We've discussed already the need to make your work engaging. In order to do that one needs to use every word to their advantage to ensure a reader simply can't put your manuscript down. Nowhere is this practice of making every word count more prevalent than in short fiction. I myself must confess that I am not a fan of short fiction. I can't claim to enjoy it particularly and most of the short fiction I've read (even by some of my all-time favourite authors) can't really keep me interested or move me like their novels can. I do like the Raven by Edgar Allan Poe and I do like some of the stuff in Men Without Women by Hemingway and some of Haruki Murakami's stories in After the Quake however.
In today's world writing short-fiction is not what it once was. Ray Bradbury was so prolific at short-story writing at one stage that he was selling over 50 stories a year and making a living off it. I don't know that there's much more than 50 publications left out there that will pay an author for short-stories nowadays. Likewise, Stephen king used to write short-stories to provide supplemental income for his family, something that would be very tough today (not that it was a walk in the park for you Mr King if you're reading this). There's some very good University Presses that one can get published in and some journals and magazines like Glimmertrain and Crazy-Horse but the days of getting published in major newspapers and magazines is (for most) well and truly over. Even so it's still worth trying to get shorts published because many agents like to see any publication credits that you have on a query letter. If someone has seen promise in your work then agents are more likely to take a look at it.
Anyway, how does short-fiction help you with a second-draft? Well as I've already stipulated writing short-fiction requires a writer to write lean, crystal clear sentences. Every sentence you write needs to either build character, establish setting or drive the story. No words can be wasted. Writing this way is very tough when you start because you'll need to constantly try to trim the fat off your wording to make it cleaner and crisper and to get into the heart of what's happening as fast as possible without losing tone and style or clarity. Because it's short fiction and there are word contraints you need to start as close to the end as you can but still achieve the same kind of character relationships and world establishment as a novel has to in it's opening chapters.
A good exercise is to take a story that you like and try to paraphrase the first few chapters. Then try to inject the same kind of tone that the original author does in the novel in that short block of words that you've just written. It will become apparent how important word choice is, how important sentence structure and length are and what kind of little nuances can help you to really propel narrative.
As I've said I don't like reading short-fiction. I would be lying if I told you that when I've finished a peice of short-fiction I think it's going to get me anywhere, no matter how complete a peice I think it is. Having said that I beleive in making everything I write of as good a standard as I possibly can and I do beleive whole-heartedly that writing short-fiction, even as just an exercise, makes me appreciate more and more the need to be concise and clear in my work. To that end the benefit of writing this kind of stuff, even if you never submit it for publication, is massive. If you can get to a level where you can take a paragraph of 200 words and get it down to 75 without losing the tone an style you're after then you're moving in the right direction.
Writing for enjoyment is important, but you still have to be able to actually write in the first place and that takes effort. It's important to me that I gets better and so sitting behind some cliche' like "I write what I want for my own enjoyment" because it's easier than stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to get better is very ugly to me.
Top novelists write whatever they want. If they get lucky they do that from day one but plenty of writers are writing what OTHER people want them to in order to earn the right to do what they want in the future. They write what editors tell them to, what publishers want, what agents tell them will sell, what newspapers and magazines need for their readers. They write text books and technical fact-sheets and how-to-guides. They guest blog they edit other peoples work, they prepare legal contracts. They keep diaries, write court minutes or letters for their bosses. They write just to write because that's what makes them better and getting good and developing their own style is what's going to get them noticed! Being a good writer isn't just about the fun of writing from your own imagination, sadly. You shouldn't just say "I don't want to write that," or "I can't write that," because it's tough. Try new things and keep moving forward. Even if you don't think it was a relevent experience for you, if you learned one thing from it then you're getting better and that should always be the aim, from new writers to best-selling novelists. So my advice is to try some short fiction. Even if, like me, you don't like reading it you will get better at condensing your writing and making every word count. I look back now on the short stories I've written and I see a massive improvement, so much so that I've now had some things published, and that, let me tell you, is a great feeling and something that keeps me motivated.
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