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This week, we’re going to read Eula Biss’s nonfiction essay “Time and Distance Overcome”:

How many people have heard the old adage, “Show, don’t tell”? What does it mean?

There is a famous writer’s maxim: show, don’t tell. “Showing” means to let the reader “see” something, experience it for himself as opposed to simply having the information laid out neatly for him by the narrator. Showing something—a character, setting, anything—lets the reader experience it in a more dimensional way than mere telling. Showing also more closely mimics how we experience things in real life, where we see things and draw our own conclusions rather than having everything pointed out to us. In a sense, showing allows the reader to have a more interactive reading experience.

To “tell” means to relate something in a factual way that is detached.

This is telling:

The bank was robbed by two men wearing masks. Both of them carried firearms, and it seemed as if they were willing to shoot if anyone caused trouble for them. Everyone there was absolutely terrified, none more so than the guard who had a gun pressed against him.

To “show” means to render the experience, to physically take the reader inside what’s being written about.

This is showing:

And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard’s neck. The guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. “Keep your big mouth shut!” the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word.

Which passage do you find more compelling and vivid?

The first passage gives us the bare facts. Telling often involves clichés and summaries. The language is condensed. In the second passage, we’re seeing a “scene.” We’re hearing what the robbers say. We see how the customers move.

Additional examples

Often, your biggest challenge will be to convert exposition into scene.

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov

Showing forces you to be specific and include sensory detail.

One way to show is to get specific with what you’re saying.

For example, you could write, “The car drove away,” but we can picture it better if you describe it more specifically.

Look at these variations:

The Cadillac drove away

The cherry-red sports car drove away.

The rusty wreck of a car drove away.

The rusty wreck of a car sputtered away.

All of these variations do a better job than just “the car drove away.”

Sometimes you can show more by getting more specific with the names or descriptions you give objects.

The last example shows an active verb. Instead of “drove” it says, “sputtered.” What’s the difference between these verbs?

The active verb uses one word to create a specific description of how the car moves that matches the initial description of a “rusty wreck.”

Specificity also means finding the specific details that best bring the painting to life.

Let’s say you describe an apartment as: “The place was decorated in a style that can only be described as tacky.”

It’s a good start but we really don’t know very much about it. We can’t see it. We need more specific details.

Now take a look at the apartment described in Junot Díaz’s short story, “Fiesta”

The place had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky. The less I saw, the better. I mean, I liked plastic sofa covers but damn, Tio and Tia had taken it to another level. They had a disco ball hanging in the living room and the type of stucco ceilings that looked like stalactite heaven. The sofas all had golden tassels dangling from their edges.

What’s tacky about this place? Can you picture this tacky apartment in your mind?

Literary theorist Jacques Derrida once wrote about how if you mention an object, like a tacky apartment, then everyone will imagine a different version, their own version, of a tacky apartment. That’s why it’s necessary as writers to be as specific as possible. So that when we describe a tacky apartment, it’s the apartment of our creation and not the reader’s.

Specificity helps writers show, it also makes almost anything interesting.

Another way to show is to use sensory detail, meaning that you describe things in a way that appeals to the senses.

What are the senses?

Sight

Sound

Smell

Touch

Taste

E. L. Doctorow said, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

What’s the first sense that we usually use when describing something? Sight.

Definitely include sight in your description, show us that object, that person. But also try to tell us what that thing or person smells like, sounds like, feels like, etc.

Here are some examples from “Rules of the Game” by Amy Tan

(Sight) “I could see the yellow lights shining from our flat like two tiger’s eyes in the night.”

(Sound) “I heard a chair moving, quick steps, the locks turning—click! Click! Click!—and then the door opened.”

(Smell) “By daybreak, our flat was heavy with the odor of fried sesame balls and sweet curried chicken.”

(Feel) “Each morning before school, my mother would twist and yank on my thick black hair until she had formed two tightly wound pigtails.”

(Taste) “I could smell fragrant red beans as they were cooked down to a pasty sweetness.”

Do you see how in addition to all of these passages including sensory detail, they also included specific details?

Here’s more guidance on showing vs. telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNBhaEV2ESg

Clear, specific, sensory details help bring stagnant, clichéd, worn-out images to life. They make your writing accessible to a reader. They enable you to create a physiological and emotional reaction from your reader.

In analytical writing, we are asked to write about broad, abstract, generalized judgements and concepts. In creative writing, we use specific, clear, sensory details to make a world tangible for a reader. We avoid the vague and clichéd, we yearn for the concrete.

Verbs and nouns are the meat and potatoes of your writing. Adjectives and adverbs are the dressing and seasoning – do not overdo it.

99% of the time you want to show, but sometimes, it’s going to be necessary to relate things to the reader in a clear, concise, and factual way. So it may also be necessary to tell. But the organization and placement of exposition is very important.

Here’s a new saying: “Mostly show, sometimes tell.”

The results from the Introductory Questionnaire are in! Thank you so much for completing this assignment. 14% of the class listed creative nonfiction as their favorite genre of writing and 76% of the class listed fiction as their favorite genre of writing out of our three options. That’s a lot of enthusiasm about prose!

As we begin to look at a new literary genre, I always ask students to share what they enjoy about that genre so that students can serve as genre ambassadors for each other, introducing each other to new writers and types of writing. Everyone’s answers in the questionnaire were so beautiful and wonderfully insightful that I thought it would be a shame not to share them with you as we explore each genre.

When asked why creative nonfiction was their favorite genre in the Introductory Questionnaire, students wrote:

“I love hearing about other's lives and experiences.”

“Creative nonfiction is my favorite genre because you get to view life from other people's shoes and really see how they perceive things by reading their works or works about them. For example, I recently read the book Born a Crime by Trevor Noah which was an autobiography about how he was brought up during the times of apartheid in South Africa. It was such a beautiful, sad, loving, hilarious story about his conflicting life and relentless mother that touched a lot of social issues that I feel are still issues we face today. So I really appreciate nonfiction because it has the power to address political, social and economic concerns while also giving entertainment.”

“I like writing personal stories based on experiences and articles/blog posts. I enjoy reading reviews and blogs geared towards activism and social change. I also enjoy reading about pop culture and politics.”

Students listed some of their favorite writers of creative nonfiction as:

Jenny Zhang

Roxane Gay

Joan Didion

Mary Karr

Augusten Burroughs

Fran Lebowitz

Mark Twain once said, “When in doubt, tell the truth.”

Nonfiction is not fabricated. Nonfiction must spring directly from the way things are or were. Anything in the real world is fair game.

Nonfiction is the most expansive type of writing, encompassing the vast majority of what we see in newspapers, magazines, bookstores, and libraries. It also sells much more than fiction.

Much of nonfiction isn’t considered creative writing. A legal textbook for example is not creative writing. Creative Writing has nothing to do with the subject matter. It has everything to do with the way the work is written. You’ll find creatively written nonfiction in every field from cookbooks to geology to self-help, etc. Even grammar books can be written creatively in a really entertaining way (like Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots, and Leaves). Again, nonfiction relies heavily on observation, imagination, and language.

We’re mainly going to focus on three types of creative nonfiction:

Memoir

The personal essay

Narrative nonfiction, specifically feature articles

Memoir refers to a personal story or an account of personal experiences.

In the past, memoir meant a self-written chronicle of events in the life of a noteworthy person, usually written in that person’s sunset years. Memoirs were written by people like Theodore Roosevelt, Mae West, or Johnny Cash. Now, memoirs can be told by absolutely anyone.

The stories of regular folk are pretty interesting, especially for those of us who are always kind of curious to peek into the lives of other people. What was it like being raised by your mother’s psychiatrist? How hard is it to kick the heroin habit?

Another crucial part of the “new” memoir is that the author does not cover his or her entire life. Rather, the author focuses on one aspect of his or her life, usually that aspect will fall into one of more of these categories:

Coming of age – a tale of growing up (adopted, on a farm, with unstable parents, etc.)

Relationship – a special relationship with an individual (sibling, friend, pet, etc.)

Adversity – a struggle with something (addiction, disease, abuse, etc.)

Career – a job (doctor, forest ranger, ditch-digger, etc.)

Travel – a journey of some sort (cross-country road-trip, year in Iceland, day in Iowa, etc.)

Memoirs can be short or long. The long ones are the books (such as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, a tale of growing up poor in Ireland or Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, a tale of a chef’s life). The short ones run about the length of a short story. David Sedaris specializes in the short memoir and you’ll find them collected in such books as Naked.

Even with a book-length memoir, you can’t include your whole life. You still need to zero in on an aspect of your life.

The contemporary memoir is closely related to fiction. It deploys all the techniques in the fiction writer’s arsenal—in depth characters, artful arrangement of events, a degree of literary finesse. A memoir is, above all, a story; a story that happens to be a true account taken from a person’s life.

Your story will need conflict to be interesting but memoirs don’t have to be doom and gloom to captivate a reader. If you are writing doom and gloom, however, pay heed to Frank McCourt’s warning: “It’s not entertaining if it’s imbued with self-pity.”

As in fiction, memoirs usually have a central character (you) pursuing a goal against a slew of obstacles.

Memoirs are based on memory and memory isn’t perfect. It’s absolutely all right to report how you remember things even if the facts aren’t absolutely accurate.

For example, many memoirs contain dialogue. There’s no way that one person could remember exact dialogue from the past verbatim. But you are allowed to include dialogue as you remember it if it helps your story.

It’s also okay to condense things a bit.

Minor liberties are fin. But, as with all nonfiction, there is an unwritten contract between writer and reader assuring the reader that everything is essentially true. Major fabrications are unacceptable.

For example, don’t claim you were in jail for three years when you were in jail for three hours. If you’re going to do that, call it fiction.

Some memoirs contain a fair amount of telling (especially in the way of relating thoughts) but you don’t want to neglect the showing.

In Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, a tale of a troubled childhood, a hurricane heads toward the family home on the Texas Gulf. In the passage that follows, the author took a mental photograph of a moment from her past then breathed it alive with both physicality and thought:

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr

The light in our windows was gradually turning a darker and darker shade of charcoal. Mother was hanging draperies over the big picture window, and through that window, I could see the Sharps’ Chevy backing out of their driveway, tarp and all. “What if old Mr. Sharp’s right about God and Jesus?” I must have said out loud. Or maybe I suggested we pray just in case—I don’t remember. What’s dead clear now is how Mother lifted her middle finger to the ceiling and said, “Oh, fuck that God!” Between that and the tornado sirens and the black sky that had slid all over our windows and Grandma stone deaf to that blasphemy because she was tatting those weensy stitches, I began to think we’d be washed out to sea for all our sins at any minute.

Notice how Karr shows this moment, rather than just summarizing it or telling us about it. She draws an image for the reader to draw us in. She is honest about what dialogue she remembers and doesn’t remember.

If the word “essay” makes you shudder with bad memories of rigid high school assignments—thesis, body, summation—you can relax. The personal essay is much freer (and more personal) form than what you were doing in school.

The personal essay form originated in the fifteenth century when Michel de Montaigne (French writer) was essaying on everything from drunkenness to glory. One of his favorite topics was kidney stones.

The personal essay is a piece where you share your personal thoughts on a specific topic. Feel free to rant about carpet in no particular order. Feel free to try to convince me that beets are better than squash.

Essays are short, usually running the length of a short story but some have run as long as a book.

If your essay cites facts, however, you do need to get them right otherwise your opinion loses claim to credibility.

Both the personal essay and the memoir are written in first person and both feature the writer as the main character or at least the main voice.

The major difference between a memoir and a personal essay:

A memoir is predominantly a longer story. (Showing > Telling)

An essay is predominantly shorter rumination. (Telling > Showing)

For this reason, essays are the once place where it’s fine to have more telling than showing. Often, essays are nothing but telling.

A personal essay will start with a personal rumination on a rather small or specific topic and then the observations will ripple outward, reaching for a larger picture.

Types of things you might write a personal essay about:

Things – perfume, hunting knives, ladles, etc.

Society – multiple marriages, Internet dating, adopting foreign babies, etc.

Politics – women in power, mendacity among politicians, a case for benevolent dictatorship, etc. (Op-ed pieces are a close cousin to the personal essay.)

Arts – Jane Austen, train station architecture, indie bands, etc. (Criticism is also a close cousin to the personal essay.)

Philosophy – leisure time, morality of being a carnivore, seeing the change of the guard by being around grandchildren, etc.

Joseph Epstein says this about the personal essay: “Two of the chief ways an essayist can prove interesting are, first, by telling readers things they already know in their hearts but have never been able to formulate for themselves; and, second, by telling them things they do not know and perhaps have never even imagined.”

See if you find either of those aims accomplished in this passage from Epstein’s essay on time, “Time on My Hands, Me in My Arms:”

“Time on My Hands, Me in My Arms” by Joseph Epstein:

Time had a different feel when I was young. It felt, to begin with, much longer. Summers especially seemed lavish in their lengthiness. I can recall endless sunny summer days, when I was ten or eleven, playing a variant of baseball called line-ball on our gravelly school playground, with breaks for nickel-a-bottle grape soda drawn from an ice-laden metal case at Miller's School Store, days that seemed longer than entire fiscal quarters do now. Drives on vacations with my parents on 487 to visit relatives in Canada stretched out longer than reaching Mecca must have seemed to Sir Richard Burton. Events one looked forward to—the end of school term not least among them—took what felt like millennia to arrive. Now the minutes and often the hours move quite as slowly as then. It is, alas, only the months, years, even decades that rush by.

Sorry to strike so downbeat a note so early, but the difference between time now and time when I was young is the prospect of death.

We’re going to talk about investigative journalism and narrative nonfiction that moves beyond the self.

If you don’t feel like writing about yourself or exposing yourself in public, there’s always narrative nonfiction.

Narrative nonfiction refers to true stories that are about something other than you.

Narrative nonfiction resembles journalism in that the information must be extremely accurate but here the facts are molded (not distorted) into a compelling tale. It’s about bringing those facts to life, giving them the narrative power of fiction.

A typical piece of journalism might read something like this:

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by a firing squad this morning, the first man executed in the United States after a ten-year ban on capital punishment was lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the efforts of many to stop the execution, Gilmore himself resisted all appeals of his case.

Here’s an example of narrative nonfiction from The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer:

Then the Warden said, “Do you have anything you’d like to say?” and Gary looked up at the ceiling and hesitated, then said, “Let’s do it.” That was it. The most pronounced amount of courage, Vern decided, he’d ever seen, no quaver, not throatiness, right down the line. Gary had looked at Vern as he spoke.

The first account gives us the facts, nothing more. The second account puts us right there, in the room with Gilmore. With narrative nonfiction, you’re taken inside the events, made to care about the people, compelled to know what will happen next.

Narrative nonfiction became popular in the 1960s when great writers turned their talents to a new kind of journalism, leading to such well-known narrative nonfiction books as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a tale of murder in Kansas, and Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, a tale of the Mercury space program.

Though most narrative nonfiction uses third person point of view, it became acceptable for writers to use the memoir-type of first person if they were on the scene, a technique used in John Krakauer’s tale of tragedy on Mt. Everest, Into Thin Air.

Since the writer is focusing on something other than his or her own life, a ton of research is required. It’s necessary to review books, photographs, documents, interviews, and travel to locations. It can take years to properly research a narrative nonfiction book, let alone write one.

Fortunately, there is a short-form version of narrative nonfiction: the feature article.

Features tend to run between 500 and 2,500 words.

Features are sprinkled throughout most magazines and newspapers, little stories that bring a human face to the news. The last page of The New York Times Sunday Magazine usually has a feature article.

Feature articles often arise from one of these categories:

“Hard” News event – a kidnapped journalist, a controversial election, a hurricane, etc.

“Soft” News event – the Super Bowl, a breakout movie, the gene that gives us a sense of humor, etc.

Trend – the renaissance of croquet, reality shows about the physically disabled, jungle-inspired clothing, etc.

Slice of life – a high school woman’s basketball team, an unusual corporate board, the friendly bear at the zoo, etc.

Profile (a portrait of a noteworthy person) – someone who has written a book, stopped a nuclear meltdown, won the lottery, etc.

History – the last aristocrat beheaded in the French Revolution, Alaska becoming a state, the assassination of Malcolm X, etc.

There are two key elements a feature must have, both of which are present but less pressured in nonfiction books.

Timeliness: Features usually relate, in some way, to something current in the news. They don’t have to be as timely as straight news, which ages almost overnight, but features must almost always have current relevance. For example, a feature about the French Revolution would only appear near Bastille Day or if the revolution were back in the news for some curious reason.

An angle: Features require focus that means a slant on the story that slices it into manageable bits. Usually a new way of looking at an issue.

Features work artfully but fast:

They pull us right in with an enticing opening

Consolidate their premise

Then back up the story with researched facts and quotes from relevant people

All while maintaining their narrative flow and bringing things to a quick conclusion.

Here’s an example of how that first person looks in a feature article from “Desert Samaritans” by Jessica Weisberg:

On the day I met Bruce Parks, the Pima County medical examiner, his office held the remains of 55 people. “Bodies” would be an overstatement. Pima County includes Tucson and a thick slab of the Arizona–Mexico border, and most of the deceased in Parks’ office are discovered in the desert. A few days under the untiring Sonoran sun, and a corpse becomes a spattering of bones. “Skeletonized remains” is the term Parks uses when he gives me a tour. In the examination room, I saw a cranium and a thin, medium-length bone sharing a plate with the same lack of intention as two items from a large buffet. Every few minutes, Parks lathered his hands with sanitizer and apologized for the smell. There’s a locker room where he stores objects interred along with dead: ornate belt buckles, rosaries, lists of phone numbers, prayer cards of the Virgin of Guadalupe. When he comes across an identification card that hasn’t wholly melted, he brings it to the Mexican Consulate.

The summer of 2005 was a scorcher. Two hundred and eighty-two migrants died in the Arizona desert that year, most from heat stroke or dehydration. When there were too many bodies, or bones rather, for Parks and his low-slung office to accommodate, the city purchased an external refrigeration unit, the size of an industrial truck, which remains visible from his window.

It’s not unheard of for feature articles to grow into books.

For example, John McPhee began writing a feature on oranges but had to expand to a book, Oranges, once he started gathering so much information that it would not all fit within a feature.

When asked why fiction was their preferred genre in the Introductory Questionnaire, students wrote:

“I always loved being able to escape reality and get lost in magical creative worlds.”

“I feel like fiction lets me dive deep into my imagination. It is fun to simply let your ideas run wild.”

“I can become absorbed by whatever fictional story I am reading”

“I think a good novel cannot only substitute you into the story but also it is a deep communication with the author.”

“I love sci-fi.”

“What I most enjoy about the fiction genre is the sub-genres of fantasy and sci-fi. I find the fantastical elements more gripping and intriguing than non-fiction, and I love to see how individual authors develop their own fictional worlds.”

“I have always loved thriller/horror novels.”

“I enjoy creating a character and plot that never existed before. I also find this genre the most enjoyable to read.”

“Growing up, fiction was what I most often read. It began with my mother reading to me, then me reading myself, and eventually me writing myself. I’ve always enjoyed a genre where I can take my own emotions and experiences and turn them into a story as a way of capturing and sharing them. I believe that even if a story isn’t directly true, it can still hold a lot of truth in it, whether it’s a microcosm for life, a commentary on society, or a more dramatic way to express real emotions. It’s also just plain fun to read about worlds that aren’t our own.”

“what I like about science fiction is its willingness to take an unrealistic concept and treat it logically, as if it were realistic. Stories incorporate both what is and what could be, and invite thought about deep concepts, like what it means to be human, how technology affects even the subtlest of interactions, or what the future of civilization will hold.”

“I do think that fiction is the best literary mode for exploring the implications of human nature, how this nature butts up against society, etc.”

“fiction allows for a limitless implementation of storytelling and world-building. Exploring a whole new world is always exciting I think.”

“I appreciate the specific type of craftsmanship that goes into the creation of novels and short stories. I enjoy writing/reading in that genre because I find it to be more immersive and memorable.”

“It's very interesting to read since you are taken into a brand new world”

“The mundane tapestry of reality can be ripped apart to portray the impossible.”

“fiction is a way that I can deal with my imagination and satisfy my curiosity.”

Students listed some of their favorite novels or authors as:

To Kill A Mockingbird

The Book Thief

1984

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Fahrenheit 451

Frankenstein

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Eric Jerome Dickey

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Catcher in the Rye

Twilight

The Lord of the Rings series

The Harry Potter series

The How to Train Your Dragon series

Terry Pratchett

Terry Goodkind

Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Gillian Flynn

Stephen King

Celeste Ng

Ernest Hemingway

Herman Melville

H. G. Wells

H. P. Lovecraft

Isaac Asimov’s Stranger in a Strange Land and The Three-Body Problem

Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

Fiction is a lie that feels true.

Ernest Hemingway said that “People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”

Fiction is like lying in that we’re making up something and we’re not reporting on something that is factual or actually happened but at the same time, fiction feels true.

William Faulkner said “The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.”

Many works of fiction are closely based on the life of the author but for something to qualify as fiction it should be somewhat fictional, somewhat fabricated. If you don’t feel like making anything up, then call your work nonfiction.

Since you’re expected to make up some things while writing fiction, try to conjure things that will make your story as compelling, dramatic, and intriguing as possible. You want to write something that a reader can’t put down.

The great strength of fiction is that you can make up anything that you want. “The possibilities are endless” when it comes to fiction.

The author Jane Yolen pinpoints it nicely by saying, “Fiction is more than a recitation of facts or author embellishments. It’s reality surprised. It shakes us up and makes us see familiar things in a new way.”

According to literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky, fiction is a practice in defamiliarization, it makes the familiar unfamiliar, it makes us step out of the monotony of our lives and see the world around us in a new way.

I want to make sure that we understand the greater landscape of fiction, especially in terms of the publishing marketplace.

There are two major types of fiction—genre fiction and literary fiction.

How do we tell the difference?

Traditionally, in genre fiction: plot > character and in literary fiction: character > plot

Where genre fiction leans toward the melodramatic, out of the ordinary, literary fiction tends to provide more of a mirror of the real world, finding its interest in life-size events.

For example, Stephen King’s horror novel Carrie is about a misfit teenage girl who wreaks revenge on those who torment her through her powers of telekinesis. J. D. Salinger’s literary novel, Catcher in the Rye is also about a misfit teenager, Holden Caulfield but the protagonist of the story wrestles with his problems in ways that are much closer to everyday reality.

Here’s the most common understanding of the difference: Genre fiction is meant for the masses, more interested in entertaining the reader and less language orientated. Literary fiction is beautifully crafted prose that is high-minded and meant for an elite audience.

But that’s simplistic. Some brilliant prose stylists have been genre writers: Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Brabury, Ursula LeGuin, among many others.

There are also many works of literary fiction that are best sellers such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Many writers cross genres and there’s great writing in both camps. There’s also lousy writing in both camps. One camp isn’t better than the other, they’re just different. You should write what appeals to you most, what you like to read the most.

All of these genres are marketing tools. They make it easier for publishers to market and sell books to certain perceived demographics. I want you to question this value system. I want you to question the divisions between these genres.

Regardless of what type of fiction you’re writing, you can write long or short, novels or short stories.

Novel

Titles appear in italics

Length: At least 50,000 words (150-300 pages in published form) although most contain at least 80,000 words which is 320 pages double spaced in a 12 point font.

Wide scope with many characters, settings, moods, etc.

A novel can span 100 years and many continents or follow one mixed up teenager spending a couple days in New York City.

Examples: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

Novella

Titles appear in italics

Length: 20,000 – 50,000 words.

A shorter version of the novel.

Examples: Carson McCullers’s The Ballad of the Sad Café and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw

Short Story

Titles appear in “quotation marks.”

Length: 10-25 pages when published in a book or magazine. But short stories can run as short as one sentence (these being known as “flash fiction”) or as long as 60 pages.

An example of early flash fiction would be Ernest Hemingway’s 6-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” (That’s it. That’s the entire story.)

Most magazines impose a limit of 10,000 words on submission.

Long Story, a publication specializing in long stories imposes a limit of 20,000 words.

Short stories usually stay focused on one or more of the following:

A single character

A single incident

A single time

A single place

A single mood

The brevity of short fiction can make it more difficult to write although it also gives the writer lots of leeway to experiment. Literary stunts that may grow tiring in a novel might turn out very effective in short form.

Example: “The Telephone” by Dorothy Parker consists entirely of the thoughts of a woman waiting expectantly for a certain man to give her a call. It’s very similar to a Shakespearean soliloquy, only it’s hysterically funny.

Unrelated short stories or related short stories in which the same characters reappear (for example) can be placed in a collection.

Example: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is composed of short stories, all of which are about four Chinese immigrant families that know each other.

Note: short story collections are not published as stand alone covers as often as novels.

There are several magazines and anthologies that publish short stories alone.