Here's the thing. the subject for this week's topic
is "Why I prefer to write Long/Short fiction.”
I prefer both.
What it comes down to for me, what it has always come down to for me, is
that some stories insist on being longer and some decide they should be sorter.
Most of mine tend to go long, so I guess that's technically me answer. I
write long stories because I have so much I want to say. Just yesterday I
finished a short story for the New England Horror Writers that tops off just a
little over 7,000 words. For me that’s kind of short. I like to add a
little backstory, I want to get to know the characters and I want to make
absolutely sure that the readers get all that they came looking for when it
comes to the story.
An editor once asked me if I could write a promotional story for a novel
coming out and I said sure. The first time I was asked, I did around 5,000
words because the editor didn’t want to go any longer. There were space
considerations as this was a promotional piece for my novel BLOOD RED that had
not come out at that point. It was printed in a print run of only 250 copies.
After I did that I was asked by another publisher to write a short story
revolving around my character Jonathan Crowley, a supernatural hunter of all
things that go bump in the night. The
story I came up with was called “Little Boy Blue,” and it’ clocks in around
15,000 words. Enough that the publisher decided to do a heavy print run, gave
away copies at a couple of conventions and then sold the remainders as chapbooks
for a decent amount. He probably broke even, as the books had lovely production
values.
My point is, I could have made Little Boy Blue shorter, but it didn’t
work for what I was doing. It needed to be longer, so I let it go where it
needed to go.
I have written stories for several anthologies that had a cap—a maximum
amount they can pay. As an example the editor might say I can pay you x cents
per word up to 5,000 words and anything over that gets no extra money—and
almost universally I have exceeded that cap without hesitation. The words want
to be written.
I recently turned in a 90,000 word manuscript and the editor looked it
over and asked how I’d feel about adding a but more to the story here and
there, in areas he felt were a little sparing in detail. All in all, somewhere
between 15,000 and 20,000 additional words. I was delighted. I felt those areas
could use a little fleshing out myself, but I wanted to at least try to trim
back to the agreed upon length.
I like to go long. It’s just the way I’m designed, I guess.
