STOP WRITING SHORT STORIES

My first piece of advice is to stop writing short stories.

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Sorry if that’s a bit brutal, because people like writing short stories, and many people think they hone their craft as a writer by writing short stories. It will help them find their voice, find their way around prose, even provide a small buzz of self-worth when it’s chosen for inclusion in a magazine.

Despite that small kernel of truth, it’s a sugar hit, that quick fix to the ego, the chance to bathe in the praise of your fellow writers at the local workshop. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if you only ever want to write for the sheer fun of it, but the reality is that you’ll never improve yourself as a writer if you stick to short stories.

Stick with me. There’s logic behind this.

If you write a novel, you’ll find every time that the first 15,000 words are the worst part of the story, and it’ll be the same no matter how many books you write. I have had twelve books published, but with each one it was always the start that was the clunkiest. It’s the part I always had to go back to and improve, the start never quite right. This is where people get discouraged, where they feel that they can’t really do it, and give up. That is a mental barrier you will have to push through each time, but it’s worth the perseverance, because the story will become easier to write as you go along. The characters will become more fleshed out, the journey ahead will become clearer.

If you stick to short stories, you’ll never get to this point. You’ll never get to weave a plot over many chapters, or see a character properly develop, or have that glow of achievement as you put the final full stop on an epic work of over 100,000 words.

So, you’ve decided to give novel writing a whirl. You need to plot, so move on to the next page