Story must be this tall to ride brain.
3808525 Want to put all of those into one list?
Hook - show us what's coming, what to expect
Plot Turn 1 - take us into the story's new situation
Pinch 1 - first encounter with main conflict
Midpoint - change in story direction and attitude; stop running and start fighting
Pinch 2 - major setback, threat of failure
Plot Turn 2 - truth revealed, solution realized, questions answered
Conclusion - tie up loose ends
Hollywood Seven-Point Structure. Bam.
I can keep these coming, too.
3809224 3808525 I've never been one for "formulas". It might be good for a planning stage in very broad strokes, or if you're struggling with the concept just so you can understand it, but sticking to specific ways of doing things is why "formulaic storytelling" is not seen as a good thing.
3808525
I'm glad you're using the more realistic and modern OCEAN instead of the pseudo-scientific Myers-Briggs
*psychology pet peeve*
3809224
I do like formulae that always work regardless of moving variables, so I thank you for any assistance and shortcuts you can provide. They also make learning and analysis of story (or what's been done before) that much easier to break down if you know what to look for.
3809238
The problem with formulas is it makes everything predictable. I can't tell you how many times I've seen variants of 'A Christmas Carol' and 'It's A Wonderful Life' and you can recognize more than a bit of deja vu when you read or watch romantic comedies. I think the random factor and shadenfreude are what allow such stories to break the mold (casting?). I obviously have no objection to exploring something that has been done before if the purpose is to gain skill and/or insight into the thought process of another. But, to arbitrarily dismiss something becasue it's a copy of something else without exploring it in the context of a particular culture, generation, or individual perspective beyond personal dislike or disinterest is potentially limiting. Then again, what one typically 'see's when looking for differences in people is crafting, command, conduct, character, color, charm, and challenge, not connivence, contrivance, or common sense.
3809278
You can thank wikipedia for that. Interestingly enough, I've also been exposed to psychogeometrics and know of two distinctly different female authors that have claimed responsibility for creating it... which is ironic because it's as old as Hippocrates. Also, it helps to know the difference between Horse-pucky and Bull-spit when discussing personality traits. Then again, I'm more of a rectangle/divergent. I wanted to learn it (psychogeometrics) because I thought it might help me with character design. Playing cards are also based on the four personality/army model which later adopted a fifth category. Diamonds are the merchants, wands/clover/puppy feet represent the clergy, hearts represent soldiers, and spades/swords oddly enough represent politicians, fools and jokers are wildcards.
3809238 Outside of Hollywood, formulas are only really good for revising before publication. You're right about writing to formula coming off as formulaic.
But at the same time, formulas (especially this one) come about because they're the natural flow of stories. I say they're best for revising because if your story isn't naturally following them, then you're doing something wrong.
The thing his, however, is that fimfic's short stories are exceptionally short. I forget what the average length of a short story is, but... Here on fimfic, we just have pathetically short attention spans.
I've gotten those comments, too. Mostly when going north of 3000 words, I think. Part of the problem may be that a lot of readers don't realize when a short story is complete. They assume it's chapter 1 of a novel.