Why Write Short Stories? A Guest Post by Richard Salter.
The Collision is the worst disaster in human history. So far…
In the near future, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes an enormous explosion, known as the Collision. The blast flattens a huge chunk of central Europe and punches a massive hole in the Earth’s surface. Over the next decade, unspeakable horrors pour from the rift: vicious creatures with a taste for human flesh, a terrible scream that drives all who hear it insane, a phantom entity that feeds on fear and paranoia, and a nightmare train from the pits of hell, to name but a few. This onslaught of terror causes the collapse of civilization and threatens to wipe humanity from the planet.
World’s Collider is a unique concept in short fiction, where all eighteen original stories are part of a common narrative, recounting the disaster and its aftermath. A true novel by many voices, including Steven Savile, James Moran, Aaron Rosenberg, Trent Zelazny, Jonathan Green, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Kelly Hale, Richard Wright and a host of new talent.
Fifty million people died in the Collision. They were the lucky ones…
Why write short stories?
Ask any writer if there’s money to be made from short stories and they will likely laugh at you. Novels are the way to make a living from your craft. The amount of money I’ve earned from my short story sales has ranged from the cost of a pizza to the cost of an iPod.
So why do it? Why not channel your efforts into creating a world, a set of characters and an intriguing premise for the sake of a novel? Why waste good ideas on a much shorter tale that won’t make you much money and likely won’t be read by as many people.
Well firstly they can be fun to write. Maybe the idea you’ve had is struggling to stretch to novel length. Maybe your central idea is too cluttered in an attempt to stretch it out. The idea might make an effective short story. It’s a great way to hone your craft. Short stories force writers to get to the point or run out of words, and they allow a single idea to shine without the need for subplots or extraneous characters. Many successful novelists will sometimes crank out a short story, just for a change of pace or to keep creative juices flowing while researching their next novel.
For the new writer, short stories are a very effective way to raise your profile and get your work in front of readers. In Solaris Rising, I shared cover space with Steven Baxter and Alastair Reynolds. People who bought the anthology just for them might well have read my story too. If they liked it, they might seek out more of my work. It all helps, and it adds real sales to the resume when approaching agents.
Writing effective short stories is not easy and it won’t make your fortune, but it can be lucrative both creatively and in establishing a positive reputation as a writer to watch.
Thanks to Jessica for giving me this space to ramble, and for allowing me to announce that an anthology I edited, World’s Collider, is free to download for two days starting now! This is a unique collection with eighteen original stories by great writers that combine into a unified storyline. This mosaic novel charts a terrible accident at the LHC and the horrors that invade our world in the years that follow. Enjoy!
