How is Writing a Novel Different from Writing a Short Story?

Dianna Gunn is one of NHT!'s rotating troupe of teen bloggers.You can visit her own blog at diannaswritingden.com

BY: DIANNA GUNN

How is writing a novel different from writing a short story? Well, there are a few ways. Though a novel is much like a short story in terms of narrative — both have beginnings, middles and ends — it is different in the fact that it is much, much longer. This means you need a longer, more complex story line, and you'll need a better grasp of the setting and the characters. Odds are you'll have more of both of those too.

The storyline for a novel needs to be longer in order to fill more pages. A novel, like a short story, has a rising action, a climax, and a falling action, but they're all much longer. With a novel, you also want to have a subplot or two to mix things up, make them more complicated and keep the reader's interest. These can be things like two of the more important characters falling in love, the discovery of a plot aimed to kill somebody important, the reunion of long-lost family members, or anything you want it to be. It's your book, after all, so fill it with as much intrigue as you want.

Keep reading after the jump for more tips!

When you're creating a novel, you have to really know who your characters are. Characters are what draw a reader into a book and what keep them there. If a reader can't sympathize with your character, if they don't care about your character, they won't keep reading. That doesn't mean your character needs to be perfect — in fact, a perfect character is off putting for most readers, because how many of us are perfect? What it does mean is that your character needs to be a complete person, a person who your reader thinks they know, who feels real to them. Whereas in a short story the single event is the focus and you don't need to know much about character at all, you need to have all the important details for the main characters of a novel constantly in your mind.

You also need to make sure you really know your setting. If it's a real place, get a map and mark all the places your characters are going to go. Check it out with Google Earth. If it's based on a real place, look at a map and then draw your own, making it different in whatever ways you want it to be different. If you're going to write about a world you've created, you're going to need to go into a lot more depth, because you'll also have to work on a culture. But first thing's first, always make a map for your novel and floor plans of any really important buildings — that visual guide is a whole asset.

The biggest difference between writing a novel and writing a short story for me — and many other writers — is that with a novel, I plan a lot more. There are a lot more details to keep track of and it makes for less editing when you've finished it. Over the next two weeks, I hope to give you all the things you need to plan a novel.