FROM SHORT STORY TO NOVEL

WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? AND CAN YOU TURN IT INTO A NOVEL?

You can't just define it by the number of words. In my anthology THE FLOATER the shortest short story is 513 words, the longest nearly 5000. The accepted maximum is around 10,000 words. Beyond that it becomes wearisome - unless you add several more elements and turn it into a novel.

Because the chief difference between a short story and a novel is that a story covers a single event, a single experience, a single incident or a single revelation. There are few characters, not much conflict and no sub-plots.

But although a short story has fewer words, it's not necessarily easier to write. It's a bit like composing a poem. Every words must count, must have significance. As for the endings! Ah, that can be the hardest task of all. An open ending? A closed ending? All the loose ends tied up? A full circle back to the beginning?

Here's my shortest story, A HICCUP IN TIME:

It took Dodwell six months to build the time machine. He had ordered it in kit form from Taiwan and the manual, translated into a quaint form of English, had severely taxed his limited knowledge of electronics.

His first trip had been a near disaster, catapulting him into his own bed some twenty years in the future.It had been disconcerting to find himself lying beside an older Dodwell and disappointing to find that his strict diet of sheep’s milk, yoghurt and oranges had not preserved him from thinning hair and a paunch. He would have liked to enquire further after his future health, but the older Dodwell’s bulging eyes evinced such terror that he had thought it best to mutter a quick “Sorry” and beat it for the door.

A pity about the little blonde who had dived beneath the sheets. Had he been able to stay longer he might have discovered her identity but at least he had something good to look forward to.

For the time being he would concentrate on his main interest: the great artists and performers of the past whose autographs he so desired to collect. The time machine was the instrument through which he would meet them in the flesh.

His second journey went only slightly awry. Whilst he had focussed on 1901 and the playwright George Bernard Shaw he arrived instead in 1999, face to face with Melvyn Bragg, a writer whose work still received occasional mention in the more comprehensive Literary Companions of Dodswell’s own time. Bragg had been pathetically pleased to give his autograph to a 22^nd century time traveller and Dodwell had managed to sell it on for a few Euros on his return.

Since then he had met many of his idols and rarely received a rebuff. Jane Austen had been amiable and courteous, Emily Bronte abrupt and a little puzzled. Nijinsky had taken some pinning down and of course there had been the language problem, but Pavlova, Caruso, Mark Twain, Laurence Olivier, Graham Norton – Dodwell now had them all.

Inevitably however the time machine failed, three days after its guarantee expired. It happened in London’s West End where Dodwell had popped in to see the 2013 production of The Book of Mormon.

No amount of twiddling or kicking would restart the machine, and in despair Dodwell was forced to retreat into its cabin, later suffering the indignity of being clamped.

Trapped in time, Dodwell prayed for deliverance but as the weeks went by he decided it wasn’t such a bad life. Most people were friendly. Those who had initially regarded him with suspicion decided he was harmless enough and began to bring him food, blankets, the Daily Mirror.

He became a fixture in the West End landscape, even meriting an article in the Telegraph Sunday Magazine. On fine days Japanese tourists surrounded him with their digital cameras, posing alongside his machine. Some asked him to pose with them. He always said yes. It gave him some amusement to picture the bewilderment on their faces when they saw the empty spaces on their photographs.

Now, could you turn this into a full length novel?

You'd have to add complications. Obstacles. More characters. An ongoing conflict or situation which is resolved at the end.

Perhaps Dodwell is not the only time traveller who's ended up in London in the year 2013. In this case the short story, perhaps minus the last few paragraphs, becomes the first chapter of a novel in which the two travellers meet up, struggle to find a solution to the problem, maybe fall in love if this is going to be a romantic fantasy, and live happily ever after as a tourist attraction.

Another alternative is that Dodwell - alone or with the proposed second traveller - decides to abandon his time machine, settle down in Bognor Regis and use his knowledge of the future to make a fortune and become Mayor.

Of course, the short story could become the final chapter. Perhaps Dodwell has an enemy in the 22nd century who wants to get rid of him and has programmed the time machine to expire in Leicester Square a hundred and fifty years in the past.

The possibilities are endless.