Why are short stories so hard to edit?

I don't know if any of you have this problem, but, for me, short stories are the hardest thing to edit. Well, maybe poetry, but poetry is something else. When it comes to short stories, I can easily spent weeks or months to get the story right. Everything from things that might seem off with a character to the plot being presented in the right way. Then there is the language. With the piece I an revising now, I thought I finally had it until I realized the language at the end is just too harsh.

I've rewrote the beginning, I'm now rewriting the end. I've renamed characters. I've smoothed out the prose, I've cut, I've added, and I'm sure I've done more and still will. I don't believe in endless revision, but I do believe in getting it right. And in my experience that requires several passes.

My writing is clean even in the first draft so I never haver to worry about SPAG stuff. If that was all I had to worry about, it would be pretty easy. I know I can write a good short story, but it's always challenging and requires extensive revision for me to write a great story.

I am a short story writer by trade. I write a lot of them. I publish some of them. But I have learned that for me to sell a story, I have to believe it's perfect. I'm not a perfectionist and the story I submit is never perfect. But, still, I honestly have to think it is for it to have much of a chance of selling.

Then, of course, there is often a lot of editing and revision that goes on between the writer and the in-house editor. And those changes have always seemed to elevate my work in a way I just couldn't seem to do on my own. I love those editors. It's just so hard to get to that point where they will work with me.

Whether you're selling short fiction or not, the revision process can be quite challenging, no? Sometimes a story can come out pretty good even in a first draft, but to reach the story's full potential takes a lot of work. How many times do you put a short story through revision? I don't really count, but possibly around twenty passthroughs. Do you think you have good editing instincts? I think this is important, but it can also mean putting a lot more into a piece than you initially thought it needed.

I love the short form, and I even love revising and working on them. But this does take me a lot of time and effort. Some might say, but it's only a short story. But in my mind they just don't get it. It's hard to believe I'm alone in this process. Can any of you other short story writers relate?

 

I don't know which is more difficult for me, but they each pose unique challenges. Chalk some of this up to the fact that I just don't write many shorts. I've written a few flash pieces lately (with mixed results) just to have something to write while I seem to be blocked on my WIP for some reason, and the most frustrating thing I find in editing these little bastards, is that I can't get away from a problem. I can't just move on and decide to catch it on the next run through, because the next run through is five minutes from now. I do put things away for days or more for a fresh perspective, but when I'm working on the thing, I'm going over it again and again while some sentence slowly kills me.

The biggest challenge, I think, with editing a novel, is just the commitment. It's such a bigger undertaking than a five or fifteen minute read would be. I'm lucky in that I work from an outline and generally don't have to scrap the entire opening or ending or anything like that. It's all more or less figured out in the planning stages. A myriad of other problems notwithstanding, I seem to have a knack for pacing in the outline stage, so while I need to expand and trim scenes sometimes, I don't have major structural issues to deal with (so far.) Mostly, I'm editing for language and description. Description is a weakness for me and something I often have to leave far from perfected in order to get through a draft, which is painful. I do a lot of editing as I write, and I hate moving on knowing something isn't up to my standards.

 

It's funny, I find it easier to edit and work on revision with my novels. Sure, they're longer. And, of course, it takes more time to get through everything, but I seem to have less rewriting to do. With short stories, I do a lot more rewriting and sometimes complete overhauls of the piece. When it comes to revision, I will spend more time revising a 20 page story than I would 20 pages of a novel. Maybe I should also note that I do sell short stories. I have not sold a novel.

I think revision can be frustrating no matter what you're working on. Especially, when you feel like you're close to where you want something to be, but it's not quite there.

 

I don't write short stories, but here is my $2, inflation you know. What seems the most striking to me is that with novel, or novella you have more to work with so can make little changes here and there and fix a problem over time. With a short story ypu don't have much of a word count to work with. So the changes required to fix a problem need to be done quickly in a small space. Not gradually over the space of chapters.

 

I don't think editing and revision are so much about fixing problems as they are about just making the story and the writing better. I see it that way for both short stories and novels. But with short stories I almost have to live in them for a while, and that comes after the first draft. I return to a story many times before I feel like it really gets there for me.

Sure, there can be a lot of time editing and revising a novel. And there should be. And, of course, that is going to take much much more time. But, like I said, I spend much more time with a twenty page story than I do a twenty page chapter. However, I could be off base on that as I am yet to decide when I will really begin any serious commitment to that story beyond a draft. But I would spend a lot pf time going back and editing and revising chapters as I went along. I would often start at the beginning and do what I thought needed to be done along the way before adding new material. So, I do have that to compare it to.

I guess not all short stories are like that, but some of these little suckers just get to me.

 

Yeah, I'm in the homer boat. I don't spend more time editing short stories than novels, sometimes even less as it's easier to change core parts, but admittedly I write more in the novel space.

 

I think this is more a case of differnet definitions. To me, if a story or the writing needs to be made better that is a problem to be fixed.

That i would view as part of your process. Just as my process is developing into a first draft of a novel, is light on the word count, and much more tell than show. My first pass edit fleshes out the telling into actual scenes and not just narrative.

 

I think a lot of this probably has to do with what a writer is aiming to do with a short story. Writing a short story as an exercise or something like that is probably a lot different than really believing that it's reached a level where a publication is going to pay you $500 or $1k for it when going through the revision process. At least it's like that for me.

Tonight I decided to have my story start in a different place. This is a change I feel good about, but it took me a while to figure that out. I think I start these kind of revision-is-driving-me-crazy threads every so often out of frustration over my process and wondering if you guys can relate.

 

You're writing for publication. It's extremely normal to go back-and-forth between feeling good about it and "nah, this here needs more work" since you'd want your piece to be suitable for the market. Money at stake tends to change a lot of thing, often for the best.

Personally, I've never encountered such problems before, mostly because I've never written for the purpose of selling my story yet. But this still holds true even when I'm writing for a competition. That might change if I just stop making a habit of writing very close to the submission deadline every damn time! Parkinson's Law and all that, you know.

 

I think one aspect to the difficulty of editing a short story is the length. By the time you get to the end of a novel, or similar long work, the beginning is no longer fresh in your mind, so is easier to read with new eyes, which makes editing easier. It is easy as we write to leave out those little details that are obvious to us, but not the reader. Looking at our work with fresh eyes helps us spot some of those assumptions and correct them. That distance is harder to get with shorter works, unless we let them sit for extended periods.

 

Interesting, @w. bogart. I think there is something about what you said that rings true. And, to take that a step further or to build on what you just said, when a writer is editing or revising a short story, they likely have the whole story in mind where as a novelist is probably more focused on a chapter at a time. A chapter and a short story might be the same length, but they do quite different things.

Of course, all writers are always concerned with the overall story, but with a short story the overall story is right there in front of you and ready for you to go through entirely in one go. I go through the entire story of a short story several times. And that can be exhausting. Even when I let a short story sit I will still go through it several times (maybe even several times at once). I think some of my difficulty with short story revision stems from the idea of the whole story in mind right there throughout my editing and revision process.

 

I have the same problem if I can call it so. When I write something short, I spend a lot of time on editing and changing something. Maybe because it's a short one, so I want to explain and write everything perfectly and be able to express everything I want. When I write longer stories with many chapters, I feel like I have enough "space" for everything, so I'm not that stressed, and my wish to edit or change something is not that strong.