When is a story a novel?
12/5/06 10:59The other day the Sarcasm Girl and I were riffing on some silly notion--I don't even remember what it was, just one of those she-says-something-I-say-something-and-it-goes-from-there things, and as the riffing petered out she said "You should turn that into a book." My kids are always trying to get me to write things--children's books, in particular (YG is emphatic that I should be writing for children, and very disappointed that two of my stories, "Sleepyboy" and "The Princess with a Rock in Her Pocket" have not already been published, lavishly illustrated) so I don't take this too seriously. "It's really not a book's worth of idea," I said. "Short story, maybe." And of course SG, being a smart cookie, asked, "How do you know?"
The truth is that, like so much of my writing, it's a seat-of-my-pants thing. Not always--some ideas are clearly limited in scope. I wrote a story I'll be reading at BayCon, "Abelard's Kiss," about a genetically engineered sex toy. That was a get-in-and-get-out sort of story; once it was done I had no impulse to expand it. On the other hand, I know a good deal about the world (as it turned out, it took place about fifteen years after The Stone War) in which it's set. I could write a book set there--I have an idea for one--but "Abelard" wasn't the germ of it. On the other hand, Point of Honour was born from a phrase uttered to me some years ago: "the hardboiled Regency." Which was more a matter of world, I suppose, than plot. I'm currently working on a short story--relatively near future SF--about a world into which a new power source is being introduced. I could probably write a novel set in that world, but the story itself is clearly a short story to me. Like love, I think some of this works on the you-know-when-you-see-it principle. But I'd be interested in hearing from other writers and thoughtful people wandering through: how do you know when an idea is a novel idea and when it's a short story idea?
The truth is that, like so much of my writing, it's a seat-of-my-pants thing. Not always--some ideas are clearly limited in scope. I wrote a story I'll be reading at BayCon, "Abelard's Kiss," about a genetically engineered sex toy. That was a get-in-and-get-out sort of story; once it was done I had no impulse to expand it. On the other hand, I know a good deal about the world (as it turned out, it took place about fifteen years after The Stone War) in which it's set. I could write a book set there--I have an idea for one--but "Abelard" wasn't the germ of it. On the other hand, Point of Honour was born from a phrase uttered to me some years ago: "the hardboiled Regency." Which was more a matter of world, I suppose, than plot. I'm currently working on a short story--relatively near future SF--about a world into which a new power source is being introduced. I could probably write a novel set in that world, but the story itself is clearly a short story to me. Like love, I think some of this works on the you-know-when-you-see-it principle. But I'd be interested in hearing from other writers and thoughtful people wandering through: how do you know when an idea is a novel idea and when it's a short story idea?