What to Consider When Choosing Story Formats

I once received a story prompt that caused me to scratch an old mental “itch.” It had to do with a real-life situation that really bugged me: Occasionally, important email messages were automatically routed to my junk mail folder.

(7 Things I Learned While Writing Across Genres.)

One of the lost messages was from a prestigious literary magazine that wanted to publish one of my short stories, and it took me a while to find it. Ouch. Did that ever hurt. Aside from kicking myself for not checking my spam folder more frequently, I tried to put a humorous spin on the recurring situation by imagining a place in the upper stratosphere that was harboring lost messages. But until that prompt during a writing workshop, I’d never considered turning that idea into a story.

An initial short film script morphed into a TV pilot script. And finally it became a major plot line within my new novel, Universe of Lost Messages. In the book, there’s a metaverse—a vast, virtual space that looks like the cosmos. And it’s filled with messages that never reached their intended recipients. The novel’s eclectic band of characters is desperately trying to find a few of those trapped messages, which can help stop an epic catastrophe for just about everybody on planet Earth.

Yeah, I’m talking sci-fi thriller, here.

Ideas for stories can develop like that: Writers can start out small, in one format, and then transfer the concept to much larger formats if the ground they’re sowing proves rich enough.

For another example of that, look no further than N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities book series, which includes The City We Became and The World We Make. The first book’s prologue was derived from a short story, “The City Born Great,” as Jemisin’s copyright notice explains.

However, choosing a format can involve a lot more than that.

MARKET REALITIES

Some choices involve practicalities. I first wrote Universe as a script because I love film and TV. But as I plunged deeper into the business, I realized that I was facing some really big impediments.

First, a lot of TV shows and films are adaptations of existing intellectual property (IP)—articles, short stories, books—that have gained popularity. This gives the people who greenlight productions a level of security, that a given show has a chance of success. That holds true for all genres. Hollywood types are also attracted to stories based on real-life stories and events that will resonate with audiences. If you have written a script in one of those categories, terrific!

However, that isn’t me. My chosen genres are sci-fi and fantasy—original stories I’ve written myself. And that poses an added challenge, largely due to the accepted screenplay format standards. Scripts have extremely short descriptions of characters and visuals. They are skeletal in nature. The world-building that goes into a sci-fi or fantasy story can be vast, as book series like Dune or His Dark Materials make clear. It can be difficult for producers to fully grasp—and get excited by—the writer’s vision, if their only encounter with a sci-fi or fantasy story is in the screenplay format.

Those realities eventually led me back to my first love, prose—which I find liberating. It allows me to build entire stories. Needless to say, there are lots of people who add creative layers to TV and film productions—from film actors and directors to makeup artists and costume designers. With novels and short stories, I get to create the entire story.

Check out Janet Stilson’s Universe of Lost Messages here:

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CREATIVE DECISIONS

Other factors that writers need to consider involve creativity. Among them is the amount of detail that a writer envisions. Is the story just a brief moment in time that can be conveyed in flash fiction (under 1,200 words) or is it more like War and Peace? Figuring that out can relate to:

The number of characters with vibrant personalities and challenges who undergo change.How the world around the characters changes.The number of subplots. Maybe the main plot is a murder mystery, but there’s a secondary storyline that relates to romance. And a third subplot focuses on the protagonist’s fight against some mental demon.The intricacy of certain questions that need to be resolved.How long a certain chain of events plays out.

Aside from those variables, writers need to consider what formats they enjoy. Is script writing the only thing that blows your hair back? Then, go for it.

The early stages of writing a story can be like standing before a body of water that you intend to swim. You can see the waves that reach shore, but there’s mist obscuring your view. It’s impossible to tell how long it will take to reach the other side, and how much energy you need to expend. Is this a Diana Nyad swim from Cuba to Florida? Or are you backstroking across a pond? Regardless, the water is so inviting you just have to figure that out. Sometimes you can only tell by paddling around a bit.

That paddling might take the form of journaling; researching aspects of the story that have captured your curiosity; or testing out various outlines. And sometimes you just have to start writing the story in order to figure out how much there is to tell.

Even highly successful writers can have difficulty figuring out the best format for a story in the early stages. In the acknowledgements section of his novel Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman explained that when he started the story, he didn’t realize it was going to be a novel. He was responding to a short story request from Jonathan Strahan, an editor and publisher. “Jonathan was forgiving and kind when I finally admitted to myself and to him that this wasn’t a short story, and I let it become a novel instead,” Gaiman wrote.

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To quote Theodore Roethke: “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow … I learn by going where I have to go.”

The critical aspect, in figuring out the ideal format, is to have a story idea that stirs passion and curiosity inside you. With enough of that precious energy, and a whole lot of tenacity, you’ll be able to go the distance, no matter what format you choose.