One of the tools built into this blog lets me see the links and searches people used to get here. Frankly, the searches confuse me sometimes. I have no idea how a search for “Strawberry Stephen King” led here, but “thriller short story publication magazine” I can understand. One of the searches I see regularly is “difference between novel and short story.” I decided to comment briefly the topic since it seems to be a common question, and it would be nice to have an answer for people who are going to end up here anyway. 

So, what’s the difference between short stories and novels?

The most immediate answer is that of length, but the differences between short stories and novels are deeper than the length of the text. It has a great deal to do with the author and the story asking to be told. 

There is frequently a misconception that short stories are easier because they are shorter. Lee K. Abbott (from "In Defense of the Short Story; or, Why Less is More," 2001 NSSWM) states he writes short stories, not from the mistaken belief that their brevity means they’re easier to write than novels, but because “the form suits my temperament, never mind my understanding of our goofy and condemned kind.”

All writers deal with humanity and their reactions to the world around them. Abbott proposes the depth of exploration of those reactions are greater in novels than in short stories. “To be sure, such remarkable looks into the dark well of us can, and do happen with [short] story. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that we ought not to ever write a story that will only cost us time to get between margins. Still, with the novel—unique to its form, dear readers—much is demanded, not least a broader, more comprehensive sense of character, which is to say, finally, a more straightforward and more honest view of ourselves, the analogues for the selves we breathe into life with language.”

Short stories give a glimpse; novels create. Emotions, thoughts and attitudes are developed on the pages as they are explored in the writer.

The glimpse versus creation concept is true for the worlds created on the pages as well as the thoughts and emotions. Novels have more room to create a world, whether it be the limited world of a boat in The Life of Pi or a completely new universe like Anne McCaffrey's Pern. More depth is required for those worlds than for a short story.

Granted, I’m talking more about stand-alone short stories, not multiple ones that revisit a world. I am currently reading the entire Sherlock Holmes collection, and I hadn’t realized so much of the Holmesian world was set in the short stories. Why, even his death was in one of the short stories!

Another difference between the forms lies in the amount of research needed to write a novel versus a short story. Have you ever seen a dedication to a short story with a list of the specialists the author consulted? Neither have I, but I see them in novels frequently. The amount of research needed is far less for short stories. You can get away with more, but you also get to create less.

Pacing is different in novels and short stories. Novels are allowed to have slower sections and variations in pace, but as Abbott points out “The storywriter cannot be self-indulgent or indifferent to the need to hurry along to the next dramatic moment. We have to make our mark, often not subtly at all, and press on…the emphasis for the storyteller is brevity, an aesthetic economy where less is more.”

What drives people to write in one form or another? For Abbott, “I wrote short because, well, after 30 pages I began to lie.” He tried to write novels, but with no success. However, “I learned yet more about being brief, about what to leave out, about how to cut… I learned, very quickly, to get to the dadgum point. I learned not to overstay my welcome…I learned, to coin a phrase, to make time fly, days and even years disappearing in a sentence. I made pals with the angel that is white space. I became explicit, maddeningly so. I learned to kill two, sometimes three, narrative birds with one stone. And, yes, I’ve learned what I can’t do. I’ve learned that I have not the stamina, the time, or the imagination or the courage to type—not the least valuable lesson, importantly, once can learn about one’s singular, miserable self. And best of all, I am not through learning.”

Writing in both forms gives a writer many oppertunities to learn. What are the differences you've found in writing short stories versus novels? Which do you prefer and why?