Trying my hand at short stories was the single best decision I made when I started writing fiction.
A couple of years back I started a novel – like just about everyone else does when they decide to take up writing – but the project quickly stalled when I realised the near-future world I was creating needed more detail and coherency. I wasn’t clear about the universe the story was taking place in, which is a sure-fire way to write a weak science fiction novel.
(click on the PDF icon, above right, if you prefer a black lettering on a white background).
So I dipped into short stories, figuring they’d be a useful means to getting the background right for the book. It proved to be a fortuitous move. World building is the least of the many ways the Short can make you a better writer.
Let me tell you about it:
1) A Shortcut to Better Writing
When you write short stories, you dramatically reduce the time period between drafting, critiquing by beta readers, re-drafting and submission. A short story can go through that process within 2 to 4 weeks. A novel – well, that takes over a year, at least. It’s also a lot easier (and more reasonable) to ask four friends / fellow writers / put-upon-partners to read a 5000-word short story than it is to find four people to read a 100,000-word novel.
This constant feedback on your writing allows constant revision, discussion, and improvement of your style and technique. It means ongoing workshopping of your craft that can quickly eliminate most of the common errors new writers make when starting out. Much better to limit those rookie errors to your first couple of short stories, rather than have them plague your epic manuscript.
Short stories are also a form that demands economy of language. They demand you grab the reader’s attention from the first line, and don’t let go. They demand that you make the reader care about the protagonist, and deeply, within the first few pages of the story.
All of which are crucially important skills transferable to novel writing.
2) Connecting With Other Writers
Assuming you join a writer’s group where you can exchange and critique stories (and if you don’t, you’re a damn fool), 
you’ll gain plentiful opportunities to engage with other writers. This has obvious transactional benefits: you will meet more experienced authors who will read your stories and help improve them, and who will also be able to give you insights into the profession.
It also has less transactional, more human benefits. You’ll find a peer group who can share your pain in rejection, your frustrations with the craft, the joy of publication, and have all manner of geek preoccupations similar to your own.
Cats, for example: every bloody writer in the world has a cat, apparently, and talks about their damn cat endlessly and in great detail on social media. I’m not a cat man. Fuck cats. But if you like cats then writing’s your game, as every other sod on the scene has one.
What I do have is my Star Trek: Deep Space 9 uniform. I love this uniform. And aside from wearing it around the house, the only other place I can wear it (and be cheered for doing so) are at science fiction and fantasy writer’s conventions. That is the place where my magnificent, tailor-made, Season 7 Deep Space 9 uniform can be worn in all its glory.
3) Career Advancement
You get published in a professional market – it matters. It tells prospective agents and publishers, for example, that you are producing quality stories. It’s certainly not common, but it is not unknown, for publishers or agents to reach out to authors they’ve read in one of the major pro markets.
I won Writers of the Future earlier this year and will be travelling to LA next year for the awards ceremony. Aside from the money and the trip – both of which are very cool, to say the least – I’ll be sitting down in an intensive week of workshops with best-selling novelists. I’ll be getting insights from some of the biggest names in the genre.
A short story 4800 words in length got me that.
4) Readership
You collect readers. Certainly – with the exception of an award-winning masterpiece, one sale probably won’t get you that many. But developing a backlist of short-story sales is a way of building up an audience for the time your novel does come out. Magazines like Asimov’s have 15,000 subscribers, and online-only sites like Clarkesworld get tens of thousands of readers every month. You’ll get noticed.
5) Hardens you Against Rejection
The short story market – in particular the professional market – is a highly competitive one. Some pro writers argue it is harder to get a short story in one of the top markets today than it is a novel with a credible publisher. I’m not quite sure of the numbers on that, but I agree that it is bloody difficult.
Which is another way of saying: you’ll get lots of rejections. If you start writing short stories and stick at it, you’ll get more rejections than you can poke a stick at. But that’s good. After a while, the rejection slips become your armour. You’ll wear so many you’ll barely feel it when the next one hits home.
6) Confidence
The first thing I did after winning Writers of the Future was argue with the contest organiser, telling her she’d made a big mistake. The second thing I did was imagine travelling to LA, getting the WotF Anthology hot off the press, and seeing my name over someone else’s story – that there’d been a terrible mix-up and that I’d been accidentally awarded the prize.
But after two subsequent sales to Interzone, and some others besides, I realise it’s no longer simply about luck (though please never forget luck is part of the equation). I have evidence now that my writing is good enough to be there. This, in turn, spurs me to continue writing.
A novel on the other hand, well, a novel can take a year, sometimes five, even ten. And most authors do not sell their first novel. While you may have support from beta-readers and family, you’ll always have that question in the back of your mind: am I a terrible writer and simply deluding myself? Short stories – while not completely removing those fears – will help allay them.
7) World Building
As I set nearly all my short stories in the same universe as I’ve set my novel and novellas, they provide an opportunity to flesh out the details: the implications of new technology (and do the research to make sure I get the science right), explore geo-political changes of this imagined future, and to experiment with new ideas and characters.
Now, these are usually all in the background. A story that is merely world-building is not a story; it is simply tedium for
the reader and self-indulgence on the part of the author. Don’t make that mistake.
But weaving it into the background of your stories, or exploring ideas that are central the world you’ve created (a magic system, a political or social system, a new technology) helps you discover and build the setting you are working in. You will accrete layer after layer of detail that – if used sparingly and carefully – makes the reading experience immersive.
If you’re relatively new to the game, short stories are a valuable way to quickly hone your craft, make contacts in your profession, and develop an audience.
Most importantly, they’ll make your novels that much stronger.
The Writer’s Training Regime Part 1: The Convention, can be found here.