Improving Your Craft Through Short Stories

By Dan Rice

When I first buckled down to seriously pursue my writing journey in my mid-20s, I had no intention of writing short stories. I wanted to pen the next great fantasy series, something akin to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire or Joe Abercrombie's The First Law Trilogy. What I discovered is that such series are tremendously difficult to create, especially as a newbie. Nevertheless, I persevered, and my writing improved, albeit at a slow rate.

At some point, I stumbled across this quote from Ray Bradbury: "Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row." For years, my day job has revolved around software development, where phrases like 'fail fast' and 'incremental improvement' are bandied about, so Bradbury's advice resonated with me. But I'm stubborn. I wanted to write books, not short stories! Only after realizing my writing had plateaued would I appreciate Bradbury's wisdom.

Characterization was the weakest aspect of my writing, probably still is. Even when the plot moved along at a cracking pace, my work was still being brutalized, and rightfully so, by my critique group for slipshod characterization. Most damning of all, I couldn't unravel the mystery of crafting characters readers love, or love to hate, no matter how hard I tried. I needed a new approach to the problem, one that went beyond simply banging away at novel-length rough drafts.

About this time, I attended a talk by sci-fi author John Scalzi at the Tacoma Public Library. He was promoting a new novel, and I was and am a fan. I listened with rapt attention as he spoke about his work, including a strategy he used to improve his craft—writing short stories as writing assignments aimed at refining a particular aspect of his skill set. It gave him permission to experiment, focused his mind on the craft, and if something marketable emerged from the exercise, that was a bonus. This was a eureka moment for me! Maybe, just maybe, I could use this approach to shore up the deficiencies in my prose.

I embraced knocking out short stories as assignments, typically focusing on improving characterization. I tried to address the core critique that my characters were emotionally too distant for the readers to connect with. Not only did my characterization improve, but so did other aspects of my writing, especially my ability to wield the editorial butcher knife with a degree of proficiency. All of this happened at an accelerated pace, giving credence to George R.R. Martin’s advice, “I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That’s like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest.”

Many of the short stories I wrote weren’t particularly good, but a handful found homes in speculative fiction e-zines. This was a great boon for me. With the publication of my first short story, I was finally a published author! What a great feeling and fuel for motivation to keep trudging away at producing fiction.

The improvements in my craft began to show up in my novel writing. My submissions to the critique group were no longer thoroughly lambasted for poor characterization. Over time, I even earned praise for characterization in Dragons Walk Among Us, which would eventually become my debut novel.

I wrote Dragons Walk Among Us in first-person present tense after discovering, while scribing short stories, that this technique gave my work more immediacy and made solid characterization easier. I found writing that novel relatively easy. I think this is primarily because I had written several short stories in the first-person present tense before using the technique in a book-length work.

Now, as a writer with a YA fantasy series and two new books on the way, I need material for my platform. Some of my better short stories have found new life serving this purpose. I have used them as reader magnets on my website, i.e., sign up for my newsletter and receive a free story. Several take place in the same world as one of my upcoming novels, so I have them up on my site to give readers a sample of what’s to come. Also, having an e-zine publish your stories exposes their audience to your writing. A few of their readers might decide to read your book.

If you’re struggling to improve facets of your writing, crafting short stories might be the accelerant you need to slay those deficiencies. By treating the short works as writing assignments, you give yourself permission to experiment and fail fast. After all, the story is simply an assignment to improve your craft, and if anything publishable comes out of the exercise, that’s the icing on the cake. Your high-quality writing assignments might find a home on a literary website or as marketing material for your author platform. Honestly, you have nothing to lose and much to gain by writing short stories with the focused intent of improving your craft.