The long and short of it
Thursday, October 26, 2006
When it comes to reading action/suspense/mystery romance, I can't help but wonder if the best ones are always the long ones. I mean the full length novel type stories. Here you get the full development of a real story, suspense and romance. You have time to see the characters really grow, you can see the villain degenerate to the final showdown. It's all there and you can really dig into it.However, the flip side of this argument is that writing short is an artform that not many can master. It takes a lot to write a really good, really tight romance. Especially considering you're adding a suspense sub-element and you have a very limited amount of space. Think about it, you may have to ask a reader to suspend a bit more reality to make it believeable that in 35 pages your people fall in love, conduct an investigation, and catch a bad bad man. BUT you also managed to tell the much story in 35 pages. Holy smokes. That's really amazing for those who can do it.
Hats off to you who write the shorts. And much love to everyone else, because a good story is tough to write no matter how long or short it is.
Posted at 9:19 AM by Crystal Jordan
3 Comments:
Writing suspence is nerve-wracking and I can't imagine puting all the emotions and drama down in less than thirty thousand words. At the same time, I've read a few that went on too long. The genre is difficult enough to get all your facts straight, dig into your darker side and create convincing bad guys. I'm occasionally successful at it, but kudos to all of you who do it so flawlessly on a regular basis. :)
I have to be in the mood for one or the other. I love shorts though. Writing them ain't easy, but I'm getting there.
I'm still new at doing shorts, but I have to agree. A story with real impact is harder than stone to do in small packages. Real conflict, emotion, development.
For the people who can do it, my hats off to them.
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