A short story is a valid art form

I'm far away from home and my typical writing routine, staying here in Moscow to take care of my mom after she had a heart attack and a stroke, so it feels very weird to attempt to wrestle my brain into writing about writing, but I shall. And the topic this time is something that Stone Crowns Magazine asked me to dish on, namely, how writing short stories is a valid art form and not just something to practice your hand at while prepping to write a novel. I've only written one short story so far, Cube, and it was done as on request of one of my readers and bloggers, so I banged it out in a couple hours (it could've been much better), but I believe that a short story is separate from a novel, it's its own beast, with its own rules, and it can even take you longer to write than a novel. I'll start with a quote from Alice Munro who recently has won the Nobel Prize in Literature as a "master of the contemporary short story" (I have yet to read her stories), and then will go into what I feel about writing short stories that makes them unique, as I do not have enough experience to write what I know.

"I really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art ... not just something that you played around with until you got a novel written."

― Alice Munro

Every story needs 8 elements. This is something I picked up from Chuck Palahniuk, namely, from one of his readings, when he read aloud his short story Romance. He said that he is going to a writer's group, has been going for years, and that someone (I don't remember who exactly) told him, either in his writer's group or just another writer, that every story needs 8 elements, and that it is very much applicable to a short story as well as a novel. Here they are: 

1. A clock.
2. A birth. 
3. A death. 
4. 3 elements that repeat, and those 3 elements need to start on page 1.
5. Make the reader smarter than you. 
6. Make the reader laugh. 
7. Make the reader cry. 
8. Make the reader sick. 

He also said that every story needs to be written for therapy and read aloud. Therapy is important because you don't know if anyone will ever read it, and you want to have a payback from writing. Reading it aloud helps you see where you stumble, and that's where the story needs to be cleaned up. These two last things aside, think about it. If you can, read Romance by Chuck Palahniuk and then see how this principle applies. The clock is a must. In real life the time is always ticking, always bringing us to the end of our lives, and living while we have this time is all that matters to us. Stories with a clock matter, they make our hearts race, they feel real. The birth and the death... they don't have to be literal, but it's great if they are, because it's what happens in life all the time, somebody is born, somebody dies, and it has a significant impact on us. The 3 elements can really be any number of elements, thematically, but we tend to be overwhelmed if too much if communicated to us, and it doesn't grab us if there is too little, so 3 seems like the perfect number. Those elements can be anything. In my short story it's "getting lost", "curiosity", "breaking rules". They could be better, but that's what they are. To compare, in my trilogy SIREN SUICIDES, there are also 3 main elements, but they are bigger, since the story is bigger, and they are "suicide", "abuse", "finding your voice". Next come the difficult parts, you have to make the reader feel smarter than you, make them laugh and cry and feel sick. These are all very powerful emotions, and this is why we read, to experience emotions. If your short story doesn't have that (and it's much harder to pack all that into a short story), you've lost the reader. 

In a short story there is no luxury in explaining things. In a novel form, you can hook the reader from the first page, and then slowly ease them into the ride. Stephen King is a master of that. He can stretch out suspense to 10 pages, more, keeping you on the edge of your seat, waiting for what will happen. But in a short story you don't have this luxury. It's fast, it has to give you a snippet of a larger picture, a window into a larger story, yet staying a complete story on its own merit, with a beginning, middle, and end. My favorite shorts stories are those by O. Henry and Anton Chekhov. If you haven't read them, please do, they are masterfully written. They evoke a completely different response in me as opposed to novels. They give a little glimpse into people's lives, into a certain episode of their lives, and that episode shows an incredible depth of feeling, so in a sense a short story feels like a very deep well, and, compared to it, a novel is like a vast ocean. They both hold water (story), but is has a different shape, a different entry point, a different weight, and a different takeaway. You dip into the well to get clean water, have a drink, and sigh in relief from thirst. But you plunge into the ocean with your whole body and swim for hours, relishing the feeling. At least, this is how it feels for me.

A story is a story is a story. In the end, it is unfair to treat a short story as something inferior to a novel. It isn't. It's as hard if not harder to write, in its own way, and it's as much a story as a novel is, or as a flash fiction story is. Even a quick couple-lines joke is a story, with a beginning, middle, and an end as a punch line. No matter what the length of your story is, it's a story first and foremost, and it should be treated as such. There are universal elements that are part of it, and unless we make it interesting to the readers, they will abandon it, and go elsewhere. I wish I could write here more on the craft of writing a short story. Alas, I don't know, I've only written one, although I've read a ton. But from what it feels like, a short story makes you work harder as a writer, it's unforgiving. You can't ramble on for pages about something irrelevant, there is simply no place. It makes you be a better writer, it teaches you to be more concise, and it's truly an art to be able to give your reader an emotional jolt with only a few pages as opposed to a couple hundred.

I sincerely hope this was helpful to you. It was helpful to me, actually, and it made me scared, in a way, because I want to write a bunch of short stories about my dating experiences, when I was freshly divorced and started meeting guys after being married for 15 years, which was quite an experience. I felt like a kid in a candy shop and wanted to try everything, and, boy, I did. The tone of them will be a lot like Guts by Chuck Palahniuk, so this will be the blog post I will refer to, when I'll get my courage to start on this project. When, that is, I will work up the courage.

Write first, research later!

Recently, out of multiple Twitter conversations, this topic about research bubbled up to the surface, with many heated opinions on it, that all came down to the following questions. Should I do research before starting on a novel?  Should I do research while I'm writing my 1st draft, or 2nd draft, or what number draft? Should I not write at all if I haven't done research? How much research do I need to do, when, how, why, and can someone hold my hand, please, because I'm afraid to start writing my novel because I haven't done the appropriate research? And more, in the similar manner. The funny thing is, I've been through this. I've done a ton of research, in various stages of writing, and I came to this very simple conclusion, for which I know I will be beaten up by an angry mob of writers who believe otherwise. Because, I say, write first, research later! Hey, don't look at me like that, I can back this up, okay? Of course, my 1 year of experience is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, but to me it's something, it's everything, actually. It saved me time and multiple headaches, so here is what I have to say on the subject. 

Let your story drive your research, not your research drive your story. Before I seriously started writing my 1st novel, SIREN SUICIDES (and I started 3 times and abandoned it 2 times), I fretted, I trembled, I bit my nails in fear, because I was about to write about all things water, songs, boats, fishing, and even a touch of Greek mythology, of which I had no clue. I still don't. I've never gone fishing on a boat, I never dived, I never studied music, because singing in a choir and trying to play piano for a couple months doesn't count. I'm not a Greek mythology scholar, nor do I understand how sound passes through water and other scientifical stuff like that. In light of this and scared out of my mind, on top of it petrified of things like character development, plots, subplots, dialogue, exposition, style, you name it, I read a ton of books on writing and started doing detailed research. I wrote out a list of characters, I wrote a biography for each (gotta have backstory, right?), I bought books on marine life, I studied tides in Puget Sound (a lot of action is happening there), I researched types of fish, I researched... well, I better stop here because I researched a lot. I even went as far as plotting out the entire novel 3 (!) times, writing and rewriting it, a la Garth Nix style. Guess what, once I started writing, 90% of this research (90%!!!) went down the drain. All these hours I spent, were for nothing. I had fun, yes, but they didn't add to the story. In fact, those details distracted me, and I paid for it, paid with having to write more drafts than I needed. With ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel, I ditched the whole research thing, and here is what happened.

When you commit to a story, the universe aligns in your favor. I'm not kidding. I had this epiphany multiple times now while writing ROSEHEAD, and I want to scream about it on every corner of the universe, because... *drumroll* ...instead of having to write 5 drafts, I think I will only need 2! Partially this is due to the fact that it's my 2nd novel and by now I have learned to write cleaner and hold things in my head, but partially it's due to the fact that I focused on the story from the start, I committed to it, and the story paid me back, so to say. You heard this saying before, write what you know? Well, I understand what it means now. It doesn't mean, write what you actually know in terms of factual knowledge, it means, write about what you have experienced emotionally, because you can fake everything else but your knowledge of life. You know how they also say, you don't know what it's like having a kid until you actually have one? The same principle applies. If you have experienced love, joy, grief, anger, bitterness, fury, terrible loss, amazing gain, you can write about them all convincingly. But if you haven't, no matter how much research you do, your reader won't believe you. Here is my method. I start writing my 1st draft and I write down the 1st thing that comes to my head. People's names, occupations, locations, everything. If something puzzles me, I may do a quick Google search, to find the correct term for something, and I move on. I let the story ask me questions, and then in 2nd draft all I have to do is simply supply the details that are missing, but the story is written down already, and that's the most important part. For example, I made up a forest on the outskirts of Berlin in ROSEHEAD, and today I learned that there actually is one, it's Grunewald. I had goosebumps. And this is not the only time that it happened. It's like my brain knows better than me, you know what I mean?

Even if you're wiring a historical novel, it's all about the story. I have heard people tell me that because I write fantasy, I can get away with not doing research beforehand. But I disagree. Historical novel or not, a story is a story is a story. It's about characters, about people, and stuff that happens to them based on their decisions. Aside from that, you can dress them up as medieval princes or aliens in spacesuits, it doesn't matter. If the reader doesn't care for your characters, no matter how detailed and authentic you are in your creation of the historical background, the reader will toss your book. The secret is, the reader will forgive research blunders in favor of the story, not the other way around. And it's a harsh lesson to learn, because once a reader is burned, a reader is very unlikely to pick up another novel written by you. Ouch. So what do you do? You research as you go, just enough to give you some information, a quick glance at an article or an image, not more, and keep moving forward. Keep writing. Write out your heart, write for the reason you started writing in the first place, and worry about specific details later. At least, this is my approach, and I'm loving it. After I'm done with ROSEHEAD, which is turning out not so much fantasy but more magical realism, I will start on IRKADURA, a literary novel set in Soviet Union in the 80's, and even though I am originally from Russia, I have forgotten many things. Yet I don't plan to do research until I complete the 1st draft, and then only sparingly, only enough to make the story sound authentic, focusing on the characters and not on the correct historical facts.

There. Wait... I hear someone knocking on my front door. It's the mob! They came for me! They... Oy! Let me shout something else in my defense. I only meant research about fiction books, hear me? Ouch, that looks like bananas! Don't throw bananas at me! Don't... Well, jokes aside, what about you? Can't wait to hear about your struggles in regards to research. 

The danger of long descriptions

I was debating whether or not to call this post THE CURSE OF LONG DESCRIPTIONS, but thought that was a bit drastic, though I can assure you that I'm thoroughly afflicted with said curse, and I certainly have seen the danger of using long descriptions in Siren Suicides, my 1st novel, particularly in Drafts 3 and 4 (I will be posting them for download later on my site, by the way, since people asked me, to see the difference). I got carried away in dishing about the weather and the clouds and the rain (did I mention, I live in Seattle?). Yeah. Anyway, like every beginning writer, I suffered from the fear of my reader not understanding what I'm talking about, painstakingly writing out everything in long poetic passages that my Beta Readers confessed to skipping. I hope I'm much wiser in Rosehead, the 2nd novel I'm writing right now. I hope. Nonetheless, I do know now the danger of long descriptions, and here it is for you in all its intricate glory. 

Readers don't care for beautiful. Readers care for story. This was a very hard blow for me and a hard lesson to learn. As much as I tried to act all nonplussed on the outside, I totally squirmed in hurt inside upon my Beta Readers telling me that they could do without lengthy poetic descriptions of the rain. Oh, how could they! Oh, but it was so beautiful! Oh, but I worked so hard at it! Yeah, it took me a while, but then I cut a lot of them, ruthlessly, I might say, out of the final Draft 5 of Siren Suicides (not without shedding a tear or two, dare I mention). And, lo and behold, the story flowed better. Really, the descriptions were bogging the action down, and, what's interesting, cutting a lot of them out also forced me to pay more attention to character development, because it was kind of hidden behind all the descriptive facade. And, it made me realize something else too. Namely... 

Don't over-explain to the reader, let the reader imagine. This is key in any story telling, be it a book, a movie, a play, a song, anything. The idea is that we all have had similar experiences in our lives, but we are also very different. For example, we were all afraid of some type of monster when we were little. Don't tell me you weren't, I don't believe you for a second. I was afraid of a monster under my bed, thinking he will snatch my feet when I got out in the morning or got in at night, so I sprinted up really fast, making sure to tuck in the blanket all around me, in case the monster decided to try and pull at my feet while I was sleeping. Now, you might have been afraid of the moster in your closet, and you thought he was very green in appearance, and somebody else was afraid of a ghost in the kitchen. For all these different people who will read your book, all you have to say is, there lived a monster in the room, then give him a few broad strokes, as in, he was stout and his lips opened like that of a toad, and he was covered in shabby fur. Don't even give the color. The reader will supply the rest, making this monster hers or his, and a very real one at that, because this monster will be tied to her or his childhood fears. If you explain too much, you will make your monster too foreign and it will be hard for readers to relate to.  In fact, less readers will relate to your specific monster, which will directly result in a diminished success of your book.

Every sentence has to either advance the story or to develop the characters. I wish I'd said that. I didn't. Kurt Vonnegut said it, not exactly like that, I'm paraphrasing him. So, imagine you are wasting your precious sentences on descriptions. A polite reader will suffer through them, a not so polite reader will toss your book away, frustrated. "But.. but.. but... !" You're saying, I can hear it. Yeah, I have the same problem. I love my descriptions, how can I not describe everything? Well, think of it this way. Are your descriptions relevant to the story? Does the description of a sock left on a chair signify a clue in your mystery? Then, by all means, describe it down to specific cotton fiber and the knit rib and the red color of the stripes, heck, even specify the shade, crimson royale, or whatever, assuming that the killer in your book has a fetish on socks particularly of crimson royale shade. I'm just making this up on the fly, but you get the idea. I use a very simple rule of about 3 sentences. Every new setting I introduce, I try to give it enough broad brush strokes to orient the reader, and then I move on.

Long descriptions are an excuse to skip hard work. I have felt this myself, so I know it's true. Whenever I got stuck, I found myself ruminating extensively on this or that outfit of a character, or the description of their hair, or the way their jeans looked, or the way the sky looked when they gazed at it. I mean, oh, I'm so guilty of this, you have no idea! It's so easy to flip an object in my mind, writing about it from this and that angle, and it's so hard to write action, knowing what will happen, how characters will react,  what will happen next, how it will change the story. As soon as I recognized what I was doing, I started seeing it in other books. Literally, I could see spots where the author just got lazy. Everyone does it, from big names like Stephen King to every single newbie author. And I'm not talking about necessary breathing points that follow intense action, I'm talking about plain fatigue and fillers, places that could be cut and could've made the story advance faster. Hey, everyone slacks off once in a while, right? Writers are no different (I do it too, but don't tell anyone!).

Well. This is it, really. I'm sure there are more terrible dangers lengthy descriptions possess (like this very lengthy blog post, for example), but the main one is really one simple fact. You will bore your reader and your reader will put your book down, and you don't want that. You want your reader to be glued to your book, turning page after page, wanting to know what happens next.