Little Willow: I love reading short stories—I just can’t write ‘em.

Dawntreader90: Welcome!

I don’t think that they’re necessarily easier, just easier for me. I know lots of writers who find the opposite true.

Hah! I think you’re the first person to like the all-lower case thing. I have good friends who hate it so much they won’t read my blog. Tee hee.

just popping in to say i discovered your blog today and that i am in perfect agreement with your assessment that “world buildery” stories are much easier to tell than ones where you have to get every tiny detail correct or risk someone jumping down your throat about it.

(that’s a long sentence, but i don’t think it’s a run-on.)

not to mention, the imagination flows freer than when you second-guess yourself by thinking, “well, i don’t REALLY know what it looks like, so i shouldn’t talk about it.”

anyway, i also ADORE the fact that you don’t use capital letters. i don’t use them either unless it’s to emphasize Important Words ala the A.A. Milnean-style of Fine Literature.

That ‘stuff happens’ bit, though. Pretty roomy.

Short stories blow. Just walk away.

I can’t believe you said that out loud (er, wrote that in public). I usually keep that info secret. Hee. Hee.

P.S. I have just finished my second attempt at a short story and, well, no, it’s really the first three chapters of a novel again.

Some “Comic Book Guy” type tells you in an arch tone: “Sir/Madam – in Chapter 4 of your book, you describe the Eiffel Tower as X feet tall, while in reality it is Y feet tall — 2 meters taller than your claim. How do you justify this factual error?”

You: “Have you measured it yourself?”

Comic Book Guy type: “Well, uh, no, I looked it up in Wikipedia…”

You: “Have you been to Paris and walked up the tower yourself?”

Comic Book Guy type: “I… No…”

You: “Do you personally know someone who has measured the current height of the Eiffel Tower?”

Comic Book Guy type: “Errr…”

You: “We all suffer from a lack of direct experience. And this is just getting worse. With all this secondary experience of the world should come a little bit of humility… don’t you think?”

And writers are expected to shackle their stories to these “rulebooks”, to these clichés about “realistic human behavior”…

… but the rules are not that realistic. In fact, they ARE clichéd, because they don’t bother with all the exceptions that occur almost daily.

Read the news headlines any given day, and you come across examples of human behavior so bizarre or unusual, an editor would dismiss them IF they were fiction.

As for purely factual detail in a story (chemistry, physics, geography etc.), writers should be more rigorous.

either one is, to my mind, difficult to pull off.

I have been known to take a roll of wrapping paper and whirl about the room to see if something i said happened could actually happen in a sword fight. And i’ve had to adjust things accordingly. I’ve also made my husband catch me when i fall, and researched crossbows and lighthouses. But that’s about it.

I write “real word” stuff, and have now done one fantasy/horror book. Distinct pluses/problems working with both. I really wrestle with the real world things, though. I feel like I beat my head against the desk to do things that “seem” to come easily to other people. Kissing scenes? Fuggetaboutit. So f***king hard. It takes me forever to figure out if I’m going for the shock of recognition (that’s a kiss!), or if I’m just using the kiss to stage something else (it’s a kiss! and then a dead body falls on the scene). I like to ask readers what they liked and what they responded to. The answers are often surprising (and smart).

LIkewise, I think it’s really hard to write romance and other convention-heavy genres, because your audience is equally acute. They’ve seen so many first kisses, break-ups, reconciliations (or in science fiction: first contacts, time traveling paradoxes, or eureka moments) that they’re pretty good at spotting the puppet strings.

One person might finally write the book that has been brewing in her mind for years while another writes a story for kids that is fairly autobiographical. Who will finish first? There’s no way to know.

Which will be the more meaningful story? It depends on the reader.