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- Newsgroups: misc.writing
- Message-ID: <oedFgoW00WC005jWhP@andrew.cmu.edu>
- Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 15:51:16 -0400
- From: Edwin Huang <eh1s+@andrew.cmu.edu>
- Subject: Re: short story writing vs. novel writing
- In-Reply-To: <14789@mindlink.bc.ca>
- References: <14789@mindlink.bc.ca>
- Distribution: world
- Lines: 17
-
- I believe that short stories are important for an aspiring novelist not
- only because of the short term satisfaction of completing something,
- but because of the fact that you have completed something. A short
- story is very useful in stopping a writer from rambling on and on. You
- start on a novel that you want to get published and pretty soon you're
- working on a dectology to submit to your publisher cause you just aren't
- done with the story yet.
-
- Also there is nothing from stopping your short story to become part of
- your novel. In science fiction, both V. Vinge and Glenn Cook have both
- built novels around their short stories or visa versa. I consider short
- stories a way of starting small and working your way to higher
- aspirations. Perhaps the scope of the short story is too small in your
- eyes, but I believe one has to be able to work with small scopes as
- well as large ones to be a decent writer.
-
- -ed
-