A Short Story Wants to Get Away From Me
Earlier this week, I started writing a short story entitled “The Girl Who Flew on a Whale” as part of my WISB Podcast project. The story, as my friend Adam Callaway remarked, is a whimsical fantasy for young readers (chapbook level). I’ve always wanted to write a story like this. They’re fun to read and the current venture has been fun to write. But one of the issues I’ve had is the tug in my mind to turn this short story into a much larger project. “The Girl Who Flew on a Whale” is about a young girl who lives in a semi-Victorian-era town on the continent of Traea (many centuries after the events of The World in the Satin Bag). Her mother wants to prune her for the aristocracy, while the little girl, affectionately called the Dreamer, wants nothing to do with that world — rather, as her name implies, she dreams of the legends and myths of her world, wondering and wishing some of them are true. The conflict is one that I’m sure has been seen many times before, but it is also a conflict that is close to my heart. I don’t have children, but know that when I have them, I’ll do everything I can to foster their creativity. Because children who have their dreams crushed are children who lose the very thing that makes the world grow: creativity and innovation. We need dreamers today more than we ever did before. “The Girl Who Flew on a Whale” is partly about that conflict, but I’ve set it in a fantasy world (with plenty of whimsy) to get the message across via an adventure. And that’s where the issues arise. The story is begging me to expand the narrative I have already started. It’s begging me to bring in swashbuckling pirates and strange creatures and wonderful magic and all sorts of silly and beautiful things. Many of these I’ll put into the story anyway, but the grand adventure my mind is trying to imagine won’t fit into a short story or novelette. I’m having to keep those things at bay while I write a more manageable tale (and one that I can actually read in a single sitting for the podcasted version I promised everyone). Something I’ve been thinking of doing is providing the short version and then expanding it into a proper chapbook. I know many writers have done things like this (writing novel versions of shorts they wrote a long time ago). But is it as common today as it was in the old days of SF/F? I can’t think of many contemporary examples. I bring all of this up because I’m curious about some things: How do you go about keeping a story under control? Or do you throw your hands up and give it what it wants? Do novel versions of short stories work for readers? Do you enjoy reading those kinds of stories? What do you think? ———————————————————– P.S.: I actually already have cover art for this story, which is amazing. My lady has been working on artwork for me (not because I asked, but because she’s freaking amazing). I’ll share such things later. Maybe I’ll even do a special illustrated edition of the short story. That would be cool, no? P.S.S.: The inspiration for “The Girl Who Flew on a Whale” came from the following image:
Book Review: “Gates (Variations)” by Larry Niven (from Gateways)
I’m sensing a pattern in Gateways. One really good story, followed by a bad one, followed by a good one, and so on and so forth. Larry Niven’s “Gates” is one of those bad ones. Split between two perspectives — a science fiction writer talking about the singularity/Bill Gates and Bill Gates making the decision to create a virtual world in which he is filthy rich — “Gates” lacks anything resembling plot or character development. In fact, beyond presenting a gimmick, I’m not sure if the story has a point. Is it a story that wants us to buy its premise that the world we live in is a virtual world a la Second Life in which all but Bill Gates and his friends are intelligent programs? If so, Niven has failed to provide a coherent “world” within which we can come to that conclusion. Or is the singularity / Bill Gates section a fictionalized account of the tech icon’s rise to “power” written by the science fiction writer of that previous section? That might be interesting, but beyond the fact that the science fiction writer talks about Bill Gates (from which the title obviously comes), the connection is loose. Then again, perhaps we’re supposed to think of this story as a couple of alternate histories about old Bill. But each “vision” lacks depth. The characters are cardboard cutouts — people we’ve seen before. The stories themselves, if you could call them that (vignettes might be a more appropriate term), go nowhere; we never see the worlds these different characters are talking about, or learn anything about the characters to give us a sense of who they are and what they’ve done to get here. Maybe that’s the point, but there are writers who have approached similar themes more effectively. This story, however, is one I would recommend skipping. ——————————————————————- The above is the continuation of my story-by-story review of Gateways edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull. Below are the reviews of other stories in the collection (which will be updated as reviews become available): “Shoresteading” by David Brin “Von Neuman’s Bug” by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein “Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman “Gates (Variations)” by Larry Niven