ENGL 4310

I hate to be one of those people that says, “Well, the only way to know the difference between a short story and a novel is to write them.” But, maybe the only way to know the difference is to experience the work behind it. In class on Tuesday we talked a lot about the way stories felt. Some stories feel like a short story. Some stories feel like a novel. This idea of feeling is interesting in this context, because it is so individualized. But I’ve done it.

In Kay’s playwriting class, I had an idea for my one act play. It scared me, because it just kept feeling like a short story to me. I talked to her about it and she said to just try it as a play. I did and I hate it, it is a short story. It feels like a short story. But I know that Kay could take the same idea and make it a play. Maybe this is why writing is so hard to teach to someone else. It is all about feeling things.

Okay I got side tracked, but I think the same feeling principle can be used for the short story vs. novel. There is this almost innate (though I hate using that word) thing that happens with writing. A writer will see something, say a sparrow landing on a tree, and it was important to them. So they take that moment and write it. It could turn into anything, fiction, nonfiction, poem, play, what have you. But for that writer, they know what this moment is and where it belongs. They can just feel what it wants to be. And it happens. And sometimes it works, if you are lucky.
Maybe it can all go back to this idea of feeling, for both the reader and the writer. The reader needs to feel it just as much as the writer. It is the contract they both sign. Perhaps the answer in the question goes back to that thing about writing that we, I, can’t put my finger on, the idea of feeling and knowing.