Every now and then I read on a forum where someone wants to start writing and wonders if they should start with short stories before jumping into novels. Other times it's a novel writer trying to write a short story but finding themselves at 10,000 words before getting to the gist of the story. The common theme is whether writing shorts and writing novels are two aspects of the same thing or very different.

My own tendency is to short fiction. I have finished Nanowrimo three times out of three so I can do longer stuff. I find most novels too full of character development, description and unimportant subplots for my taste. I like the "ideas" of the story. I still remember one story from Analog years ago. A squid came to a human ship and asked why we have stopped killing the whales. The squid were intelligent and the whales were like wolves preying on the squid civilization. I don't remember any more details but the idea that whales which we think may be intelligent are the bad guys of the deep ocean stuck with me.

I'm sure this could have been expanded into a novel with various good guys, like the Sea Shepard crews who try to stop whaling, becoming the bad guys. Throw in various government agencies, deep sea exploration, and love interests and you've got eighty thousand words easy.

But I need to get back to the original point of this posting. What does a beginning writer need to do to start. To me the progression is: words, sentences, paragraphs and scenes. To say it another way, you need vocabulary and grammar first then you can proceed to expressing ideas and stories.

Notice I didn't specify short or long stories. They are different, but only in what you include or leave out. Novels include more character development, backstory, description, as I said stuff I don't care too much about. What did I retain from that Analog story? You read it above. I couldn't tell you if the main character was male or female, what time period it took place in or even which ocean. Don't get me wrong. I'll read novels. A good space opera or adventure will keep me entertained for hours.

So to those wanting to write novels or shorts, go for it. And do try to write in different lengths. I think of it as cross-training. The experience you develop by cutting a story down to four thousand words or by interleaving half a dozen subplots can only help your writing.