How to Prototype Your Novel and Ensure Coherence via Short Stories

Looking for a fix (or preventative) for lost plot threads, convoluted conflicts, and extraneous events in your novel-in-progress? What about testing various inciting incidents or ensuring your story is coherent? The solution is surprisingly simple: create a prototype. Generally speaking, a prototype is a preliminary version used to gauge the effectiveness of a concept or product before committing on a larger scale. Prototypes prevent the waste of resources, allow for exploration, and ensure feasibility. When it comes to writing, prototyping your novel-in-progress by distilling it into a short story is a tool you can use to create a more polished, compelling finished product.

Remember, all stories—novels included—are coherent combinations of five elements: plot, character, conflict, theme, and world. Lose any one element, and kiss a satisfying story goodbye. Of course, there are key differences between short stories and novels (length being an obvious one!), but don't let that dissuade you. Good storytelling techniques are as essential for short stories as they are for novels, and they're nearly exactly the same. Still not sold on the value of creating a prototype of your novel? Keep reading, here are a few reasons it's worth considering.

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.
-Haruki Murakami

Distillation

If you've been around the Bardsy for more than a minute, you've undoubtedly heard about the Minimum Complete Story. (If you haven't, learn more here!) As a quick refresher, the Minimum Complete Story, or MCS, encourages you to engage your brain's "instinct" for storytelling by telling your story aloud in its shortest complete form. This technique generally works below consciousness to place narrative elements in their proper relation, particularly their salience, identifying what's crucial and what's not. The MCS is a "living version" of your novel in miniature, evolving as your novel progresses to ensure coherence.

Creating a short story prototype of your novel works similarly. Falling between MCS and a full-fledged novel in terms of length and detail, writing a short story requires you to focus on the core elements of your narrative. There’s no room for distraction. Having a clear understanding of your story's essentials prevents clutter and disjointedness that can trip up a reader.

Experimentation

As you write your story, you'll be faced with choice after choice, each one a butterfly wing flap that changes your story. You’ll have to debate and decide things such as the societal norms in your storyworld, your protagonist’s character flaws and backstory, and what theme you want to emphasize. These “simple” decisions cascade throughout your story, affecting other elements. What makes these choices even more challenging is that there often isn't a right or wrong choice. You may be selecting between good and better, or even great and fantastic.

So, how do you decide? You could flip a coin, or make an educated guess, but there's only one way to know which choice is the best for your novel—testing your options. A short story allows you to try out major choices, and see how they work on a smaller—more efficient— scale. Different plot points, characters, and narrative styles can be tested this way without the time commitment required to rework your entire novel. The principle of isomorphism (that certain features stay the same regardless of size) demonstrates how your choices will play out on a small stage— with comparatively low effort—so you don’t have to test them out in your actual novel.

Identification

Knowing something is “off” with a story but being unable to identify the issue is a problem all writers face. It’s frustrating. Something is wrong and you want to fix it, but you can’t put your finger on the issue, so solving the problem is far beyond your reach. Suddenly, you feel a new sense of appreciation for the character in every scary movie who says, “Something about that haunted house/cursed bog/man in the clown costume feels dangerous,” but can’t articulate precisely what it is that’s bothering them.

You can’t improve an issue without identifying it first. Creating a prototype of your novel helps you pinpoint the problem. It’s easy for pacing issues, convoluted plot lines, and unmotivated characters to hide in an 80,000 word novel. However, in an 8,000 word short story, there are a limited amount of shadowed corners. Every element of your story is forced into the light, allowing you to unmask any monsters in your manuscript, Scooby-Doo style.

Short stories are fiction’s R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.
- Walter Kirn

Don’t overlook the usefulness of writing a short story while working on your novel. Crafting a prototype aids the creation of a coherent novel by revealing weak points in your story, distilling your novel to its essential elements, and allowing you room to explore how various choices will cascade throughout your story.

Plus, if that’s not motivation enough, how does publication and a monetary prize sound? That’s right, our 2024 Spring Anthology Contest: Compelling Hooks is open for submissions, and this time we’re seeking short stories. As always, you’ll receive editorial feedback and have a chance to revise before judging, so the sooner you submit, the better. Click here to learn more.

TO DO SCRATCHPAD PRIVATE JOURNAL TRACKING Update Assessment

CLICK A TAB TO USE WILL.POWER

TO DO LIST:
Add tasks to your sortable list, then revel in checking them off.

SCRATCHPAD:
Cache your gems as they fall in this always accessible place.

PRIVATE JOURNAL:
Reflect on your process — good, bad and ugly — in your dated diary.

TRACKING:
Measure your progress with key writing metrics, automatically,

ADD DO

Show Dones

ADD ENTRY

Metric:

Words

Minutes

ADD

Click anywhere to close / cancel