Short Stories That Are No Longer Short Stories & Load Bearing Ambitions

Yesterday was a weird writing day.

I’m working on a short story at the moment, scribbling a couple of pages in a notebook every day, locking down the details as I go. Yesterday the rough draft hit forty-odd pages, rolling through the first major gear change in the plot, and my momentum ground to a halt in the space of a page. For the first time since I started, I’d written less than a page.

Now, yesterday was a not-terribly-good day, but other writing still got done on other projects. I did the usual self-recrimination and doubt that comes when you stall out on a project–the inner monologue of lo, it has finally been revealed, I am rubbish and the ideas are gone and I will never do good work again–and then put my writing away at 6:00 PM and went out to eat tea and watch Netflix.

This morning I’m pondering the issue with a clearer head. Less angst, more analysis. Thinking through what it is that’s got me stuck, looking back at what’s come before to see what I’ve set up that I’m now ignoring, or what tangent have I started that’s a departure that does not fit and now need to include set-up if I want to keep it? The problem with the third act is invariably in the first, as movie writers are fond of saying, and some days you just need to apply the Kress protocol and get on with it.

I’ve done that a few times in this story, when I’ve followed an idea in the wrong direction. Usually I’ll pull myself up after four or five paragraphs, recognise that I’ve made a wrong turn and go back and make a different (usually harder) choice.

The problem this time went all the way back to the beginning, because the story had simply grown too long. 40 pages of handwritten story is approximately 8,000 to 10,000 words on average, which means I’m moving beyond the realms of a short story and into the realms of a novelette, and the little idea about telescopes and alternate worlds that could sustain a 4,000 word story feels too slight for anything that long.

The events of the story, and the pacing of them, was more-or-less occurring at the pace they should be. But a short story is about one thing, more or less. You take an idea or a point of conflict, and you play it out in a condensed punch of fiction. As you get longer, you start developing layers, otherwise you risk that feeling that the story is too long to read and offering not enough in return. And with that in mind, I’m sensing the ambition of the story–how it’s told, where the tension in placed, what’s drawing the reader through the story–wasn’t up to carrying the weight.

Back when my former flatmate and I did the Trashy Tuesday Movie watching, ambition was one of those things that separated a really good bad movie from a really tedious one. A flawed work that strives and fails is inevitably more interesting than a competent work that stays within the lines and plays it safe.

Some films have lode-bearing ambition that will shore up their failings. Short stories and novels have the same, and I believe we respond to those ambitions in ways we can’t quite pinpoint.

Having realised that, I could start seeing the ways in which the story could be shored up. Where the load-bearing ambition of the story could change, where I could create contrasts and tensions that would carry the reader along for longer (Also how I could make the story shorter, more concise–but having thought of the more ambitious approach, it’s harder to go back and do less).