Carlton Mellick III

David W. Barbee writes:

Your Sideburn-ness,
I have an assload of prospective novels, and I’m coming up with more all the time. But I often struggle with short stories. In your opinion, are some writers just drawn to one or the other but not really both?

It definitely seems that there are short story writers and novel writers. Personally, I got started with writing because I wanted to write novels. I didn’t care about shorts. I didn’t even like to read them. I didn’t start writing shorts until after I already had 13.5 novels written and was trying to start getting published. Short stories are far easier to get published than novels and novels are far easier to get published when you have a lot of good story credits to your name, so I started writing shorts. They were terrible though, compared to my novels. But, as a writer, you really have to do both.

You have to realize that short stories and novels are two completely different art forms. As different as drawing is to painting. If you draw (or write short stories) your whole life until you get really good and then switch to paintings (novels) your paintings are probably going to suck at first. It takes a long time develop new skills. You might even have a different painting style than you would for drawing. I know my drawing style was different from my painting style, just as my short story style was different from my novel style. You are more likely to be drawn to the form that you feel you are better at, or which one you enjoy to do more. But you shouldn’t avoid other forms just because you are better at one than the other.

Short stories are bad because they won’t really make you any money. You’re not going to become a successful writer only writing short stories. You might even feel like you’re just messing around when you write them. You might not want to waste any of your good ideas on them, which makes them not as fun to write. However, you can get your name out there quicker with short stories. You can develop a reputation and a professional list of credits. Also, and more importantly, you will learn more about the craft of writing if you write a lot of short stories. With everything you write, you learn something new about crafting a story. However, you learn about the same amount whether you are writing short stories or novels. So, you’ll learn more by writing 30 short stories in a year than writing 1-2 novels. It depends on the length of story though. If you are writing flash fiction that doesn’t really have anything to do with plot and character, you likely are only to get better at writing flash fiction. Still, people recommend you start out with short stories because you’ll develop your skills as a writer quicker and also have tons of opportunities to get the stories published. Also, you’ll learn a lot just by submitting stories all the time (especially if you get editorial feedback). Once you have perfected the short story, you can move on to writing novels. At least that’s what they say… though most people who do this end up finding it incredibly difficult to move to novels, especially if they become successful with their short stories. I think it’s better to do both at the same time, all the time.

Novels are better, of course, because more people read them. Anthologies and short story collections hardly sell at all. I think it’s because people are more used to movie-lengthed stories. There are people who really like short films and short stories, but they are pretty rare. Still, I think writers need to do both. If you are better at short stories, still write one novel or novella a year. If you prefer novels, still write 1-5 stories a year. You’ll become a better writer for it, even if you end up just throwing that stuff away.

Eventually, once you get used to it, you’ll learn that you’re not actually just a novel-person who can’t write short stories (as I used to think I was). You’re just more practiced in one art form and need to learn how to do the other (even if the material you write sucks for a while). Someone who learns how to paint before they learn how to draw is missing out on a lot of basics they could really use to improve their paintings. Someone who only draws has to know that if they want their work displayed in galleries they’ll have to start painting.

When I was an art major in college, my dad (who came from a family of artists) used to tell me that to be a successful artist you have to start out by doing a drawing a day and a painting a night. Every day. Not only because of the quantity = quality argument, but because you’ll learn more by working on both art forms. Of course, you can’t do a short story a day and a novel a night, even though that would be pretty impressive, but perhaps you can write a short story a month and a novel a season…or something like that. Or, more realistically, spend 1-3 months out of the year writing only short stories. At least one a week. Then spend the rest of the year on your novels.

PS – yes, it is possible to become successful writing only novels or only shorts, but you’re kind of handicapping yourself if you can’t do both. If you are an up-and-coming novelist who gets invited to submit a story to a big magazine that offers a ton of exposure and high pay, you’re screwed if your short stories suck. If you get a good reputation as a short story writer and a big publisher wants you to write a novel for them, you’re screwed if your novels suck. Dig?

Over at Bizarro Central, people are talking about how they get their ideas for stories. So I am posting my answer here. I usually get my ideas using a variety of methods, but the one I use the most is a variation of the Ray Bradbury method.

Ray Bradbury’s method for coming up with stories works great, in my opinion. He would write down dozens of words (usually nouns) onto a sheet of paper. He would pull them out of books by flipping through pages and pointing randomly at words. They were words like Skeleton, Scythe, Crowd, Maiden, Wind, Lake, Coffin, etc. Then he would pick a word from the list and think of it as the title of a story. He would try to come up with the most interesting and imaginative plot he could based on that title. So, the Skeleton was about a man who learns one day that his skeleton has awareness and is rebelling against its body. The Crowd was about a mysterious crowd that always shows up at every car crash. Basically, he used a word as a trigger for his imagination.

I do the same thing, but I combine multiple words. I create a list just as Bradbury did. Then I make random combinations of 2, 3 or 4 words. Then I have a list of combinations and if any of them seem like they would make good titles and trigger my imagination in any way I will write a book or story based on them. These books I based on random word combinations: Satan Burger, Electric Jesus Corpse, Razor Wire Pubic Hair, Haunted Vagina, Menstruating Mall, Steel Breakfast Era, Teeth and Tongue Landscape, Ocean of Lard, the Egg Man, War Slut, and the upcoming book: Handsome Squirm.

After I have a title, I think of the most interesting story that could go with that title. Sometimes the title gets straight to the point. Satan Burger is about a fast food place owned by Satan. Haunted Vagina is about a haunted vagina (well, sorta). Ocean of Lard is about pirates on an ocean made of lard. But some of them, like Steel Breakfast Era, really don’t make much sense as titles. However, the words Steel Breakfast Era triggered something in my imagination that gave me the idea for the book. Porno in August is another title that did this. When I randomly combined the words Porno and August together, I came up with the Porno in August short story. For some reason, the word August reminds me of the ocean, so it made me think of a Porno that was being filmed in the middle of the ocean. That’s where the story begins.

Whenever I get stuck while writing a story, I will do this word combination brainstorm exercise and sometimes it will give me an idea for where the plot will go. Perhaps I will combine words to create an object that a character will use such as a glass chainsaw or hyperspace panties. A lot of my chapter titles come from word combinations, especially in Satan Burger and Sausagey Santa, and then I have the chapter based around that title.

That’s just a method I use to trigger my own imagination. There are other ways. Tons of other ways.

Eli Hicks asks the question:

“What makes bizarro “bizarro” is the plot, right? But how do you know how normal or how strange to make your protagonists? In all your work that I’ve read, I’ve always found the “heroes” quite relatable…”

In mainstream fiction, the main character is usually the “everyman” (AKA the most normal human being on the planet, one who is relatable to pretty much everyone). In bizarro, the hero doesn’t have to be completely bat shit weird, but shouldn’t be the everyman. To bizarro readers, the everyman is boring. Who wants to read a story about the kind of people we live next to already and have no interest in getting to know?

For bizarro writers, I recommend making your characters as interesting and abnormal as possible. They can be quirky, eccentric, surreal, or freakish. Some writers don’t like to write about weird characters because they think it will make them unrelatable to the reader. However, I disagree with this. I believe that it’s possible for the reader to relate to any kind of character. It’s like the old saying: “Even Hitler loved his dog.” So you can even relate to Hitler, if you love dogs. And if you can relate to Hitler, you can relate to any character. Even a girl who has tentacles for hair and a cockroach-sucking fetish. There are problems, passions, and emotions that she has that anyone can relate to. So it doesn’t matter how weird you make a character, you can still make people feel for them.

Of course, as in your case, if your reader happens to be as weird as the character then it will be even easier to relate to that character.

But I do want to also say that the character doesn’t have to be weird for a story to be bizarro. Only the plot has to be weird. You can put the everyman in a bizarro world. Still, I think it’s more interesting to focus on unusual characters. Of course, another thing I’d like to point out is that I don’t actually believe that the everyman exists. I don’t think anybody is “normal.” Everyone is strange in one way or another. Some people hide their weirdness, some people flaunt it, and some people can’t control it. Mainstream writers tend to focus on what is normal and relatable about their characters, but bizarro writers should focus more on what is weird and unique about their characters. It doesn’t matter if your bizarro books has is a suburban middle-class family man as the main character, because even a suburban middle-class family man has a strange side that is worth exploring.

Jeremy Pellington writes:

“i would like to know what sexuality means to your work. reading some of your books, i’ve noticed that sexuality is a common theme, sometimes leering towards discomfort. i know that you are a bizarro writer, and it may be possible that you’ve thrown these things in for a bizarre attitude.”

Sexuality is usually important to my stories. I probably wouldn’t say that the sexuality has any meaning, but I often use sex as a way to create conflict, build character, or add strangeness. Sometimes it’s even there for the sake of world-building. Almost every one of my books has an unusual sex scene that is there for a reason. In Ugly Heaven, people have sex by cutting open their bellies and pressing these squid-like organs together, which is important for world-building because it illustrates how people are able to have sex in Heaven even though they no longer have human sex organs. In Cybernetrix, there is a sex scene in the Tron world, which is important because it creates conflict when the character goes back to the real world with an electronic STD. In the Egg Man, there is a lot of uncomfortable sex between a man with a heightened sense of smell and a woman who purposely never bathes in order to torture him. This creates conflict and builds on the woman’s sadistic nature. In Apeshit… well, I don’t even want to get into the sex scenes in Apeshit, but let’s just say they reveal the ugly sides of some of the characters.

So the sex in my books have a reason for being there. Kurt Vonnegut said that every single sentence you write should do one of two things: build character or move the plot forward. Sex scenes shouldn’t be any different.

I also try to make the sex scenes as imaginative as possible, because imaginative sex is something I feel is lacking in most books. And, as they say, if you want to read about something that other people aren’t writing about then that is the thing you should be writing about.

I also use sexuality to explore gender roles in my books. I often give conventional masculine personality traits to the female characters and conventional feminine personality traits to the male characters, so the sexuality of the female characters tends to be more aggressive, lewd, and predatory, while the male characters tend to be more innocent, emotional, and tender. Of course, this is nothing new (not just in fiction, but in reality) but in my opinion it makes the characters more interesting and more fun to write about.

I’m not saying the sexuality is completely without meaning. Razor Wire Pubic Hair, for example, is one big exploration into the meaning of sex. But for the most part, it is usually there to build the characters.