Expanding Short Stories into Novels

Once, some years ago, when I was at a writers conference, I sat in on a literary agent's session. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Too many writers waste good ideas on short stories."

The gist being that those ideas should have been used for novels.

I disagree on two levels. First, the short story is its own wonderful form, and some ideas only need the breathing space of a short story to be executed. It's akin to him having said, "Too many poets waste their ideas on poems"... as though every written thing should be a novel. Each form has its own beauty... its own freedoms and limitations. In terms of artistic importance, I would put the finest poems and short stories up against any novel. It's as though he was saying that all short story writing is merely practice for novel writing. As though the short story is some inferior, adolescent form that the writer will one day, hopefully, outgrow.

Horseshit.

Tell that to Raymond Carver who never published a novel (to my knowledge) or John Cheever who, though an excellent short fiction writer, wrote two pretty weak novels.

The other way in which I disagree with the aforementioned literary agent is the idea that somehow, once a short story is finished, the characters, settings, and themes can't be revisited in a longer form if the writer is inspired.

For example, I had written a short story called "Downstream Water," and over the years the character, Stan, kept eating at me. I kept wondering what happened to him after the ending of the story. It was with Stan in mind that I began the clunky draft of my first novel, Into the Desperate Country. In fact, my story, "Downstream Water" is the second chapter of that novel... almost verbatim. That did feel good to cut and paste my story into the manuscript and have it suddenly grow by six thousand words. And so, in the rest of the novel, I explored what happened to Stan after the story ended. With the help of some very astute editors, I was able to rewrite that first clunky draft into a novel of which I'm still proud. The novel came out from the now defunct March Street Press. It took me two years, but I did sell over 500 copies of that book. And, it was March Street Press' first novel.

My point? At least I think this is my point. I don't think I ever would have written Into the Desperate Country if I hadn't first introduced myself to Stan through the writing of "Downstream Water." I had to get a fragment of his story down first, and let it live for awhile as a short story (a short story that was published in Crab Creek Review). It was only years later that I realized that there was more to Stan's story that I needed to tell.

How about yourself? Do you have a short story with a character who still eats at you? Did you ever wonder what happened to the character after the story ended? Perhaps this could be your leaping off point for starting a novel. I think first and foremost, the character should still be eating at you. Don't force it, but instead just wonder if the story has the potential to continue at the point that the story ended.

With my most recent novel, Rules of Order, (just released from Montag Press) I had a similar, though different experience. During the pandemic, Whistling Shade Press released my short story collection, The Neighborhood Division (for purchase: here) The book is a collection of stories that I wrote over the previous ten years. One of the stories, "Load", kinda stuck with me. But, unlike "Downstream Water," which I wanted to know what happened to the character after the story ended, instead with "Load" I realized that the story was almost like an outline to a longer, more developed story.

You can read (or even listen to) "Load": here

That doesn't mean "Load" was a failure as a story. Prior to being collected in my book, it was first published by Fiction Circus. So, it did function as a stand-alone short story. But, I realized that the whole thing could be expanded, but still essentially have the same beginning and ending (more or less). The expansion allowed for more scenes, more characters and more opportunities to explore the topical themes of the story. I think I realized that the themes I explored some 12 years ago were actually more relevant now than they were then. In any case, it wasn't the character, so much as the possibility of expanding the overall tale that set me to work on expanding the short story into a novel.

Again, I would argue that had I not written "Load" first, I likely never would have written Rules of Order.

How about for yourself? Do you have a story that you realize now could be expanded? Not the way I expanded "Downstream Water" by continuing Stan's quest in Into the Desperate Country, but instead seeing the beginning and end of the story as the beginning and end of a novel, but with much more expansion of the middle? Think about your own stories. Is there potential there to expand the middle, and thereby develop it into a novella or novel?

If you've read this far, I'd like to offer a description of Rules of Order and a link to purchase it, especially if you found this blog post either entertaining or informative.

Rules of Order:

Rules of Order tells the story of Harvey Crowe, a community activist, who lives in what could be the last remaining high-rise building in a wrecked city. Cracks in the ground-floor apartments are appearing exponentially. The building’s structural strength can’t possibly hold the load it bears. Crowe works to inform tenants on the upper floors that the weight of their possessions could bring the entire building down. Working with the Anti-Collapse Trust, Crowe encounters obstacles to his message, including indifferent tenants, his self-doubt, hostile security guards, and a co-op board headed by the corrupt Chairman Burke. Even as Crowe makes meaningful alliances with other influential tenants, he can feel the way they are working against a ticking clock. With time running out, Crowe and his militant colleague Dagmar carry out a desperate plan to save what might be the city’s last habitable space.

Please consider purchasing my novel and supporting the wonderful Montag Press. Thank you!

Rules of Order available: here