Shortish

Remember a couple weeks ago, when we talked about backstories in short stories? Well today we’re taking that topic from the other angle, from the point of view of the novel. See, last time we talked about why you shouldn’t try to fit extravagant backstories into the few words allowed within a short story. So this time, I want to tell you what you shouldn’t do with backstories in a novel.

Small Backstories

Okay, so technically it’s fine to have smaller snippets of backstory within a novel, but that’s not what I mean here.

Within novels, what you’ll want to do is come up with the full backstories for your characters, so that bits and pieces can be revealed at a time. You’ll want to make something that's rich and real, something that shows how lifelike your characters are. What you will not want to do is start working on your novel with no idea who your characters are, and no notion of what their lives were like before the story started. That’s what I mean by small backstories. Try to get to know your characters before you start writing them into a story.

See, when people read novels, they’re looking for an elaborate story. They want characters with depth and detail, with histories that might be similar to ones we face in our everyday lives. So that’s what your characters need to have.

A lot of new writers forget this, when they first start writing. They focus on the story itself rather than on the characters, and the book ends up falling flat. We don’t want that. It’s the last thing we want.

My recommendation is to write shortish backstories for each of your characters before real work on the story begins. You don’t have to write a lot, just a bullet point list of maybe fifteen to twenty things that happened in their lives and things you should know about them, so that you’ll know how they might respond in any given situation. Without this information, without really knowing who your characters are, your readers will never even be given a chance. 

Nobody wants that, either. 

[love]

{Rani Divine}

One Day

Maybe I’m getting redundant at this point, but I can’t help but continue. There are certain things, certain small aspects of story, that cannot be pulled and stretched out into novel length. If you string them along and weave them together, they might make it. Otherwise, it’s a bad idea even to try. Don’t do it. Please. Novels need far more than just one focus. So today, what you shouldn't do is...

A Day in the Life

This too is something I’ve seen people stretch out into a full length novel. And this time, I have actually seen it succeed. So today, I’m saying not to try it until you’re extra-seasoned, until you know very well what you’ll need to do in order to make it work. If you’re not there yet, write your idea down and keep it on the back burner until you’re ready to work it out.

I’ll use Michael Crichton’s Prey as an example. The majority of the story (note: not all of the story) takes place within one day. But it’s not a normal day. There’s a lot that happens, and Crichton has to go into a great deal of detail with every few hours. If you don’t have enough going on to make that work, then maybe you need to rethink your idea entirely.

The trouble is, a lot of the time, novels cover a day in a chapter or less. There’s only so much that can happen within a single day, as you well know. There are only so many hours, only so many things we can do to stretch out a day from any given character’s point of view. If we tried to explain everything that happened in one single day, it'd be boring and fall flat.

That’s why I recommend that if you’re determined to try it, you wait until you have at least a couple other novels under your belt. Get to where you really know what you’re doing, to the point that you feel strong and wise enough to build a good story.

Until then, it’ll be easier on you and better for your readers if you stick with something simpler, like a regular full-length novel with multiple plot lines and many days.

[love]

{Rani D.}

Blank

Today we’re talking about something that I’ve actually seen stretched out into a novel. I didn’t like it. I actually didn’t finish it. So this time, perhaps more than some of the others, I hope you’ll take me very seriously.

Character gets a ____

Fill in the blank with whatever you wish. Fact of the matter is, it’s not enough to make a novel. It might make the good beginning of a novel, or even of a short story, but it doesn’t make a full novel. How could it?

Here’s the story:

Character goes to the store. Looks at shoes. Finds a pair of red ones. Imagines self wearing them at some particular event. Character buys shoes and goes home.

Tell me, how is that a novel? Really, I'm asking. I don't get it. I know people have tried it, and I know some feel they've succeeded with it, but no—I wouldn't say that's a novel. But it might make a jolly good short story, if I'm being honest.

Like I said, I’ve actually seen people try to lengthen this sort of story out into a novel. It ends up dragging, flailing, and grabbing onto anything it can in order to get the right number of words for it to be a full-length novel. It’s rough to read, because I can see exactly what struggles the writer went through to try to push it into a novel when it didn’t want to be. And I’ve been through it too. I’ve written stories that got a little too long, and I’ve tried to make them novel-worthy. They weren’t. They didn’t even want to be. And I struggle to go back and read them, much less read someone else’s.

Point being, I highly recommend avoiding writing this sort of novel. If you have an idea of this nature, make it a short story. It’s a length that can handle the smallness of your story, and do it proper justice.

A novel, on the other hand, will not.

Trust me.

[love]

{RD}

Single

Similar to Monday's topic, today we’re covering a very broad subject. Why? Because it's the best way I could think of to explain what I mean. ;-)

Singular Events

What do I mean by that? I mean a single point in time. Say, a night at a party, a day at the beach, a trip out of town, a death, a birth. Those are all singular events, things that cannot be stretched out on their own to make a full novel.

However, they can be added to, in order to become a novel. Take a day at the beach, for example. Throw in a shark attack. Someone else is trapped off shore, and the tide is coming up. What happens there, and how everyone deals with those events, could possibly be made into a novel. That's actually not probable, and a slightly horrible example. Sorry. You’d have to push it, but it might work. But a simple story about a day at the beach, would not. It might make a good short story, but you’d never find enough words to make a novel.

The trouble with singular events is that they’re just that: singular. Novels like to have multiples. That’s the whole fun of them. We have a plethora of characters, many different plot lines to follow, various things going on at any given time. Short stories are for the singular, the few characters, the one plot line.

Essentially, what I’m here to tell you today is that if you only have one little idea, then it’s best you aim for a short story.

But if you have a mass of ideas in your head, and you’d like to see if you can fit them all together into one concise story, then you should aim for a novel.

That’s a big thing that a lot of writers forget about while they’re writing. They take a singular story and think it can stretch, and they force it to become a novel when it never wanted to be. And that’s one of the worst things you can do, because no one will ever want to read it.

My apologies for being so blunt. The editor in me is strong today!

[love and hugs]

{Rani}