Advanced Techniques, Part 1
Now that you have the basics down, you're wanting to experiment, aren't you? Great, because the short story is a marvellously flexible thing and can give you scad loads of freedom in trying new things. There are several major techniques one can make use of when working with short stories, and they can be used either by themselves or in conjunction with many of the other techniques discussed in this guide.
Novel Characters (Thanks to
Ace of Shadows for this one, and
Alea Facta Est for feedback.)
No, we're not talking about eccentric characters, but rather the characters from your novel(s). The ones you've put so much time and effort into turning into heroes or villains. The ones you've spent so much time fleshing out. The ones you've beaten into shape and forced to get along (or not) to work together as a unit. The ones you should (supposedly) know inside and out.
Yep. We're talking about
those characters.
But why write short stories for these characters if they're already starring in a longer work? What could possibly be the benefit of doing this? And, perhaps most importantly, how do you keep the focus on only a select few of them, especially if they're secondary characters in the novel(s) they're taken from?
There are several reasons for writing short stories centered around characters from novels, some of which are related, others which aren't.
The most basic is that, no matter how convoluted and rambly a novel is, there simply isn't room to fit everything in without weighing down the story (if not ruining it altogether) and/or taxing the patience of the reader. Making short stories out of some of the ideas the plot bunnies give you lets you avoid cluttering your novel with elements that don't fit, while at the same time giving you the ability to expand your story and make the world even richer.
Likewise, some characters from a novel may end up being more interesting to you (the writer) than the others are, but shifting the focus of the novel over to them is obviously not a good solution. Placing them into their own short stories lets you write about them - their actions, past, personality, and other aspects that were inappropriate for the novel the the character's from - without jeopardizing the integrity of your novel, while also giving you a possible spring board for placing them into a novel of their own.
On the other hand, you may want to write short stories from the perspective of the secondary characters so you have a better understanding of the main (or mains), or so you can show them in a different light. Does the MC come off as a Mary Sue/Gary Stu when they're in the lead role, for example, even though they're not? A short story from the pov of a different character can easily let you see how you can solve this or work around it. Does the MC come off as a Mother Theresa type of character with no depth? Likewise, a short story from a different character's perspective will let you illuminate the MC more fully and give them more depth.
Of course, the stipulations for writing an effective short story still hold when taking characters from novels and putting them into their own story or stories. Being so familiar with your characters already will actually make the task easier in many ways, because you won't have to worry about figuring out what they'd do in a given situation. You'll already be familiar with their personality. The difficult part is maintaining the focus, especially if you're using characters that are secondary in the novel from which you're taking them.
The solution, which should be self-evident but often isn't, is to treat the characters you're using as the stars of their own story. This is easy to do with the novel's MCs, because you're used to them being the focus, but with the secondary characters, it may be more complicated, especially if the novel's MCs suffer from the much maligned Mary Sue/Gary Stu syndrome. The trick, then, is to consider what these secondary characters do when they're not associating with the MCs. (This may also be a good solution to fixing any Mary Sue/Gary Stu afflictions of the MCs, because it will remove them from being the center of the other characters' universes.)
Now, this technique may require some necessary violation of the advice I gave about limiting character background, if you're using secondary characters from a novel as the MCs of a short story. Why? Because you're going to need that background to better understand how to extract your character from the context of their novel and place them into their own story, a story that may not even be related to the novel it's derived from beyond sharing characters and being in the same world.
Despite these little tricks, if you're using secondary characters, it's still possible that the novel's MC will attempt to take a starring role, especially if they have a very forceful personality. If this isn't what you want to happen, I recommend minimalizing their role in the short story as much as possible. This is obviously not an always satisfactory solution (nor the only one), but it does force you to focus on the other characters to the exclusion of the novel's MC, which means you're also forcing yourself to focus on how to make the short story's MC the MC of the short story.
Novel Characters Challenge #1: Use tertiary characters.
Novel Characters Challenge #2: Make the MC of the novel a tertiary character in the short story.
Side Plots
I'm going to break from my usual practice so far in this guide and begin this section with explanation and advice rather than jumping right into how-to.
When I say side plots, I don't mean subplots, and I should explain the difference to make this section more understandable. Side plots, like in novels, are most often centered on two or more characters, at least one of which is involved in a separate (if not entirely unrelated) story line.
A good example of side plots are the story lines in
Lord of the Rings, where we start our journey through the book with Frodo/Sam/Merry/Pippin, who are then joined by Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir. Throughout the second two books, we have three and four separate story lines in progress: Frodo/Sam/(Gollum/Sméagol), Merry/Pippin, and Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli, with Gandalf moving between the latter two, and much interweaving between the second and third story lines.
Subplots, by contrast, are one of two things (not necessarily mutually exclusive):
1.) Interplay between a core group of characters who are (almost) always together, and if one or more of those characters leaves, we do not follow them. A romance between character A and character B would be a subplot if it is not the focus of the story.
2.) A secondary (or tertiary) plot that is connected to and dependant on the main plot for its purpose and existence. Character A being promoted for doing a good job and finishing the task (which task is the main plot) would be a subplot.
Subplots are one of the most effective tools for character and plot development, and are very difficult to go without when you have two or more characters interacting with each other over the course of the story. Subplots may be caused by events outside of the focus of the story, but these events need not be directly spoken of, and the subplots can be removed without affecting the overall scheme(s) of the tale.
I (and most other practiced writers) generally consider side plots to be a distraction in short stories, if not entirely unnecessary. The nature of short stories is to focus on a single event or course of action, and including side plots detracts from this focus, which, more often than not, ends up detracting from the story as a whole, making it seem directionless, confused, or cluttered. While it's possible, and sometimes desirable, to include one or two side plots in your short story, do some serious thinking about whether or not it adds anything before you do so, because it's very easy to mangle a short story if you have too much going on.
That said, on with the guide.
With short stories, side plots are both easier and more difficult to handle than they are in novels. Easier because they need not be as complex, but more difficult because everything has to tie together much more seamlessly. You don't have the luxury of chapters or of lengthy scene setting or plotting, and this makes it much easier to spot problems with continuity or smoothness because there's less to be assimilated.
So how do you handle multiple story lines when you don't have chapters? How do you handle side plots when a short story isn't nearly as complex as a novel? How do you smoothly tie these things together into a cohesive whole?
Handling the lack of chapters is actually the easiest to deal with, because all you need is the same trick used in novels: scene breaks. That is to say, use some method of making it clear that the scene is changing to something else, whether this be a simple double return, a typical ***, or some other method. Doing this, you also have the freedom to disregard the technique of referencing the previous scene, or leading into the next scene, that I talked about in
Plotting, since the two scenes aren't connected (such as character A doing Q at X, with the next scene being character B doing R at Y). This doesn't mean you can ignore continuity between related scenes, however, because doing so imperils the integrity of your story.
The most difficult part about including side plots is that, unlike novels, you have to begin with an understanding of
exactly how they factor into the story, which means it's advisable that you start your writing with a complete (or near complete) picture of what you want to do/have happen in the story. You can't fudge a side plot, let alone several of them, into a short story and expect the whole thing to nicely come together with only a few minor tweaks. This means you must do some planning, whether it's only mulling over the story in your head or writing notes and making an outline.
The easiest method for including side plots is to have them related in some fashion (from the perspective of two friends (or enemies) or a new relationship in a story about coping with the death of a loved one, for two examples), which means they revolve around the same central concept. This makes it much easier to include side plots, because you're still focusing on the same core theme or point, which means the story won't seem cluttered, confused, or directionless once it's written.
All of that said, side plots in short stories operate like they do in novels, only scaled to fit the story. However, it's not advised that you have more than three or four of either, in any combination. This is for two reasons. The most obvious is the plot bunnies, because the more fodder they have to work with, the more likely it is that you'll lose the ability the keep the story short as all these ZOMGAWESOME!!!11 ideas bombard you. The second reason, and interrelated with the first, is that having more side plots makes it more difficult to keep the story short because they require more story space to effectively wrap up.
Side Plot Challenge #1: Up to four entirely unrelated story lines.
Side Plot Challenge #2: Nothing but side plots. (The dreaded "pointless" story.)
Epics
Most people associate epics with lengthy works, such as
Lord of the Rings or the
Iliad. That doesn't mean that epics are limited to being long. They can, in fact, sometimes be more effective as short stories, but how is this done?
One thing to keep in mind is that you have up to 20,000 words to work with, which is no small amount. As mentioned in the opening for this guide, however, it's best to check the publisher's guidelines for the word count they'll accept, so let's say 10,000 is the limit. (10,000 being the highest I've seen for print magazines.) Even with this limit, it's still a good 15 pages single spaced (more if you hand write), which is easily enough for our purposes.
What differentiates most short story epics from other short stories is that they most often focus on plot, not because the characterization is unimportant, but because your main focus is going to be on the events of the story. Short story epics are also the sort of story that requires a lot of planning, because you need the pieces to fit together much more seamlessly than with other sorts of short stories.
The key, then, is going to lie in which scenes you use to tell your story. Chances are good that you'll also have side plots, which is fine, because they can help build the story and the tone and atmosphere you wish to create.
Are you wanting to tell a war story? Find the pivotal and/or important points of that story and use only those. An epic love story? Do the same. Perhaps even combine the two. But most especially,
do not be afraid of having large gaps in the timeline of the story. This is inevitable and necessary, because you only need the most important moments of the story, and I'll explain in a moment how to deal with the timeline gaps.
Once you've done this, the trick is stringing them together. Writing them as individual scenes and then just ordering them sequentially will work, but it will leave your story hanging like a limp coat on a hanger. It won't be filled out, in other words, and this is something you absolutely have to do in order to have the individual pieces come together smoothly, and this is another trick to writing short story epics.
How is it done, then? Remember that the characters and events of the story are not static and defined only by the events that you've chosen to write. What happens between these key events that you've chosen? How does it affect the characters and the scenes you're writing? Make references to these events, and understand the impact they have on the story and the characters. Remember those timeline gaps I mentioned? This is how you deal with them. Don't worry about confusing the reader because you're mentioning something that happened between the last scene and the current one. Once they understand that there are large time gaps between each scene, they'll also understand, without you ever needing to state it, that these references to unwritten events are the glue that holds the pieces of the story together.
Another key is consistency, both with the scenes you've chosen to write as well as the between-scenes events. Don't have your MC a member of the government military in one scene and a member of the rebellion in the next, with only fleeting mention of his/her defection. The defection is a pivotal moment, and requires either a scene of its own (preferable) or a great deal of foreshadowing and subsequent consequences.
Epic Short Story Challenge #1: Multiple story lines covering divergent or opposing pov's.
Epic Short Story Challenge #2: Cover more than one lifetime or century.
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