On Linked Stories, Part II: Proceed with caution.

Remember back in the day — and by that I mean January 26, 2011 — when I promised to write a second blog post about linked stories?

Right. Well, I didn’t either, until the other day, when I was thinking writing linked stories is so much harder than it looks, and I was reminded that I had written an “On Linked Stories Part I” blog post in which — you guessed it! — I promised to consider why writing linked stories is so much harder than it looks.

Well, here I am, six months later, and the nature of the beast (yes, beast!) is still mysterious to me. I have written 2 linked stories, along with 5 or 6 halves of other stories, all connected to the first two. By connected I mean, the characters are the same, though the point of view differs in each piece of writing. For example in the two complete stories, one is from the perspective of the mother, and one is from the point of view of the daughter. In two of the incomplete pieces, the POV is that of the grandmother. In most cases, the setting is the same, though sometimes the time period is different, depending on who’s narrating.

My intentions in writing this way, rather than, say, writing a straight-up novel:

- Short stories take less time, and have an end. I am a busy mom with a part-time job and lots of other things going on. I have trouble focusing on a longer work because I forget what the heck I am writing towards.

-Because short stories end, they can be sent out even while the longer collection of linked pieces is still underway. If some of these stories were to get published, that would be a good selling point for the book in its entirety, when that time comes. See? Practical.

You might remember (or not, since it was 6 months ago) that my previous post quoted a writer on The Millions who saw these points as benefits to the linked-story genre. It’s a practical way of producing a book, is what she seemed to be saying, and how I saw it, too. She also added that each story allowed her to hone her craft in a way that writing a novel did not.

Here’s the problem. In order to write an entire collection of stories that are interconnected, YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT THE OVERARCHING STORY IS. If you don’t, you’re writing 10 separate short stories that happen to involve the same characters, setting, and so on, but don’t actually link in any meaningful way. You’re writing a collection of short stories.

In the end, though it sounds reasonable, practical and, let’s face it, pretty neat, to write a linked-story collection piece by piece and story by story … proceed with caution. In my opinion, you’re still writing a novel.

And by you, I mean me. I’m writing a novel. It is possible, in fact, that writing the novel as separate-but-linked stories has actually hurt my ability to construct the plot that connects the stories to make an entire book. Because I can skip from story to story I can, for example, allow myself to stop the action when it gets too hard. I can end the story I’m working on and pick up with a different one instead. And, because I am focusing on so many shorter narratives, I have neglected the umbrella narrative — that is, what is the storyline that holds all of these pieces together?

I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from writing a linked story collection. I love, love, love to read them. They are often beautiful in tone and writing style in ways that novels cannot always afford to be. The breaks in the narrative can be just as, if not more, poignant than a continuous narrative. All I’m saying is, do not allow yourself to be fooled.

On Linked Stories, Part I

Sonya Chung had a nice essay up last week at The Millions, on linked stories/novels-in-stories. In “The Long and the Short of It: Linked Story Collections Bridging the Divide,” Chung describes her recent excitement about writing linked stories as a way to develop her skill as a writer.

As she sees it, short stories are taught in writing workshops because they really are good vehicles for boosting fiction writing skills:

You do need to work on several stories, soup to nuts, to hone craft and process, narrative structure, revision skills; to experiment with voice, point-of-view, subject matter.

You could practice all of the above in a novel, she writes, but “how many novels do you want to write and trash as part of your learning process before your stamina gives way to defeat? Practice works best on a manageable scale.”

And this is where, Chung writes, the linked collection comes in. Quite simply, when the short story is not long enough, but the novel is too much, linked stories offer writers, in Chung’s view, the perfect solution: the freedom of a novel-length storyline written “within the framework of compression, of small moments, of elegant lines and movement; you can write and sustain a standalone piece that is driven solely by the energy of voice; you can work at mastering the power of simplicity without sacrificing prismatic complexity.”

I’d add, too, that linked stories offer writers who are just starting out the opportunity to get publication credits (of short stories) while simultaneously working on a book-length work. Novel excerpts are publishable, of course, but the challenge of keeping the excerpt self-contained is a big one. What to cut? What to include? How to provide the gist of a whole within one small part? Linked story collections offer an alternative path. You can write one story, and work on getting that one published while you are at work on the next. In the end, you might have a whole, published in parts, which is an appealing place to be in when seeking a book contract.

One might argue that linked collections are hard to get published, but from the number of them I’ve seen recently, I don’t know … My guess would be that publishers would prefer a novel-in-stories to a collection of unconnected short stories (which is what many young writers leave MFA programs with). Linked story collections can be marketed as novels, which is, supposedly, what the “reading public” wants. (Well, what they really want are nonfiction books, but that’s another blog post.)

Chung goes on to list some of her favorite linked story collections, including Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx; Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson; and, Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson. My own list might also include:

-The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro
-Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
-Day For Night, by Frederick Reiken (described in my previous post)
- The Love We Share Without Knowing, by Christopher Barzak
-Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
-Miles From Nowhere, by Nami Mun

Coming soon, part II: In which I consider why writing linked stories is so much harder than it looks.

linked stories

I’ve become enamored of (obsessed with?) linked stories/novels-in-stories/fractured narratives. This is what happens: Every time I read a novel-in-stories or a collection of linked stories (where is line, when do linked stories become a novel-in-stories? Is there a line?) I am so wowed by the form, and then I think about it constantly, wonder what other books are out there in the form, vow to read them all immediately, and then pick up a novel or a memoir and forget all about it. (What can I say? I am easily distracted.) Until the next linked story collection appears on my nightstand.

I was first made aware of the form in grad school, when I was assigned The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro, for a lit class focused on short stories. (Quite possibly the best class I took in my MFA program, writing classes included.)  It wasn’t that I’d never read linked short stories before, but that class was the first time I was made aware of the concept, and could put a name to it. This summer I read Elizabeth Strout’s beautifully written Olive Kitteridge.  A couple of weeks ago I got lost in Japan, in Christopher Barzak’s ethereal The Love We Share Without Knowing. The fractured narrative seemed particularly appropriate to convey the confusion of being an expatriate, as well as some of the mysterious (to an outsider, anyway) conventions of Japanese culture.

Reading these two books reminded me how much I love the concept of linked stories, and I started poking around on the web for any commentary from writers on the writing process. Every collection of linked stories I’ve read has seemed, despite the skips in time or the switches in point of view, to have a certain complexity that I saw as possibly being quite difficult to create. Or was it easier to write a novel-in-stories? I just wanted to see behind the scenes.  Alas, my dreamed-of “Authors Talk About Writing Linked Stories” book proved elusive. I’m still looking for something out there on the process of producing a collection of linked stories and how it differs from sitting down and writing a novel from start to finish. (If you’re aware of any, please let me know!)

Anyway, one of way of answering these questions might be… writing some linked stories myself. Hmm.

In the mean time, I’m putting together a linked stories/novel-in-stories reading list. Suggestions welcome.