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WriteOn! What is a story, exactly? [1]

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Date: 2022-09-15

Every story is different. But people still like to make categories

We talk a lot about our stories, making stories, editing stories… but what, exactly, IS a story?

story 1 / ˈstɔːri / noun 1 . an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. "an adventure story" 2 . an account of past events in someone's life or in the development of something. "the story of modern farming"

Dictionary.com is pretty clear. It’s EITHER an account of people for entertainment, OR it’s an account of past events. Fiction and nonfiction, except...some stories are both. But we have a definition!

So what does that mean exactly?

Parts of a Story

Stories all have certain components.

Setting: where the story takes place. This can be as tiny as a single bedroom, or as large as the entirety of Middle Earth — or stretch out across a galaxy. Every story has a PLACE associated with it, and that place has its own rules. In speculative fiction, those rules are frequently alien to the reader, and must be introduced in a way that makes sense and doesn’t detract from the purpose (above) of the story. The same can be equally true of nonfiction! Most of us don’t know the setting of feudal Japan, for instance, or even Europe’s Middle Ages (which were wildly different than the common knowledge people operate by, according to the medievalist scholars I know).

Characters: Now, this one is a… most of the time. SOME nonfiction will be characterless. Some speculative fiction can be, as it tries to make the reader the character. However, as a rule, stories have characters in them. These are the people who live the story (or die the story, though that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it). They might be human. They might be robots. They might be dogs (ah, Homeward Bound). They can be many things, but they will have some sense of self and (usually) a sense of agency. They ACT.

Narrative Arc: Now’s where things get messy. In most fiction, there is a narrative arc. Something happens. The story, whether it’s fifty words or five million, will be able to be digested in a sentence or two. Biographies are easy: the story of X person. Histories are easy (not to write!): the story of X place/period/person. Mrs. Polifax’ stories (by Dorothy Gilman) are always about her doing something for the CIA and managing, through luck, pluck, and grit, seeing it through. Tom Clancy’s novels are about spycraft and politics, but I can look at Hunt for Red October and go ‘This is a book about a Russian submarine captain who, with his officers, tries to defect to the US during the Cold War.’ And while that doesn’t get into everything, it hits the ESSENCE of the story. Someone will know what’s supposed to happen.

Character Arc: In a lot of fiction, it’s really the characters that people stay for. Which means the characters usually need to CHANGE throughout the story. (This is slightly less true for mystery/suspense, but that’s a fun discussion for an evening and a bottle or two of wine) While there are flat character arcs, they aren’t common. People like to see characters grow. It’s how they live the story.

So! That’s a lot.

How long is a story?

HAHAHAHA.

This is a question that really has no clean answer, but! But it’s something that’s important for anyone looking at publishing their work, so…

Short Stories: These are works that are 10,000 words or less. HOWEVER, most publications will limit what they’re looking for to a shorter number. In speculative fiction, this can be 5,000 words, or 3,000 words. Clarkesworld goes for 2200 words. However, short stories still need to have everything above: a clear setting, character(s), a narrative arc, and a character arc. They have to be vivid and memorable. This is HARD to do in so few words.

Flash Fiction is a subcategory of short story that’s even harder. Usually this is 1,000 words or less. But some publications consider it 1,200 or even 1,500. If you thought short stories were hard… try pulling it off in two pages on Microsoft Word (maybe three).

Here, in a short story, you’re going to have a single arc. One plot. Everything is built around it.

Novellas: These are from 10,000 words to about 40,000 words. Except when they aren’t. Novellas are not common to see these days in commercial fiction, though there are a fair number in the romance sphere. There’s a narrative arc and a character arc, but there’s more room for misdirection, pinch points, even subplots.

Novelettes are another subcategory! They’re often limited to 10,000 to 16,000 words. Though sometimes anything under 20,000 will count.

Novels: Novels are the bread and butter of a writer. If someone says they’re a writer (as opposed to a journalist, historian, etc), nine times out of ten, they’re writing, or have written, or have considered writing, or have been told they should consider writing, a book. A novel. They start at 50,000 words and go up from there.

No one ask me what happens to things that are written between 40,000 and 50,000 words. They don’t exist.

Novels have a rich setting, a cast of secondary characters in addition to the main character(s), an overarching plot, and multiple subplots. There are themes and explorations, in depth (and sometimes too much depth when it comes to embroidery on a dress or the seventy-three courses of a particular feast), enough to feel lived in. Once again, they don’t have to be speculative! Novels can be romances, can be science fiction, can be horror, can be historical…

But there are 50,000 words or more, and they have not just a main plot, but subplots. Not just one character, but many. So, novels are everything MORE. But they still need to have a narrative arc, they still need a main character, and they still need a setting.

Confused yet?

Because there’s more!

In the past, some writers produced material serially — for radio shows (Hitchhiker’s Guide), for newspapers (Dickens), etc. And that’s equally true today, with web serials, weekly fanfiction updates, and the like. It’s not so much a thing for traditional publishing, but it’s there. And when that happens? Well. Serial works can struggle more with a narrative arc, especially when they’re being written and published contemporaneously (which most are at the moment). Editing is a different beastie, and is usually focused on that chapter. But they absolutely, 100% still exist, and are popular in many mediums (after all, what is a tv show but a serial story?).

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/15/2122801/-WriteOn-What-is-a-story-exactly

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