Short to Long: One story, two ways

Graphic by Peg Ihinger

So last time we met, I mentioned the two basic ways of turning a single short story into a novel: adding complications, subplots, characters and conflicts within the confines of the original story, or continuing on from the end of the short story (and letting the extra characters, complications, etc. develop organically from there).

The main problem with making a single short story into a novel is that the impact of a short story usually comes from its focus. Writing essentially the same story using more words to make a novel can dilute the short story’s impact. Continuing the story can feel like an anteclimax, especially if the short story was life-changing for the protagonist and/or the novel’s climax isn’t as strong as the climax of the short story.

I’ve expanded a short story into a novel twice. The first time, it was “The Harp of Imach Thyssel,” an early unpublished (and unpublishable) short story which became a novel by adding—or rather, fleshing out—the complications and subplots that I’d crammed into the short story. The second time was when Jane Yolen persuaded me to extend “The Improper Princess” into Dealing with Dragons. The short story, almost unchanged, is the first chapter-and-a-half of the novel, ending at the space break in the middle of Chapter Two, and the novel just continues on from there.

Both times, “turning a short story into a novel” eventually became indistinguishable from “writing a novel from scratch.” The point where the change happened was different in each case, and that had a lot to do with the short story I started with.

“The Harp of Imach Thyssel” was written well before my first sale. At least half of the story consisted of info-dumpy internal monologue intended to cram in “backstory” that involved several vitally important characters and places that never appeared on-stage. The characters that were on-stage had too many complicated relationships to fit into 6,700 words, even without the backstory.

In short, it was a novel outline pretending to be a short story. Because this was so very obvious, there was never any question about what needed to happen to turn it into a novel. I didn’t have to worry about diluting the impact of the short story. What it needed was more room to breathe. Too many critical events happened before the “beginning” of the story. Turning it into a novel didn’t dilute anything; it was more like dropping powdered milk into water to reconstitute it.

The short story was material, but I couldn’t use it as-is. I had to deconstruct the story to get at the good stuff. As soon as I’d did that, the process became almost the same as for any other novel. The “backstory”—which  included the offstage characters, some of their problematic relationships, acquiring the magic harp, the setting, and the crucial plot events—became the first half of the book. Half of the characters who were on-stage in the short story disappeared entirely; most of the others were replaced by characters who’d been needed to flesh out the backstory. The bones of the short story plotline are still visible in the last third of the novel, especially around the climax, but the novel is not the same tale, and the process of getting there was essentially the same as any other novel starting with a plot outline.

“The Improper Princess,” on the other hand, worked fine as a short story, but there was obviously a lot of interesting stuff and possible adventures looming in the near future. “The Improper Princess” was clearly the beginning of a story. (This was even more obvious because it was the prequel to Talking to Dragons, which was already in print.)

The plot of “The Improper Princess” was straightforward and perfect for a short story. It stood alone and didn’t need fleshing out. It was absolutely not strong enough to support an entire novel, but it made a great beginning of a novel. And I already knew some of the characters and problems my heroine would face, and I had enough of her “future history” to be able to see a good spot for the end of the book.

At this point, turning “The Improper Princess” into a novel by extending it was pretty much the same as writing any other novel for which I had a clear beginning point, a general idea of where it was going, and a solid draft of Chapter 1. I had to figure out the “how” of the plot and the “why was this hard to do?” part of the plot, and develop the things that could/would happen in between. I wasn’t setting out to write a slice-of-life story about Cimorene living happily with the dragons until Kazul effortlessly became their king. I wanted to write a story in which Kazul becoming king was an achievement that marked a satisfying end to the book, as well as a satisfying turning point for Kazul and Cimorene as a team.

The real difficulty in choosing between these two methods is picking the one that will work for the story. Continuing “The Harp of Imach Thyssel” wouldn’t have worked as the opening of a novel, because the short story didn’t start at the obvious beginning, and was overloaded with stuff that should have been on stage. Expanding “The Improper Princess” instead of continuing it would have had to write over the original storyline, or dilute it to a subplot, because there simply wasn’t enough plot there to support a novel.

What I learned from the experience (which took me a while to articulate clearly) is that there are three kinds of ideas: those that are only right for a short story, those that are only right for a novel, and those that can be either. “The Harp of Imach Thyssel” was a novel idea stuffed into a story, so expanding it worked. “The Improper Princess” was a short story idea, so simply expanding it would never have worked, but extending it was possible. “Stronger than Time,” my retelling of “Sleeping Beauty,” is a short story that can’t be extended or expanded without wrecking the focus.