I hate writing short stories. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I'm not all that fond of reading them either, to be honest, but it's the writing of them that drives me daft.
God knows I've tried, and managed it from time to time. I've even sold a few; I've got a short piece called "Under a Lady's Skirts" coming out in September 2011 from Aoife's Kiss. But they are the exception that proves the rule, which is that the first draft of any short story I attempt to write will inevitably be five or six thousand words over what the magazine is wiling to accept. Granted, I do believe that editing is good for the soul... but I've mortified my spirit by chopping down so many pieces that were striving to become novellas, I might has well have sackcloth under my skin.
I started a science-fiction piece called "Deep Places" over a year ago. It's not allowed to be any longer than seven thousand words. And I'm finding it insanely difficult. I've done four drafts so far; none of them have gotten beyond four thousand words—not because I've run out of story, but because the relatively simple, straight-forward plot I thought I'd had suddenly mushroomed into something quite different, something exciting and complicated. And now I can't get past four thousand words because I'm terrified this thing is going to explode into another vast work that I'm going to have to take a blowtorch to. It's gut-wrenching. Oh, I could just let it bubble and brew and become another novella or novel, but then I'd have another WIP on my harddrive—and still no short story!
The problem, at first glance, is merely the length. I've been doing this writing thing for almost fifteen years now, and brevity is something I've never been able to learn. I've never been able to write a complete beginning-middle-end piece coming in anywhere under the eight-thousand-word mark that is usually the ceiling for professional publishing venues.
A second reason, probably more likely, is the simple fact that I lack the ability to formulate a proper plot on its own, without taking all the characters into account. For me, the plot is not something external to the characters it affects; it is internal—it wells up from the characters. They bring their perils and their enemies with them.
There is no plot without characters. There is no understanding of a plot without a thorough understanding of the characters—their lives, their motives, their pasts and dreams. For the writer that I am, there can be no story at all unless I and the reader knows the characters intimately.
And that's damned hard to do in eight thousand words or less.
(Comic from http://giavasan.diludovico.it/archivio/2009/04/16/short-story/)
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