9 Ways Writing Short Stories Can Pay Off for Writers

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Sargentodiaz

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I find myself in a place where I've bogged down on writing my historical novel epic about 18th century California.

So, it was like a bolt of lightning when I came across this article on my Writer's Digest daily feed. It makes a whole lot of sense and has given me a kick in the rear.

The idea came to me and I found myself doing the research necessary to write a short story based on California just after the Civil War. Creating the character down to the weapons he carried, the saddle on his horse, and the pack saddle for his mule.

The stuff about the rancho was already in my files and I just had to do a bit of digging to find the poor widow with her 4 children being faced by an evil Gringo to sell out her home.

Now, just to make it interesting and entertaining.

The full article is @ [FONT=Times New Roman, serif]http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/9-ways-writing-short-stories-can-pay-off-for-writers[/FONT]
 

ML-Larson

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My current series of short stories was originally conceived as a novel. I still plan on finishing that novel, one day eventually, but I very quickly realised that the whole premise just worked better as interconnected shorts. It's let me take all of the interesting bits out of what was otherwise a huge, bloated narrative, and tell them one piece at a time.

It also lets me explore parts of the universe I wouldn't have been able to within the scope of the novel. Since the novel is in essence fantasy post-apocalyptic, the series has allowed me to go back and show what everything was like before the downfall.

And as it is now, the shorts have been selling for the last year, while I am still working on the novel now.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Well, most of those things make sense. Contests are generally nonsense, though. There are a very few contests that have meaning, but most of them, at least ninety percent, are a complete waste of time, even if you win them.

Networking with short fiction editors is as meaningless as a fart in a whirlwind. No meaning at all. Online retailers really don't give a rat's behind about the number of titles you have, but are only concerned with how well what you do have sells. And today's short stories make money and hold their value? In what universe? This is true only for a tiny few writers.

All of this, of course, is meaningless unless you can write top level short stories that actually sell. Maybe one writer in a hundred can do this at all, and maybe one in a thousand can do so on anything like a regular basis. The only reason short stories can help a writer's career is because short stories are incredibly difficult to write well enough to sell at all, let alone sell in a way, or to a place, that matters.

It's fifty times easier to sell a novel to a good publisher than it is to sell a short story to a good magazine. This is why short stories matter. They matter because very darned few writers can write stories that are good enough to beat the competition. With short stories, your direct competition is all the best short story writer in you genre that the world has to offer.

With novels, your direct competition is otehr new writers who have never published a novel. This is a difference so immense that it's hard to measure.

I'm all for writing short stories, if you love to write and read short stories, but writing them for any reason other than pure love is almost always a dead end street. Chances are extremely high that short stories will not further your career, and will just waste a lot of time. Which is fine, if you;re writing them for love. If you're writing them only because you think they'll help your career, however, it's best to stick to novels.
 

ML-Larson

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I think this article was probably geared more toward the self-pub crowd, though. Short reads do sell on Amazon, and quite well. The more you have in your back-catalogue, the more return business you have. Releasing one or two a month, and using multiple pen names is a pretty common strategy for a lot of short story authors right now.
 

WriterBN

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I think this article was probably geared more toward the self-pub crowd, though. Short reads do sell on Amazon, and quite well. The more you have in your back-catalogue, the more return business you have. Releasing one or two a month, and using multiple pen names is a pretty common strategy for a lot of short story authors right now.

It really depends on genre/category. I've never had much luck with single short stories on Amazon (or even my recent book with three linked stories), but my full-length collection sold pretty well the first couple of years.
 

Coconut

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Seems to me that the building the bio and being professional points are the only valid ones in that article. The others are a real stretch...the few regularly published short story writers I know say that short stories are a good way to get your foot in the door and build your skills until you're ready to write a novel. And the article's author doesn't seem to have any short story credits....maybe I'm being overly critical, but big red flag
 
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