I have become painfully aware that debut novelists must not “overstay their welcome” when it comes to word length.
This is a strange idea to me, since a longer story means that I put in extra work. But while querying for an agent, I have found that most publishers will not even consider a novel over 100,000 words. Mine exceeds that limit substantially.
I should not be surprised. Word limits have always been basic to publishing, whether they are for a novel, newspaper article, or short story.
If there is any conflict between word limits in publishing and the art of writing, I have never seen it mentioned. That is probably because cutting verbiage can do miraculous things for the quality of a story. Beginning writers often pad their stories with words that do nothing to drive a story forward, and trimming excess text can reveal the treasure inside.
Thus, a “shorter is better” ethic has emerged among many writers. Perhaps this accounts for the recent popularity of super-short stories.
NPR has a contest called “three minute fiction” and the media hub Reddit now has a section called “One sentence stories.” Perhaps one-word stories will be next: “ran” or “swam,” as the pinnacle of literary minimalism.
Supposedly these super-short stories propel normally verbose writers to divine heights of succinctness. But has it gone too far? Are there limits to how much you can limit a story without it losing its essence?
The “shorter is better” trend is being taken to such extremes that I wonder: If shorter is better, would a nonexistent story be the best story of all?
I think not. Even minimalist stories suggest that people see value in the short story form. Short or long, stories seem to be deeply ingrained into the human psyche. Ideally they enrich life and further understanding of the world.
But, despite my misgivings about stories being reduced to sentences, I must admit that brevity has benefits.
I recently began a project to write a short story every weekend. A refreshing change from writing novels, short stories allow me to test a wide range of ideas without a long term commitment. Ray Bradbury was my inspiration for the project.
He built his skills by writing a short story every week and advised any aspiring writer to do the same. As he suggested, writing a lot of short stories prevents me from getting too bogged down in a single project. Given the minimal risk and time commitment, no idea is too silly to try.
But I ran into a problem. Embracing the “shorter is better” ideal, I tried to limit my stories to three pages on my computer. But when I did that, I was unable to complete them.
Even after I jettisoned large chunks of text, my stories still wanted to be at least 5 pages to “feel” complete. Stories are not just pages. They are patterns with rising action and a conclusion. To make a full artistic statement, I seemed to need more space.
Finishing my stories is important to me. Most of the stories I wrote during high school and college were incomplete. I would present an enticing hook and a compelling conflict, only to run out of creative energy mid-way and discard the project.
I have written a lot more since college. Some pieces are better than others, but I always go out of my way to finish my stories. I may not have the perfect ending, but, good or bad, I always create one. The habit of completing my stories and articles marked a turning point in my writing skills.
For my current story project I raised my limit to five pages. Still, I rarely had room for more than one scene. I thought I needed models to show me how to write super-short stories well. The ones I remembered best were childhood stories, fairy tales and fables, so I downloaded a book of stories by Aesop.
In terms of character development, there was no much there. The characters of Aesop were animals, each with one defining trait: the hungry wolf, the slow but ambitious turtle, or the wounded lion.
As a kid I loved this kind of story. But around age 12, I discovered that stories could be used to create a point of view and a sense that I was reading the minds of characters. Afterward I never wanted to read another fairy tale or fable. They seemed unsatisfying compared to fiction that could simulate consciousness.
But there is more to stories than thought flow. I wondered if my inability to bring my short stories to a close within a 3 page limit was a skill issue. After all, a short story is a different form with different needs than those of a novel.
For inspiration I turned to the acclaimed master of the short story, Anton Chekhov. I downloaded an anthology of his stories on my Kindle, thinking that a master of succinctness must have numerous super-short stories to his credit.
But I found that his stories were not that short, or at least not internet-short-attention-span short. Though insightful, they would not have qualified for the NPR contest.
Even in my college literary anthologies most of the short stories were 5 pages or longer. Though the masters were succinct, they were clearly not slaves to a “shorter is better” ethic. This made me wonder: When you shorten a short story to a nub, what do you lose?
A lot. The longer short stories in my anthologies were far more satisfying to me than the fables of Aesop. The shorter a story is, the more it loses nuances of character, plot progression, sensory details, and figures of speech, which make a story enjoyable. I wondered what Huckleberry Finn would have been if Mark Twain had reduced it to 100 pages. Maybe it would have been fine, but it would not have been the same story.
For me, word count limits need limits. That is, a story should be as long as it needs to be to accomplish its artistic purpose.
Along with point of view, story length is another factor that affects the design of the finished product. Shorter is not always better. Sometimes cutting writing to its most basic components makes it shine. At other times forced brevity drains it of life and meaning.
Practical considerations such as limited magazine space sometimes interfere with what is artistically ideal. But a long story does not have to be a verbose story. A skilled writer can claim more space, yet still make excellent use of it.
An interesting story that is long but conservative in its word usage deserves a warm reception. If it is banished for exceeding an arbitrary word limit, it needs to visit a friendlier household whose members like to read.