Tips on picking the right one and making it blossom in the longer form
AT FIRST GLANCE, the novel and the short story may seem to have nothing in common. One, after all, is sprawling and roomy, the other truncated and dense. Yet many novel ideas are born inside the short-story form if the writer has the commitment and vision to carry the transformation through. Some writers even use the short-story form as a kind of proving ground for characters and ideas, testing their viability before they go on to develop the large structure a novel requires. This article will guide you through the process of transforming a short story into a novel with steps and personal examples.
1 Choose a story that haunts you. Where do you begin? What if you have five stories that pulse with energy, flaunt a great plot or feature some of your best-written characters ever? How do you decide which to adapt? Easy: The story you choose should still have your attention long after you wrote it. If you are still in rapture over a new story, put it down for a month or two and see if you still have such fervor for it later. You should feel "haunted" by the story, as if it is unfinished.
For example, four years ago I wrote a short story titled "Mastery" It is about Ziba Mashouf, a female mechanic and one of a set of identical twins whose mother abandoned them for the Hare Krishnas, leaving them to be raised by their stern, hopelessly conformist father, Faraz. The family is Iranian American. The story version only tackles Ziba's quest to be herself in opposition to her father's blueprint for her, which would have her quitting her "un-feminine" job and getting married as soon as possible. The story barely touches upon her relationship with her twin sister, Marian, and ends with Ziba still wondering what happened to her mother.
I was haunted by Ziba long after I wrote her, because I had more questions: What would it be like to be a woman in a male-dominated field? What did happen to her mother? How can identical twins turn out so different? What would it be like to appear Iranian but be raised and feel American? Why is it considered "selfish" to go against the grain? It was clear to me that if I wanted to find the answers to these questions, I would have to write a novel. Thus, Self-Serve was born.
2 Take the road not taken. A story is limited by its design. There is only so much that can happen to a character in 10 to 25 pages. You might find that you had to compress an event or only briefly explore a character's inner life to fit the story form. In "Mastery," Ziba longs for her lost mother in vague expository passages. But in Self-Serve, a major part of the plot is her journey to find her mother.
When I stumbled across the following passage from the story, I realized that Ziba needed to return to the scene I describe, which meant a journey in search of her mother. I kept the passage almost verbatim in the novel, except that I changed the pronouns ("Mastery" is written in second person):
This led her to remember that time when she was sixteen, visiting a friend down in Laguna Beach. There they were, a blissful group of Krishna's children dancing on the beach in their saffron robes. Ziba was sure it was their mother, dancing in the middle of them, her limbs flailing with abandon. Ziba stopped, frozen, staring at the face whose features were carved into hers and Marian's faces and prayed that she would look at her, just once and in that looking, see what she had missed. She had looked at Ziba all right, or rather through her, as if she were a palm tree, happily waving her fronds in the summer breeze but nothing more.
3 Keep 'em on their toes. Whatever you do, construct a plot that keeps your characters in action. A short story must stand up to scrutiny over its language and rhythm, its voice and vision. While a novel must also be careful with all of those elements, there is simply more space to fill, and if you fill it with too much exposition and not enough action, you can count on your reader getting bored. A quick and easy way to keep your characters in action is first to have a plot in mind--a problem that is worth solving--and second, to ask after each scene what the next likely scenario of conflict could be. Actions arise out of conflicts, emotional entanglements and choices that characters make.
4 Change the scenery. Like Dorothy stepping Out of Kansas and into Oz, your novel-world will have to differ in, or expand upon, the setting for it to succeed. Maybe subtle hints about the geographical location in your short story aren't big enough to ground the novel. Maybe your story is set in a generic or unidentified location, like inside a building. In the novel, the more specific the details, the better. In my novel, Ziba leaves her small Northern California town for Los Angeles to undergo an important awakening.
In the short story, Ziba refers to her work at an auto-body shop, but in the novel we see her there:
Poised with her head inside the giant maw of a '74 Chevy, she didn't notice Josh staring at her, at first. Not until she lifted her head and grabbed for the brush to scrub the corroded bits of battery crud off the nodes to test it. Josh looked away too quickly for her to read his expression.
5 Develop new people. Perhaps your story takes place on a farm with a tiny group of characters, but the novel requires your protagonist to set out into the world. Or maybe you need a love interest, a villain or an innocent to up the stakes. In my short story, Ziba is fairly isolated, interacting only with her family and a few friends. In the novel, I had to give her a wider life, so I invented a nosy co-worker, a needy boyfriend, a stern father and, ultimately, a damaged but perfect love interest she must leave home to meet. I didn't invent them willy-nilly; I created them as I felt they were needed to serve the plot. With plot in mind, you will have to make decisions about your Characters, and not all of these will be easy.
In "Mastery," I wrote one character in particular whose eccentricities made me love her. Ziba meets "Rebecca" at a lecture. Rebecca is everything that Ziba is not, and therefore Ziba feels drawn to her. Rebecca, it turns out, is also bad news, with an evilly delicious streak of selfishness, but in the short story she is the catalyst for Ziba to get in touch with her necessary rebellion, to stand up to her family. The novel; though, opens with Ziba already in rebellion against her father and sister. While Rebecca was a juicy character with a lot of potential, she fit poorly into the larger story of Ziba's search for her lost mother, and I thought her large personality would compete with Ziba's, so I chose to delete her (or to save her for another story). Getting rid of her meant creating new conflict and characters, and developing minor characters more deeply.
6 Let voice lead. You want to start from a story in which the voice of your characters is powerful and unique, because voice--the flavor of your characters' personalities--helps make your prose memorable. If you aren't sure which characters to bring over into the novel, look for those in the story whose voices compel you the most. Perhaps the most compelling voice will belong to a character you didn't think was your protagonist. Let the "best" voice lead you--a character whose voice is powerful and engaging. I liked Ziba's voice, which came effortlessly, the best because she seemed to already be her own person, telling the story through me. She's got personality, which is fierce and sardonic, hence memorable, as this line from her (written in the second person) demonstrates:
After he calls you a "Persian kitten," thinking he is being funny, you say, "I prefer Iranian." You're about as connected to your ethnic pool as an ostrich is from a pterodactyl, yet you hate being called Persian. Like a rug.
7 Add thematic elements. Theme can help you develop setting and plant physical cues and behavioral hints when you're otherwise stumped on plot. Is yours a novel about redemption? Forgiveness? Surviving tragedy? The novel Self-Serve is so named because it is about learning how to take care of oneself, putting one's own needs first despite what others think. Plus, the title had a nice tie-in with Ziba's line of work. I also pulled in thematic elements, Using automotive references and metaphors to describe what Ziba was going through at various times, rather than using interior monologue or dialogue to describe her feelings.
Sometimes theme can be decided after you've written your first draft, and then, when you begin to revise, you can plug in thematic elements as you see fit.
Adapting a short story into a novel is not necessarily easy, but if you begin to loosen up the seams that hold your story in its tiny shape and let in fresh color and energy, you may discover that a novel is waiting in the wings.
WORKOUT
TEST HOW VIABLE your story might be as a novel. Reread the story you think is "the one" you want to adapt and answer the following questions. If you can either answer "yes" or provide a comprehensive answer to most of them, you probably have a potential novel.
1. Which character from your story is going to be your novel's protagonist?
2. Are there at least two major crises, problems or concerns this protagonist has? Select the one you think has the most dramatic potential.
3. Will the above-mentioned problem--the "plot problem"--affect other characters in significant ways?
4. Which character will the major plot problem affect the most?
5. Do you need to create a new character or cut an old one?
6. Can you think of at least five consequences of the major plot problem mentioned previously?
7. Will these consequences require a deepening of your character?
8. Will these consequences require a change of, or a broadening of, your setting?
9. Will these consequences surprise or create concern in the reader?
10. Can you solve the major plot problem in 100 pages or less? If so, it's not novel-worthy.
--J.E.R.
RESOURCES
• National Novel Writing Month; A playful, motivating way to turn a story into a novel.
• Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
• A Writer's Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon
• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
By Jordan E. Rosenfeld
1 Choose a story that haunts you. Where do you begin? What if you have five stories that pulse with energy, flaunt a great plot or feature some of your best-written characters ever? How do you decide which to adapt? Easy: The story you choose should still have your attention long after you wrote it. If you are still in rapture over a new story, put it down for a month or two and see if you still have such fervor for it later. You should feel "haunted" by the story, as if it is unfinished.
For example, four years ago I wrote a short story titled "Mastery" It is about Ziba Mashouf, a female mechanic and one of a set of identical twins whose mother abandoned them for the Hare Krishnas, leaving them to be raised by their stern, hopelessly conformist father, Faraz. The family is Iranian American. The story version only tackles Ziba's quest to be herself in opposition to her father's blueprint for her, which would have her quitting her "un-feminine" job and getting married as soon as possible. The story barely touches upon her relationship with her twin sister, Marian, and ends with Ziba still wondering what happened to her mother.
I was haunted by Ziba long after I wrote her, because I had more questions: What would it be like to be a woman in a male-dominated field? What did happen to her mother? How can identical twins turn out so different? What would it be like to appear Iranian but be raised and feel American? Why is it considered "selfish" to go against the grain? It was clear to me that if I wanted to find the answers to these questions, I would have to write a novel. Thus, Self-Serve was born.
2 Take the road not taken. A story is limited by its design. There is only so much that can happen to a character in 10 to 25 pages. You might find that you had to compress an event or only briefly explore a character's inner life to fit the story form. In "Mastery," Ziba longs for her lost mother in vague expository passages. But in Self-Serve, a major part of the plot is her journey to find her mother.
When I stumbled across the following passage from the story, I realized that Ziba needed to return to the scene I describe, which meant a journey in search of her mother. I kept the passage almost verbatim in the novel, except that I changed the pronouns ("Mastery" is written in second person):
This led her to remember that time when she was sixteen, visiting a friend down in Laguna Beach. There they were, a blissful group of Krishna's children dancing on the beach in their saffron robes. Ziba was sure it was their mother, dancing in the middle of them, her limbs flailing with abandon. Ziba stopped, frozen, staring at the face whose features were carved into hers and Marian's faces and prayed that she would look at her, just once and in that looking, see what she had missed. She had looked at Ziba all right, or rather through her, as if she were a palm tree, happily waving her fronds in the summer breeze but nothing more.
3 Keep 'em on their toes. Whatever you do, construct a plot that keeps your characters in action. A short story must stand up to scrutiny over its language and rhythm, its voice and vision. While a novel must also be careful with all of those elements, there is simply more space to fill, and if you fill it with too much exposition and not enough action, you can count on your reader getting bored. A quick and easy way to keep your characters in action is first to have a plot in mind--a problem that is worth solving--and second, to ask after each scene what the next likely scenario of conflict could be. Actions arise out of conflicts, emotional entanglements and choices that characters make.
4 Change the scenery. Like Dorothy stepping Out of Kansas and into Oz, your novel-world will have to differ in, or expand upon, the setting for it to succeed. Maybe subtle hints about the geographical location in your short story aren't big enough to ground the novel. Maybe your story is set in a generic or unidentified location, like inside a building. In the novel, the more specific the details, the better. In my novel, Ziba leaves her small Northern California town for Los Angeles to undergo an important awakening.
In the short story, Ziba refers to her work at an auto-body shop, but in the novel we see her there:
Poised with her head inside the giant maw of a '74 Chevy, she didn't notice Josh staring at her, at first. Not until she lifted her head and grabbed for the brush to scrub the corroded bits of battery crud off the nodes to test it. Josh looked away too quickly for her to read his expression.
5 Develop new people. Perhaps your story takes place on a farm with a tiny group of characters, but the novel requires your protagonist to set out into the world. Or maybe you need a love interest, a villain or an innocent to up the stakes. In my short story, Ziba is fairly isolated, interacting only with her family and a few friends. In the novel, I had to give her a wider life, so I invented a nosy co-worker, a needy boyfriend, a stern father and, ultimately, a damaged but perfect love interest she must leave home to meet. I didn't invent them willy-nilly; I created them as I felt they were needed to serve the plot. With plot in mind, you will have to make decisions about your Characters, and not all of these will be easy.
In "Mastery," I wrote one character in particular whose eccentricities made me love her. Ziba meets "Rebecca" at a lecture. Rebecca is everything that Ziba is not, and therefore Ziba feels drawn to her. Rebecca, it turns out, is also bad news, with an evilly delicious streak of selfishness, but in the short story she is the catalyst for Ziba to get in touch with her necessary rebellion, to stand up to her family. The novel; though, opens with Ziba already in rebellion against her father and sister. While Rebecca was a juicy character with a lot of potential, she fit poorly into the larger story of Ziba's search for her lost mother, and I thought her large personality would compete with Ziba's, so I chose to delete her (or to save her for another story). Getting rid of her meant creating new conflict and characters, and developing minor characters more deeply.
6 Let voice lead. You want to start from a story in which the voice of your characters is powerful and unique, because voice--the flavor of your characters' personalities--helps make your prose memorable. If you aren't sure which characters to bring over into the novel, look for those in the story whose voices compel you the most. Perhaps the most compelling voice will belong to a character you didn't think was your protagonist. Let the "best" voice lead you--a character whose voice is powerful and engaging. I liked Ziba's voice, which came effortlessly, the best because she seemed to already be her own person, telling the story through me. She's got personality, which is fierce and sardonic, hence memorable, as this line from her (written in the second person) demonstrates:
After he calls you a "Persian kitten," thinking he is being funny, you say, "I prefer Iranian." You're about as connected to your ethnic pool as an ostrich is from a pterodactyl, yet you hate being called Persian. Like a rug.
7 Add thematic elements. Theme can help you develop setting and plant physical cues and behavioral hints when you're otherwise stumped on plot. Is yours a novel about redemption? Forgiveness? Surviving tragedy? The novel Self-Serve is so named because it is about learning how to take care of oneself, putting one's own needs first despite what others think. Plus, the title had a nice tie-in with Ziba's line of work. I also pulled in thematic elements, Using automotive references and metaphors to describe what Ziba was going through at various times, rather than using interior monologue or dialogue to describe her feelings.
Sometimes theme can be decided after you've written your first draft, and then, when you begin to revise, you can plug in thematic elements as you see fit.
Adapting a short story into a novel is not necessarily easy, but if you begin to loosen up the seams that hold your story in its tiny shape and let in fresh color and energy, you may discover that a novel is waiting in the wings.
WORKOUT
TEST HOW VIABLE your story might be as a novel. Reread the story you think is "the one" you want to adapt and answer the following questions. If you can either answer "yes" or provide a comprehensive answer to most of them, you probably have a potential novel.
1. Which character from your story is going to be your novel's protagonist?
2. Are there at least two major crises, problems or concerns this protagonist has? Select the one you think has the most dramatic potential.
3. Will the above-mentioned problem--the "plot problem"--affect other characters in significant ways?
4. Which character will the major plot problem affect the most?
5. Do you need to create a new character or cut an old one?
6. Can you think of at least five consequences of the major plot problem mentioned previously?
7. Will these consequences require a deepening of your character?
8. Will these consequences require a change of, or a broadening of, your setting?
9. Will these consequences surprise or create concern in the reader?
10. Can you solve the major plot problem in 100 pages or less? If so, it's not novel-worthy.
--J.E.R.
RESOURCES
• National Novel Writing Month; A playful, motivating way to turn a story into a novel.
• Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
• A Writer's Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon
• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
By Jordan E. Rosenfeld
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