Short Fiction is Hot: 10 Reasons for the Short Story Renaissance

James Patterson, the bestselling author in the world, is coming out with a new line of short fiction starting in June. As reported in the New York Times he is planning a series called BookShots, "a new line of short and propulsive stories that can be read in a single sitting."

Mr. Patterson hopes to sell books to people who have abandoned reading for television, video games, movies and social media.

So how do you sell books to somebody who doesn't normally read? Mr. Patterson's plan: make them shorter, cheaper, more plot-driven and more widely available.

And in Publisher's Weekly this week, Welsh author Cynan Jones made a case for "very short novels" that you can read at one sitting. He's talking about pieces that take 90 minutes to 2 hours to read, so he's really talking about a longish short story or very short novella.

"What a short novel asks is that you commit, in one sitting, the same amount of time to reading as you frequently commit to a film, or a football match. Make that commitment and, in many cases, the pay off outweighs the investment," he said.

Which all means that short fiction is big business these days. Writers, take note.
Short stories went out of fashion with the demise of slick magazine fiction in the 1990s, and lots of us stopped writing them. When I started taking my career seriously, I thought I needed to "graduate" to novel-length fiction.

Unfortunately, most novice writers I know are still putting all their energy into book-length fiction or memoir and not bothering with short pieces, except for classes or maybe a flash fiction contest or special event.  

Some even feel guilty for preferring the short form. Recently a writer contacted me on Facebook, worried she might never be a "real writer" because she prefers the short form. I told her she's a "real writer" right now, and urged her to keep writing those short pieces.

I wrote a post back in 2012 about why we should be writing more short stories that was one of my most popular blogposts ever. I was invited to write on the subject for Writer's Digest and that piece was also picked up by the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market for 2016.

Since then, short stories and novellas continue to surge in the marketplace.

Plus there are lots of markets for personal essays and short creative nonfic pieces in magazines, online venues and anthologies, while book-length memoir is a very hard sell.

So most memoirists would probably do better writing short than long.

I do realize that most writers gravitate to one form or the other. These days, my ideas generally spool out in about 80,000 words and I can't seem to cut them down.

The reverse is true for some authors. Some great short story writers have a hard time writing good novels. One of our greatest short story writers, Katherine Anne Porter, only wrote one novel, Ship of Fools, which was more like a tapestry of many short stories woven together without a compelling story arc. Critic Elizabeth Harwick said it was " too static" in spite of "the flawless execution of the single scenes."

But all authors should be keeping their short and long form muscles exercised. And readers will miss out if they don't read all book lengths.

It's funny that most people think of the big novel as the most legitimate type of fiction, since it's a relatively new form of storytelling. It was perfect for the age of Gutenberg, but perhaps novels won't maintain such cultural importance in the digital age.

Cervantes is generally credited with inventing the novel with the 1605 publication of Don Quixote, but the form didn't make it into English until a century later—and for a long time it had to masquerade as "history" as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe did in 1719. Non-factual narratives were considered frivolous and time-wasting even into the Victorian era. In the 20th century, the novel finally surpassed the play as the most revered form of fictional artistic expression in English.

But who knows what will happen in the 21st century?

Here are ten things that have changed the way we look at short fiction:

1) "Singles" ebooks and other original shorts

By the first decade of the 21st century, short stories had pretty much vanished from any but a handful of mainstream magazines. But readers missed them. Kindle Singles ebooks launched in 2011 and sold 2 million in the first year.

The short stories in the "Kindle Singles" program sell for between $. 99 and $1.99 and the authors keep a 70% royalty. Many of the top sellers are by big name authors, like Lee Child, Stephen King, and Jodi Picoult, but others are by unknowns. They take both fiction and nonfiction. (The term "short story" usually means fiction, but it can also mean creative nonfiction shorts.) If you're interested in submitting, here are the Kindle Singles Guidelines.

But you don't have to be accepted into the highly competitive Singles program to self-publish short works successfully. The royalty will be less than with the official Singles program (If you're not with the KS program, anything sold under $2.99 gets a 35% royalty) but it's probably going to be better than getting paid with a copy of the Northern South Dakota East Campus Community College Review.

2) Smaller screens and shorter attention spans. 

We're a multi-tasking world.

As bestselling short story writer Amber Dermont told the NYT: "The single-serving quality of a short narrative is the perfect art form for the digital age…Stories are models of concision, can be read in one sitting, and are infinitely downloadable and easily consumed on screens."

Cal Morgan of Harper Perennial said: "It is the culmination of a trend we have seen building for five years…The Internet has made people a lot more open to reading story forms that are different from the novel, and you see a generation of writers very engaged in experimentation."

Story collections are still something of an unwanted stepchild in the traditional publishing world. But savvy agencies like Fuse Literary help traditionally published authors publish their short works. Fuse Literary publishes short works (10K-25K words) through the agency with their own imprint, Short Fuse.

And for readers, shorter pieces save time and let us move on to the next thing. Reading a novel is always going to be a delicious experience, like binge-watching a whole season of Orange is the New Black. But a short piece is more like watching one episode. It's great for relaxing for an hour, but doesn't take a huge chunk out of our increasingly busy days. 

3) The success of serial fiction like Hugh Howey's Wool

Indie superstar Hugh Howey made history (and a nice chunk of change) by self-publishing his sci-fi novel Wool as a series of shorts—like the Saturday matinee cliff-hanger short films of the early 20th century. He put his first episode—a stand-alone that's also a teaser—perma-free on Amazon, and the fans ate up the succeeding chapters, offered at 99c each.

This led to a film deal with Ridley Scott and a book deal with Random House, although Hugh still prefers self publishing.

I know a number of authors who have followed his lead and done very well. But writers need to be aware there's an art to writing serial episodes. They need to have the same kind of story arc as a short story, with some kind of resolution as well as a cliff-hanger. If readers find the ending too unsatisfying, they can will express their anger and disappointment. 

4) E-Book Anthologies

Short story anthologies are one of the best ways for new authors to increase visibility. They're inexpensive to put together as ebooks. They usually don't pay, and often donate proceeds to a charity. But if a debut author can get a story into an anthology with some well-known authors in their genre, they'll be paid in publicity that would be hard to buy at any price. All those authors' fans will be exposed to your work.

Being in an anthology also gives an unpublished writer some great cred. as a professional. Many successful authors I network with were first published by the Literary Lab anthologies. And the Indie Chicks Anthology did a huge amount to take my career to the next level.

Another plus for anthologies: Some of the biggies, like the Chicken Soup series, also come out in print and are stocked in bookstores and libraries. It's a great way to get noticed by the old-school reader, too. They are always looking for new stories. Check out their guidelines here.

5) Online literary journals and showcase sites

One of the important steps on the road to a big publishing contract has always been to place stories in respected literary journals. In fact it's still  pretty much the only way to a publishing contract for authors of literary fiction. (Can you name any big name literary writers who haven't first appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review or at least McSweeneys?)

But nobody ever got the first story they wrote published by The New Yorker. First they had to

place dozens in small literary journals—those tiny labors of love that used to cost a ton to produce and often had under a hundred subscribers. Often you had to pay $25 or more to subscribe to find out what kind of things they wanted and get the info on how to submit to them.

But these days, most literary journals are available online. They have larger readerships and you don't have to pay a fortune to read them or find out what the editors are looking for. Online literary journals like Compose can be a great stepping stone to success in publishing literary fiction.

And if you write genre fiction, you don't have to start your career getting endless rejections from the ultra competitive print magazines that still buy short stories, like Women's World, Ellery Queen and Asimov's.

6) Indie films  

Stories are easier to adapt for the screen than full-length novels. Cheaper too. They tend to have fewer crowd scenes and more small interior settings. Cost is a big factor in the growing indie film world.

Breakfast at Tiffany's started as a short story

Just as indies are revolutionizing the publishing industry, they are also the life-blood of the film industry. While the big studios concentrate on huge comic book spectacles and remakes of old TV shows, the more emotionally rich, award-winning films are coming from small-budget indies.

Some of our most enduring films have come from short stories. Classic films like TheBirds; Breakfast at Tiffany's; Don't Look Now; Double Indemnity, Flowers for Algernon—and I'd need a whole post to list the stories of Stephen King and Philip K. Dick that have been made into great films. More recent Oscar contenders like Brokeback Mountain and the Squid and the Whale were originally short stories.

7) Authors with more titles are more visible and inspire more trust.

The more titles you have in an online bookstore, the more visible you are. You can write and publish a lot of shorter titles and have a bigger presence on Amazon than with one long book. Most writers can't turn out more than two or three books a year, but they can turn out a lot of short stories and novellas.

Readers notice if you have one title or ten, and they may pass on a book when they see the author has only one title, unless it's already a bestseller. A lot of titles makes a reader feel they're in competent, professional hands. 

8) Contests are usually looking for short pieces

Great contests are easy to find and enter in the era of the Interwebz. Hope C. Clark's Funds for Writers and the website Winning Writers are good sources for vetted and free contests. And I always list some on my writing blog.

Entering short story contests is an excellent way to get your career started. A big win for one of your pieces looks great in a query or a bio. Plus you might even win a money prize. A lot of those prizes are bigger than the advances publishers offer on novels these days.

But you do have to be wary. There are a lot of bogus contests out there. Here's a great article by Hope C. Clark at Writer Beware to help you spot the red flags of bogus writing contests.

9) Shorts keep fans interested between novel releases

As I mentioned above, savvy agents are now encouraging their authors to self-publish shorts to fill in the gaps between novels. They especially like shorts that are about characters in a novel series.

It's great for readers not to have to wait for the next big book to revisit their favorite characters. (Note to authors: if your publisher has a non-compete clause, you won't be allowed to do this. Another reason the non-compete clause is a bad thing for writers AND readers.)

Writers might consider writing a couple of shorts about your main characters while you're working on the novel. It may get you through a tricky spot in the big work as well as giving you a saleable product for later down the road.

10) Short pieces make money and hold their value 

In terms of labor, a short story can make more money for an author than a novel. Not only does it take less time to write and often sells for the same price as a novel in ebook form, but it can be re-purposed many times.

The 21st century may very well become the golden age of the short story, 

For unpublished authors who feel they have a long way to go before publishing a first novel, working on stories and building inventory can be the best path to publication. It can also be rewarding to enter a few contests and submit to zines. You might even win some money.

And "award-winning writer" has a nicer sound than "unpublished novelist," doesn't it?

***

How about you? Do you favor one form of fiction over another? Short story fans, have you been noticing the growth of the genre? Do you prefer to "binge read" or grab short reads throughout the day? 

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