Cherys,
As someone who's written two novels (neither of which have made the cut) and very few short stories, I'm probably less qualified still to advise, but I'd just say, don't forget about sub-plots in the novel.
I doubt they exist much, if at all, in short stories, but in novels I think they're pretty much essential. Although to plan them would be ideal, to a degree I also think you can make them up as you're working your way through the first draft; e.g. by pondering which of the minor characters are most interesting, and what might happen to them/what might they do that, (ideally) impacts at least tangentially on the main character/characters?

Dafydd

Cherys - I'm fascinated by this thread! What sort of short stories do you write and have you uploaded any here?
I only write short stories (for women's mags and some serials so max 16000 words) so I haven't got any advice. I just wanted to ask you why you feel obliged to write a novel, if your short stories are getting accepted? Some people are naturally novelists and others naturally short story writers. Is it because you want to have a novel published? And if so, why? Is it because you think that novelists are somehow superior to short story writers?

Jem,

Excellent questions, though very near the knuckle for me. Ouch! No I don't think writing novels is superior. Through choice I read and return to shorts and often get more out of them. Maybe I have a very short attention span, but the power of a Carver or Alice Munroe, Tobias Wolff or Murakami tends to stay with me far longer than most novels. And my favourite ever novel stylistically, and for what it packs in, is Gatsby, which is about 85 pages I think - almost a long short. Could easily list 100 shorts I love, but maybe only two dozen novels.

I started a novel for the embarrassingly weedy reason that everyone said I should. Went through a phase of getting a lot of stuff accepted (this was yonks ago) and so friends and husband who financed me working part time so i could write, all said Do it, suggesting it was a natural, grown up progression. An acquaintance had just written a novel in a six week burst over the summer and sold it immediately so I thought, Gizz a job I can do that. Slowly found I couldn't.

At the stage now where I think it should be possible to learn this art, and I want to, as ideas for longer more complex pieces are starting to form, and because of sheer bloodymindedness. Don't want to fail at something when so much effort's gone into it. By the way my definition of success isn't cat fights between publishing houses as to who gets it, its merely a print out of a script I'm happy to put my name to, whether it sells or not. (That might change if i got there and no one wanted it, of course...)

But... writing and teaching writing beats working for a living, and I'm aware that it's almost impossible to get a shorts collection published or to teach on a decent BA or MA course without having published a book.

I don't have the talent to write short fiction for magazines. I admire people like Jane Wenham Jones who can turn any incident into a witty mag story. My stuff's odder, gloomier, at any rate, harder to place than that. It used to do well in mid-range comps and small presses. Morale boosting but non-starter financially.

How about you, Jem? How did you get into it? Who do you sell to? Do you want to write a book? Have you written one?

Cherys

Cherys, I don't particularly want to write a book. I have written 2 teen novels but my first love is my short stories which I sell to Take A Break and Woman's Weekly for the main, as well as having sold stories abroad. Last year I was asked to have a go at a serial and have since written five. I'm currently writing my sixth and between inspiration or waiting for feedback to an installment I'll tap out a short. At the minute I'm writing a story about what happens when 2 women pick up the other's Sainsbury's carrier bag in a rush to get on the bus after work. It's gone well up to this point but now I'm a bit stumped!

Have you seen the latest Woman&Home? It's their summer fiction issue and there are about half a dozen yummy looking stories to read by well known writers. I'd love to get something published in W&H but they only accept stories from agents.

Thanks for the tip - I'll get it. I haven't seen it but I rate W&H's short fiction very highly. First time I bought the mag I found a short by Andrea Levy in there and was very impressed. Odd situation for you I suppose, as for most mags you don't need an agent. Do you know an agent who could nominally represent you for some of the tougher mags to get into - W&H, Mail etc? Maybe someone on here? Might be worth putting out a post. Like the sound of your shopping bags. That's exactly the sort of simple but very fruitful idea I never come up with! Have you posted your bag story somewhere here?

Cherys

Jem - Isn't it crazy W&H only accepting agented stories, even if you have a CV as long as your arm with stories published in other mags?? Cutting off noses to spite faces, I reckon.

Rosy

Cherys, I haven't posted my bag story yet. I haven't finished it. When I do I'll send it off to a mag.

Rosy - no one seems to want short story writers as clients. I wouldn't want an agent myself for my stories as I wouldn't want to part with fifteen per cent of my earnings, but it would be nice to get something in a British glossy. I'll have to have a word with Charlotte - doesn't she work for W&H?

It's tricky for agented writers to get single short stories published - trickier for me than before I had a novel out, to be honest. I used to send mine off to comps but I don't feel I can do that nowadays, so a lot of the old avenues are closed. My style isn't suited to the very specific requirements of women's weekly magazines, either. So I was really pleased to be asked to submit something to W & H.

The two stories I've sold (one to an anthology, not a mag), my agent hasn't been interested in handling, so commission didn't come into it, but I guess that would be different for an agent who'd taken you on specifically as a short-story writer.

Emma

You have an agent interested in a novel you're writing and you're considering stopping to write a different one? How do you know the new one isn't going to meet the same fate? My advice is to plough on and get to the end of the one you're writing, then write the next one. You learn from doing it.

I just can't see my way structurally through a longer piece.

I probably can't be that helpful on this either but I was interested in your question and thinking about it. I think (emphasis on think here as I'm not sure) that what I do is look at the individual scene/chapter in front of me in terms of what it is getting across and where it is going and what it shows about the characters, but above that I have a set-point I am aiming for that might encompass quite a few chapters and gives a shape across a larger piece of book. And after that I think of the next etc. I
write comedy so this is something that may be more suitable for comedy than serious fiction but I find it helpful because it is easy to hold in your head at all times and go off on a tangent (necessary to comedy) and come back again and know where you are headed. But it isn't the size of the whole book, which would be impossible for me to hold in my head and also allows creativity because once you've got to your first destination you see the next one naturally from there. After I finished the first draft I returned and reshaped the structure again with some of the things I had discovered during the writing in mind, to get the most out of them, emphasise things, build things and look at the pace in relation to build or where we were in relation to the key points. This is probably a really messy way of doing things but, for me, it works better as with comedy you need lots of little ideas along the way as well as the big overarching movement and there is no way you can come up with that structurally in advance. Well, I can't, anyway.

But it does take a lot of wrestling and reworking.

Not lack of application, or ideas exactly, it's just every time I sit down they seem to evaporate and splinter, and I write reams but never get closer to a cohesive story. I know what I want to say but seem unable to say it. It either comes out as tight little nuggets of plot or long winded pontification by characters.

Maybe you are being overanxious about getting across the ideas as you might in a short story where the idea is closer to the story surface almost? Perhaps if you start with the ideas then jsut write and explore the characters, the relationships, the underlying tension/whatever and forget about the ideas and then go back and see where they are expressing them and emphasising that or where they are pontificating and seeing if you can make it more suggestive in a scene. Piece by piece. It's a lot like weaving, I think.

Think you're right Snowbell. Hadn't recognised it but yes, the idea is definitely closer to the surface in short fiction. That's a very good point. Will think it over.

Dannyrhodes - er, had an agent interested, past tense. Last time we spoke was 3 years ago when one of my kids was seriously ill and both were bawling their heads off down the phone and I could hear her giving up on me as we spoke. What you've said is exactly what all my friends and family say. It's a persuasive argument but they aren't the ones unable to get it to work. I know loads of writers whose first novel didn't work. Yes, i have learned by doing it - 100 000 words and more of doing it. But I've also worked as a reader for agents and script doc for some published authors and know the difference between a workable novel and an unworkable one. Thought that knowledge would mean I could trouble shoot the book but it doesn't necessarily. Don't want to waste anyone's time navel gazing, but am very interesting in hearing how the process works for those who have done both, and am getting some excellent advice here.

Cherys

Cherys, follow your instinct. You're right - most first novels don't get published nor do they deserve to. Start something new. Tell yourself it's only a short story but keep writing it.Even if you don't finish it you'll have a short story!

Lammi, are you in ths summer special W&H?
And why do you feel you can't still submit to comps. Loads of well established authors I know submit to Bridport and National Short Story Prize. Any comp which doesn't exclude published novelists is fair game, isn't it?

with comedy you need lots of little ideas along the way as well as the big overarching movement and there is no way you can come up with that structurally in advance.

This is obviously true of comedy, but I think in a possibly less obvious way it's also true of - what shall we call it? - non-comedy writing. (Don't want to call it serious, because that implies comedy isn't...). And I agree, it's that kind of thing that just arises as you go along, and you can't really plan for. And yet it's those little ideas - little scraps of images and moments of characterisation - that give a novel real richness of texture and life. My instinct with a novel is to throw them all in, see which find a home and which don't, which just stay as scraps, and which grow into something that changes the direction of the whole project.

I know that one sign that it's going badly (for internal reasons to do with the book, or external reasons to do with the rest of life) is when I find those little things aren't occurring to me: it's gone dead on me, I don't think about it constantly when I'm not writing, and when I am I'm just plodding on with the main plot. It's almost as if those little ideas are the bellweathers of the whole project: they betray how my creative brain is (or isn't) sparking almost more than what appears to be more major work.

Emma