Short Stories

There’s few things more exciting than finding out there are short stories to accompany your favorite series, right? They’re small and don’t require the full commitment of reading a whole other book, they usually fill in specific moments of importance that have been mentioned before or fast-forward to some special event in the cannon, and they’re usually just fun additions to the story at large.

            As you might know from the last Monthly Reading Wrap-Up, I’m currently working on reading a book of bonus short stories for Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles series called Stars Above. The set I have actually featured some of these stories in the backs of previous books, specifically ones dealing with more relevant characters, but it also features new stories as well. Most feature the main eight to nine characters when they were younger, focusing in on events mentioned in the series but not fully explored and some set after the original series.

            For one thing, having this book of bonus stories is a really nice addition to a collector’s set, but it also helps fill in and add to the larger cannon of Meyer’s universe. Also, featuring these stories following the main characters’ younger selves helps establish the timeline of their pasts when you see all these past plots lined up in chronological order, which I thought was helpful.

            Excited tangent aside, I figured we could talk some about short stories today and maybe some considerations with them.

            Maybe it’s different for some people, but I’ve always actually found writing short stories to be really difficult. I know this is because I’m chronically long-winded and have a very hard time making the full movement of a storyline in a shorter time span. For example, we had to write short stories in a writing class I took in college and I always felt like my fiction short story ended up being much more like the first chapter of a book rather than an actualized short piece. If you have this problem too, the only thing I can think to say is that being able to write a piece like that probably comes with practice- getting things down succinctly, making your way through a full character or scene arc quickly, not adding too much extra information. Don’t beat yourself up. It is really hard to pull off a short story.

            In the case of Marissa Meyer’s short stories I mentioned above, I feel like a scenario like this would be a bit easier to navigate, in the sense that she’s writing stories around scenes that were obviously important moments for the characters as they’re things that shaped them mentioned in the full series. This means she’s writing about an event that she’s probably thought a lot about as she’s developed her characters, so she’s filling in something that’s already been written in to a core part of the story. Which brings us to our first point:

Information and Accessibility

            If you’ve not guessed it already, one of the main reasons to write companion short stories is to provide extra information that your readers need or want. If you’re a best-selling author with a huge following, then you might run into the situation where fans explicitly call for you to write a specific scene. Probably more likely though, you’ll have to determine what sorts of things any bonus material needs to address.

            Keeping with Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles as it’s a good example, my copy of B2, Scarlet, featured a short story called “The Queen’s Army” at the end following Wolf (that book’s main love interest) as a young boy and details how he ended up in service to the Lunar Queen, which pertains to that book’s overall plotline. Wolf is a character shrouded in mystery and the Lunar queen forcing young men into her scary hybrid army is a key plotline for readers to understand later. Now, the addition of this story is extra information- you could easily publish the book without it and everything would still make sense- but it’s interesting to see a previously blank area filled in. Short stories are also a good way to discreetly sneak in bonus information- as I said, this short story is placed in B2, but we are introduced to Wolf’s mother in this short story and we’ll see her later in B4, Winter, as a helpful character.

            As I mentioned before, I really like that the set I got had a volume with all the short stories together, making them all very easy to find and read. Even if some stories weren’t included in the actual novels themselves, you’d still be able to find them. Beyond telling the stories that are pertinent to tell, one of the best things an author can do for their readers is make sure their short stories are accessible.

            This is me observing, but I think a lot of authors go about publishing their short stories different ways. Sometimes it seems short stories get put out in companion novels or maybe the authors publish them straight to their websites, for instance. Either one makes a whole lot of sense (plus, publishing digitally is probably a whole lot easier, cost effective, and maybe less reliant on a publisher to agree), but I think whatever medium an author picks to publish through, they must ensure the audience knows where to look for their stories, especially if they’re important.

            Keeping with the example, every story in Meyer’s Stars Above compilation is additional to the main story, so you could read the original series itself without necessarily needing the extra information provided in the series. In a different scenario however- it feels like so long since I’ve done this- let’s talk about Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. (Spoilers Ahead!)

            I don’t know if Rick Riordan just does this or if he knows the PJO fandom is involved enough to have read his additional material, but there are several instances where he’s introduced elements in side stories that have actually become major plotlines in series or larger books. Most notably, in The Demigod Files, Riordan follows a fateful quest between Percy, Thalia, and Nico in a short story called “Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades”. In this quest, Percy fights a Titan called Iapetus, resulting in the Titan losing his memory in the River Lethe and Percy convincing him they’re friends. As Iapetus no longer knows who he is, Percy renames him Bob.

            Though this story takes place as a side quest set somewhere around the last two books of the first PJO series, the introduction of Bob is a huge plotline later. In Riordan’s second series featuring Percy (The Heroes of Olympus), Bob is the only reason Annabeth and Percy are able to survive and eventually escape Tartarus in B4, The House of Hades. Bob also had a particular role in relation to Percy as he is a direct result of something Percy did- he took away Bob’s memories, showed little concern for him after the fact despite saying they were friends, and that is something that bothers Percy later on as the one thing he hates is the negligence and indifference the gods show when he kind of did the same.

More recently, the Nico/Will-centric book, The Sun and the Star, also follows a quest to return to Tartarus and finally save Bob. So, even though this character was introduced in a side quest in a small bonus book, his addition has become a plotline dominating at least two books. I’m sure Riordan probably explains enough of Bob’s backstory in the core series for things to make sense, but obviously this is a scenario where things will make a whole lot more sense if you happen to have read The Demigod Files.

Riordan also sneaked the big old ants that I’m not about to attempt to spell from another story in The Demigod Files, “Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon”, (this might sound super dumb but I’d forgotten about this story and now I’m like “Wait, is that a set up for Festus?”. I’m going to have to reread it now and see haha.) which later make an appearance in Riordan’s third Greek series, The Trials of Apollo. I don’t know if Riordan is just pulling from things he’s already introduced for established elements, familiarity, or kind of an easter egg type deal, but it’s always fun when you see something pop up again. Still though, he might be able to do that because of the scale and seemingly devoted readership of the PJO fandom, as things might be confusing if you take a plotline like Bob’s that ends up being so big in the long run when a lot of people aren’t familiar with it.

            One other thing Riordan has done with his use of short stories that I’m not sure if a lot of authors do (it would depend on how their world is set up) is use short stories to write crossovers. In the Riordan-verse, all his books are connected and happening in the same world around roughly the same time. Magnus Chase (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Riordan’s Norse series) is the first cousin of Annabeth Chase, our main girl in the Greek/Roman series, so we see her and Percy jump series there. Although they’re less related, there were hints that Riordan’s Egyptian series, The Kane Chronicles, danced around the world established in Percy Jackson. 

            In direct response to that, Riordan wrote a three short story bonus book called Demigods and Magicians where Percy and Annabeth team up with Carter and Sadie. I often joke that you have to figure out the timeline of the Riordan-verse from where Annabeth is, being as she’s everywhere and it’s about as convoluted as the MCU at this point. Though I’m sure it’s not that hard to get a hold of a Riordan book as they’re so popular, I first found my copy of Demigods and Magicians in a random kind of everything store rather than a straight bookstore, so I’m not sure how often a book like that might pop up. Obviously, a story like this goes directly for people who’ve read both of Riordan’s series (which he might know if a lot of his audience has, I don’t know), but I was surprised when I initially found it.

            In Riordan’s case, he can write crossovers where he’s purposefully made it clear his characters all live in the same world, which wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for an author whose characters live in drastically different ones to do. You’d have to pull off some intense alternate universe stuff maybe to explain that kind of a thing.

            I’m trying to think of other series I’ve read that feature short stories and, in truth, I’m not coming up with much. I know there was at least one character that popped up in Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s Starbound trilogy that I believe was introduced in a short story that I haven’t read, as I seemed to be missing some background on how that character knew the others although it didn’t affect my ability to read the series. I think Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff might have a short story or novella to go along with their Illuminae Files series, but I believe it’s only available in a digital format.

            I might be weird, but I tend to prefer tangible books to e-book format and I know when it comes to short stories or novellas, I probably haven’t read them if they’re not in a physical format.

            So, let’s recap. What are your main considerations as an author writing a short story or novella?

·       Relevance: Is this a story you need to tell? Are you filling in a scene for something you’ve previously established or are you introducing something new to come in later?

·       Timeline: Make it clear when your additional story takes place within the cannon of the larger story. If you’re filling in an event from the past, especially ones where your characters are younger, give cues so the reader knows when they are. Also, if you’re filling in backstory, you probably need to zero in on a very important (if not one the reader will instantly recognize) moment. If you’re writing a short story that takes place after the main events of your story, you’ll need to make that clear as well so things aren’t confusing.

·       Length: If you’re just writing a specific event or string of them, you’re probably okay with telling a short story. If you’re elaborating on a much more involved plotline, it might be hard to fit it all into a short story and you might need to upgrade to a novella.

·       Accessibility: How accessible will this story be to your readers? Will the format it’s in make it harder for some people to access? If you do not greatly publicize your short story or put it in a place where it’s easy to find/purchase, then it’s maybe not a good idea to put something super important in said story.

Got any authors you think have executed short stories really well or just any particular favorite stories? Let us know!

Thanks for reading! Write on.

-Kamryn