Well, it matters for a couple of reasons. The two forms, picture books and short stories, might be written for the same audience age, and they might even be the same word count, although as picture books get shorter and shorter, a picture book is actually often shorter than a short story in a magazine. But they are very different forms, and a picture book manuscript has to resonate in a way that will make parents and other people willing to pay $18 for that book, and willing to read it again and again. A short story is usually read just once, and then a reader moves on to other stuff.

A short story, because of that first difference, includes descriptive details. The words might describe what the character looks like, what the setting is, and that sort of thing. But in a picture book manuscript, none of that is included, because all of those details will be shown in the artwork, in the illustrations.


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For many years, I had an unjustified dislike of short story collections. As an aspiring writer in middle and high school, I was consumed by the notion that a writer must pen novels and only novels. Full-length books were infused with a sense of legitimacy and accomplishment that was then stripped from short fiction. The types of stories I envisioned, however, were better suited for the format of short stories. By shedding the misconception that I must stretch out inspiration to write a book, I was able to write what I wanted to write.

With no hard rules on length, short stories can span from a few sentences to tens of pages. Free from the space requirements of a novel, the core element of a short story is brevity. It must avoid convoluted plots and unnecessary descriptions, focusing only on the essentials to bring a story across. Every word must count.

Short stories have also made their mark on culture outside the literary world. The genesis of films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Brokeback Mountain (2005), as well as more recent ones like Arrival (2016) and Drive My Car (2021), can all be found in short stories.

In the busy life of a college student, short stories are the perfect length to fit into an already crammed schedule. The prospect of completing a 300-plus-page novel can be daunting when considering the hundreds of pages of readings assigned from classes. Short stories, in contrast, offer no such pressure. Their short length makes them perfect to read in between classes, sitting in the metro, or before bed. While bookstores may have a smaller collection of short stories, you can find plenty in literary magazines and journals, which publish both online and in print.

This is not to say that short stories are superior to novels; just as short stories have their own specific qualities that make them special, so do long-form narratives. But as novels have less trouble flying off the shelves, we should all give this unappreciated literary form a little more love. If this article was the perfect length for you, I know just what you should read next.

I secretly feel that the publishing industry has it backward. I think that most novels are unedited short stories or, less often, novellas, but authors are taught to expand. Imagine if authors were generally encouraged to cut, cut, cut until the words that exist are only the necessary?! And instead, every once in awhile a story needed an entire novel to be told? Of course that would never fly (though the beginning of The Murderbot Diaries did give me hope).

For most writers, writing short stories can help you on your path to being a better writer. Many writers have written a short story or two. Most have written enough for a collection. Some of my favorite novelist like Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, and Stephen King all have lovely short story collections. Besides writing short stories because its fun, here is a short list of other reasons why you should write short stories:

Tam Francis is a writer, blogger, swing dance teacher, avid vintage collector, and seamstress. She shares her love of this genre through her novels, blog, and short stories. She enjoys hearing from you, sharing ideas, forging friendships, and exchanging guest blogs. For all the Girl in the Jitterbug Dress news, give-aways, events, and excitement, make sure to join her list and like her FB page! Join my list ~ Facebook page

CAN-TOI: The can-toi are low men. They appear in Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower. Like the CAN-TAH, the can-toi also appear in Desperation. In that book, the can-toi are the animal servants of the demon Tak (short for Can-Tak, or big god). Unlike our can-toi, the can-toi of Desperation have neither human bodies nor the ability to reason or speak.

I've been playing with aspects of generative AI for a few years now, but for this short story, I wanted to demonstrate how you can use various AI tools in an ethical manner to help you achieve your creative purpose.

Many of my stories have aspects of demonology in them, and this one brought to mind a scene in Delirium when Blake Daniel returns home only to find demons feasting on his dying father. If you enjoy lots of demons, also check out Gates of Hell. (All my books can be read as stand-alone).

So I used ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas for titles and different words, and then played with them in different ways. I came up with three different titles, and we decided on With A Demon's Eye which really suits the story.

I am sorry if this is not fair to short stories or how you want to write or what you have in a drawer right now and your desire to get published. Believe me I feel that myself very much. But this is what happens at the intersection of art and commerce. If you want to sell a book to a publisher, your book needs to be able to sell your book to a reader.

Kate, as someone who is working on a story collection, this is great advice and I really appreciate your post. I am wondering, though: if the answer to the follow-up question about "do you have a novel?" is "no, I am just focusing on stories," how would that land with an agent/editor? There are a handful of dedicated story writers out there, or at least folks who launched their career on stories (George Saunders, Danielle Evans), but is this slice of precedent too small to count on? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Many thanks.

Thanks for sharing this, Kate. I just finished my first story collection, and I'm working on a second collection. My native language is Spanish, and I'm wondering if the market is more or less the same. By the way, would you let me know what font did you use in this article? Happy 2024!

SO: you want to write a short story collection. Let\u2019s set some ground rules first. In this case, we\u2019re talking fiction, because the non-fiction version of this is an essay collection, and we\u2019re also talking about books for grown ups. Short story collections for kids are not impossible, but they are rare when done by a single author. Anthologies, fiction or otherwise, are more common, but include many authors, not just one. We talked about anthologies here.

I have a short story collection in a drawer. I mean, it\u2019s my master\u2019s thesis, and it is technically a collection made up of short stories, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a publishable short story collection. (And god I wrote it when I was like 23 so who knows what atrocities lie therein.) But this is the first thing you want to avoid.

You probably started writing short stories before you wrote a novel. Not all of you, but I bet most of you, especially if you went through the MFA system. It makes sense\u2014it\u2019s like a warm up. (It is and it isn\u2019t, tbh.) But it is much harder to sell a short story collection before a novel. Why? Because more people buy novels than story collections. I mean, what was the last story collection you bought? And how did you know about it in the first place?

What\u2019s your story collection about? You might say well, it\u2019s about man\u2019s inhumanity to man, but that doesn\u2019t really tell me what happens in your stories/collection. Do you walk into a bookstore and ask the bookseller hey do you have any books about man\u2019s inhumanity to man? Probably not. If you\u2019re looking for recommendations, you probably say do you have any books about space colonization? or WWII or modern Korean fiction in translation? The more you can say what your collection is about using nouns and not abstractions, the better off you are, which is why you don\u2019t want to shove all your short form writing into a Word doc and call it a book. A short story collection is not just all your not-novels.

My master\u2019s thesis is not a short story collection, because it is just all the stuff I wrote in grad school mushed together. (I was graduating early. I might have been a little rushed.) Whether you are in grad school or not, your short story collection is NOT just all the things you wrote that are the right length. While you don\u2019t have to have a theme per se, your collection should feel intentional.

I know. It\u2019s a very how can I get job experience if I need job experience to get the job? thing. You don\u2019t need these publications to \u201Cprove\u201D you\u2019re worthy of a book deal; you need them for exposure. You need them so that when people see your collection, they might think hey, I read one of these in The New Yorker, and pick it up and buy it. So the publisher can put As seen in The New Yorker on the cover. Obviously, the bigger the venue, the more likely you\u2019ll get that instant recognition. And it doesn\u2019t necessarily follow that they will put As seen in [prestigious but small magazine] on the cover of your book. It\u2019s not a perfect system. BUT that\u2019s why you need publications before a story collection. This applies in all genres with a robust short story ecosystem, like science fiction and fantasy, too. 0852c4b9a8

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