I think some of my limitations when it comes to writing short stories is that I think it’s “1,000-2,000” words and that’s it. That was the main range that I was given to write in for the majority of my assessment tasks when I was at university and so I’ve just been stuck in this loop of struggling to write such a brief story. If you type “word length of a short story” it comes up with the suggestions of “1,500-7,500” words. It still includes the small range that I had at university, but seems like a much easier word length to breathe in. Another place on the internet says the average short story should be around “5,000-10,000” words, and that’s much more up my alley. The university has the same reason that competitions do for the word limitation (time and volume of works to critique) , but I realise that it’s caused me to box in my idea of a short story ＿〆(。。)

I have been able to develop my skills on creating brief stories while I was at university, but it hasn’t removed the stress of sitting down to plan one. I had to reframe my idea that a “story” is always a sequence of events and narrow down a “short story” to equalling a single scene. Which, that in itself is not a problem, but for me, it’s hard for me to not run away with scenes. The worlds kind of explosively expand on their own, like putting pen to paper and writing out the first scene is the big bang for that work. And then I have no idea which section to narrow the story down to because I can see the whole picture and it feels strange to give someone just a section of the canvas when I want them to know everything else (-‿-“)

The shortest forms of writing I do (not including poetry) are prompted writing. They’re basically snapshots of what I see when I am responding to the prompt. Interestingly enough, I rarely stretch these into a full story anymore, with the last one probably having been Rini & Butler. This might also be due to my infrequency of writing prompts. These are usually not long enough for submission anywhere and I often feel like they don’t tell a “story” … but in the end, they do, don’t they? They convey a scene that brings in a snippet of a story that the reader can then elaborate on themselves. And so I realised, when I’m doing prompted writing that I don’t run away with, it is totally possible for someone to enjoy the small piece of a story I give them. It is possible for them to have been provided with a story, and then maybe they’ll read the extension of that single story another time.

So, as I reflect on it, my difficulties with writing short stories boil down to working on two main points:

• My understanding of what a short story is needs to become more flexible, and I need to take “defining” word counts with a grain of salt
• Snippets are still stories, even if there’s no action and it’s just descriptions: it still tells the the reader something and that is story on its own

They did a quick survey in class once about who what forms people wrote in and apparently the majority of the writers preferred to write in short-form (short stories), and I was one of only two or three people that found it easier to write in long-form (full novels). A few weeks later I was talking about how much I was struggling with putting together short stories that stayed within the word limit and the group I was sitting with couldn’t share the sentiment. They all found it so easy. 

Before going to university, I thought a short story was probably around 10,000 words. Anything smaller than that was either a children’s book or an observation. This might be because I really only read larger novels from the time I started reading. Small books didn’t interest me, they were usually over within a minute or two and I would just move onto the next because it was a reading task. I never went out of my way to read any under-10,000 short stories until I had to when I started my degree.

And there’s my solution! I need to read more. And not because I’m being assigned the readings, but because I want to. It’s so wild how often the simplest solution is found just by mulling it over outside of my head! I need to seek out short stories and read them, and hopefully enjoy them, and build that foundation. I write long-form likely because I only read long-form. And this is why I need to join a writing community actively or have more writing chats with my only writer friend. I imagine I would grow faster as a writer if I was able to untangle my thoughts by speaking to people. Getting them down on paper is hard enough sometimes but there would be valuable responses when expressed to another.

That shall be my goal for this turn of the wheel ヾ(˶ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ˶)