<@Zette> Am I here?
<Robin> YEH!!!!
<Jim> Hi Zette!
<Allen> Welcome, Supreme Leader.
<@Zette> Hi. I am on a very slow computer. Hold on a second...
<@Zette> This is taking forever for me to see the lines come up, so bare with me.
<Jenny> Hi Zette, thanks everybody!
<Robin> I' m in my pj' s ok?
<@Zette> Okay... today we'll go through how much background the reader needs for a short story!
<@Zette> Just like with a novel, the writer needs to know far more than the reader wants to know.
<@Zette> Can someone here make a copy of this to be sure it works?
rnw2000 i copied what you've said so far
<Robin> Huh? I'll try to... if you can tell me how?
<@Zette> Are you guys there?
<@Zette> I'm not seeing anything, not even my posts...
<Jim> I can copy it for you Z.
<rnw2000> I see your picture & I see "are you guys there"
<@Zette> Thanks. I think I'm working again...
<Jim> Yes. We're here - your graphic posted.
<@Zette> Thanks.
<@Zette> A fire alarm was going, then stops, then going...seems to be fine now...
<@Zette> This is very... slow....
<Robin> we'll be patient...a zen moment...
<@Zette> Okay, background...The author can build as much background as he wants to, but he has to learn to limit what he uses in a short story.
<@Zette> So, if you love worldbuilding, I suggest that you write several stories in the same universe.
<Anon_66>
Guilty blush
<Jim> Mine is very slow, too, for some reason -- maybe 20 or 30 seconds from send to post.
<Jim> (Anon, if you type your name in the "name" box, we'll know who you are.)
<@Zette> Try for immediate details, but don't overpower the story with the background. A few striking details can do more for a story than layer upon layer of mundane description. Try to stick to the unusual or the relevant.
<Anon_66> I did - I'm in once as Cailin, and once as Anon.
<Dana> Cato seems to have infected the conference room.
<@Zette> The trick with a short story is to keep everything to a minimum. You need detail, and you need important detail, but you just have to be careful about how much you use.
<rnw2000> is there such a thing as too much
important detail? -- if so, does that mean the story isn't a short story?
<@Zette> You want to concentrate your details on the most immediate parts of the story. Unlike a novel, where you can pull the reader in from a far to a close view, you have to start close to the center of action. Lots of things will have to take on dual meanings.
<@Zette> Yes, you can bury it in details of the exact shape and size of your spaceship, when just a brief description would be enough for this story.
<@Zette> It may be important to the world, it might be great in a novel, but it will not always work in a short story. Short stories have to get straight to the action, so to speak. You don't have time for all the depth and detail.
<@Zette> Really, what you add in depends on the story. A description of the ship might be important, but one of the entire port where the ship is would probably be too much.
<@Zette> You can pretty much tell what's important. But some people love their created worlds too much, and want to tell us far more than we, as readers, need to know.
<@Zette> The graphic is really what you need to consider for detail. Working out in the circle, you need less detail.
<@Zette> You want things that are really going to impact the story, not just to show us the area. You want a wider view for a novel, where people (readers) are going to live in that world for quite a while. But a short story can get by on far less.
<@Zette> Does that make sense to you people?
<Allen> And in most short stories that I have read background and histories are there as introduction to characters and/or the storyline. After serving that purpose they are dropped and the action is immediately commenced. O'Henry stories are classic examples of this.
<Cailin> yes
<Jenny> Yes.
<Anon_42> ((my new PC locked up and I wasn't able to save the class text - could someone else do so when we're done, please?))
<@Zette> Graphic changed?
<rnw2000> I have a copy of everything thus far
<Anon_42> ((Anon_42 is Jim.))
<rnw2000> did change.
<Jenny> Pretty butterflies.
<Cailin> Allen and I have to get off the computers now.
<@Zette> Excellent. Can you email it to me when we're done? I'll be able to get it worked up for the transcript on Friday night...
<@Zette> I can't get this poor old computer to copy.
<Jenny> 'Bye, Cailin and Allen!
rnw2000 not a problem zette
<@Zette> Bye Cailin and Allen! This will be offered in transcript!
<Cailin> Thank you, Zette.
<Anon_42> (picture changed to a blank screen)
<Cailin> Never mind - the librarian said I could stay.
<@Zette> Now detail includes history background. This one is harder, because you do need to be able to tell enough to make people understand…
<@Zette> Understand the world that they've been thrown into. Sometimes it seems that you have to start farther back in the story than you really want to, just to bring in all the details of what's happened, without doing an info dump.
<Jenny> How much background can you save for later in the story, as you can for novels?
<Anon_42> (am I still here?)
<Cailin> Yes, Jim.
<@Zette> It's okay. We won't be here much longer... Save as much as you want. Use everything you can. I've written several stories in the same 'universe' using background details that I either used before or had created just to know.
<@Zette> If you have another story to go with it, then use it!
(Obviously, I didn’t quite read the question right here. The answer here is that you can play with the pattern of material until you find something that works. No two stories are going to be the same. If you find you need some information later in the story, then you should use it then.)
<@Zette> Am I still here?
<Cailin> {tumbles out of her chair and down the rabbit hole...}
<Anon_32> yes, still here.
<@Zette> There is no law at all that says you can only use something once. In fact, I've found that the later stories generally get better because I have a better feel for the world.
<@Zette> But here is a trick to use for incorporating history that you don't really want, or need, to write out in detail. Instead of "Today a meteorite fell and killed someone on Main Street' start with 'The third person was killed by a meteorite today.'
<Cailin> A mystery would be pretty hard to do as a short story, wouldn't it?
<@Zette> This opening establishes the unusual as history. This is a world where people are being hit by meteorites. You do not have to show the first two deaths.
<@Zette> Read Ellery Queen Magazine. They put a bunch of mystery short stories out every single issue.
<@Zette> This is also a trick to help humans accept the unusual. When presented with something as history, we are less likely to question it.
<@Zette> So, even more than a novel, you need to get right into the meat of the story with a short story.
<@Zette> This would be (under most circumstances) a bad opening: Daniel was the fourth born son, and he grew up sitting at his father's cobbler bench, watching him shape leather every day. His father made dainty slippers for her ladyship and hard-soled boots for the farmers. He repaired shoes and made new ones. But none of that prepared Daniel of the war with the orcs.
<@Zette> Better opening: Growing up as a cobbler's son hadn't prepared Daniel for the war with the orcs.
<@Zette> Unless the father's work is going to be important t the story, you don't want to throw it out there with that kind of detail, especially as the opening to a story.
<@Zette> You might want to bring some of it in a bit later in the story, but in a short story you don't want to lead off with anything that isn't really important to the story.
<@Zette> Just constantly remind yourself that you DON'T HAVE TIME for all the neat stuff that you'd like to add in.
<@Zette> (Typing on this keyboard is very odd! It's going to take me quite a bit to fix my typos this time!)
<Jenny> It sounds like short stories are gruesome exercises in self-restraint.
<@Zette> Sometimes they are. It was very hard for me to get the knack of them. Three years ago I snapped at my husband every time he suggested I try to write one. (grin)
<@Zette> It's hard, at first, to get the detail/size of story ratio right. It takes work. But short stories have some real nice advantages over novels. Like you can actually have one written, rewritten, and sent off in a few days, instead the years it takes novels. It's nice to be able to look at something and know it's DONE.
<Anon_32> Novice question: What's the average short story length?
<@Zette> Do you guys have any questions?
<@Zette> Am I here?
<@Zette> SFWA standards say short stories can be up to 7,499 words. But there is no average in that range.
<@Zette> And quite a few places consider up to 10,000 or more a short story. I think I listed the SFWA standards out in the first transcript for short stories, novelettes, etc.
<Melanie> Thank you
<@Zette> Slow, slow, slow. You really need to look at the sort of markets you want to sell to, and see what their guidelines say they'll take.
<@Zette> But I have often heard that a new writer has a better chance of selling something in the shorter range of what a magazine will take.
<@Zette> Sorry this is so clunky tonight, people. We have three laptops with us, but only this one was set up to go. We got here too late to get either of the other two set up, and they're much faster machines.
<@Zette> And we could only get in on our absolutely slowest ISP connection as well. Bad phone line, we think.
<Melanie> No problem, Zette... another question if no one else has anything at the moment...
<Jim Mills> Np, Z.
<Melanie> ... you've mentioned using discretion when including environmental,
<@Zette> Any other questions for tonight? I keep this class short on stuff for me to lecture about, and tomorrow night will be short too, and then we can discuss your stories, if you like.
<@Zette> Ask!
<Melanie> that you run into in creating characters?
<Melanie> part of that question is missing...sorry.
<@Zette> Did I lose this one?
<rnw2000> ...whoa! did I miss something?
<rnw2000> what was your question?
<@Zette> Oh good. Thought I had gone nuts. Try it again?
<Jim Mills> (Do we have a homework assignment tonight?)
<Melanie> It got eaten... the gist was... do the same rules of brevity apply in creating
<Melanie> characters for a short story? Or is that where we should focus most of the detail?
<@Zette> My original plan was to have you write your openings tonight, Jim -- but it's so iffy about me being able to get back, that we'll hold off on any real writing until after tomorrow.
<@Zette> In creating characters? Not really. Your characters have to come alive very quickly in a short story. The types of details might be stronger than in a novel.
<@Zette> You aren't going to show the character growing up, so you'll need to find ways to bring out failings and character quirks quickly. (That's just a general statement about growing up... but novel characters do have longer to tell us about themselves.)
<Cailin> I'm having a problem with the first assignment.
<@Zette> Remember, all of this is a general statement. It's not that you don't want detail about the world in your story: It's that you have to really be careful about how much, and which details. You don't have the pages to expand in. So what you show takes on a stronger meaning in the story.
<Melanie> What was the first assignment? Sorry, new to the entire site... still finding my way around.
<@Zette> Don't worry Cailin. All you really need to worry about is sitting down and doing a short story in the next ten days or so.
<Cailin> But I'm stuck.
<@Zette> Don't worry about it, Melanie. I really just wanted people to start thinking about doing a short story.
<@Zette> Why?
<Allen> I can share some ideas with you, love. }:-p
<Melanie> Thanks, Zette
<@Zette> (They why was for Cailin.)
<Cailin> I'm too zonked to really explain right now, but it's because you told us
not to worry about the characters right away. I always get the character first. This is wiers.
<rnw2000> ... so what do you see yer character doing? where does he/she live? why would anyone want to read about him/her?
<Cailin> No thanks, Allen -- you try to take the story completely away from me.
<rnw2000>
thats where you can find the story
<@Zette> When you said that I said not to worry about it, to go with what you see.
<Allen> Correct me if I'm wrong, Zette, but shouldn't the action line be developed first and then the character plunged in?
<Cailin> And that's where I always find it -- but Zette told us not to go there yet.
<Allen> I've always written shorts by creating the action first then show who it is happening to and why second.
<@Zette> No, Allen. Almost all my stories are character first, and then imagine what they might be doing. It depends on the writer.
<@Zette> This is so slow!
<Cailin> To me that's putting the cart before the horse.
<Allen> Sometimes my shorts end up as 1/2 flashback and then currrent action and resolution.
<@Zette> Ah, I think I must have not showed that clearly. What I wanted was for you not to get stuck on the character, and never go any farther. Start with the character, by all means. Just don't stop with him. And don't let him expand out to tell you this is a novel.
<Cailin> I do need to scat now if I'm going to grab some books before the library closes.
<@Zette> And those are often very boring stories. But, on the other hand, some can be well written. There are no absolute rules with short stories.
(Misread Allen's comment as well. I thought he'd said that most of the stories he reads (missed the 'my') part…)
<Cailin> Okay ... I thought you meant to not go into the character at all, but to write the action and then put the character in it. I kind of panicked.
<@Zette> Bye Cailin!
<@Zette> nah. I'm character driven myself. (grin)
<rnw2000> i will unless someone else claims to have it
<@Zette> This set of classes is really to help people who have trouble writing a short story, and sometimes find them expanding into novels. It's where to find the short story, and what action you can take (like limiting details) to make sure it stays short.
<Allen> Cailin said to tell you, Zette, that you are a character but we all love you anyways.:-)
<@Zette> That's why it's called Keeping It Short
<@Zette> Did I miss something there?
<@Zette> LOL!
rnw2000 no.. i responded to all when I meant to respond privately :|
<Melanie> Thanks so much, Zette! It's been extremely enlightening. I've got to run. Take care everyone!
<@Zette> Ah. Good. Thought it was skipping posts on me again.
<@Zette> Any other questions?
<@Zette> Bye!
<@Zette> Thank you!
<Allen> They're shutting the comps down and giving me looks; so I guess I had better log off too. Thanks, All
<@Zette> Bye! Good luck!
Lazette Gifford
Moderator, Holly Lisle's Forward Motion for Writers
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