Ken Liu (incorrectly referred to by the OP below as “Lee”) is a prolific short story writer and, as of recently, also a novelist. He uses an apt metaphor to point out what those of us who write in both forms generally discover: they’re structurally different, and the skills involved in writing them are not all the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Originally shared by Kantuck Nadie Nata-Akon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two interesting writing articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The one from Mr. Lee sums it up best for me. I posted this to an IM to a writing friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n (10:06:16 AM) Kantuck: Mr Lee writes: “When I write short stories, I generally don’t outline at all. I can\u00a0 proceed by instinct and experimentation, feeling my way and sculpting\u00a0 the story piece by piece while the shape of the whole is held in my\u00a0 head.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n (10:06:47 AM) Kantuck: I’ve said before I can write a short story or micro fiction because I can see it all in my mind. But a novel? almost impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (10:07:09 AM) Kantuck: although I \/do tend to get a bit wordy, once a story starts going.\/ Case in point my last one \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.space.com\/32384-writing-scifi-requires-a-sense-of-scale.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n and<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n from TV tropes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n I think I can scale this down to help get more of a scale. Imagine me, living in Kentucky USA and want to walk to Juno, Alaska. According to Google maps that’s 3,315 miles. At 15 miles a day, that’d take me around 8 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now scale that up to just the size of the solar system and go to Pluto. 7.5 billion km; uh…jezz…12,962,962.96 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looks like I’ll need a couple more hiking boots now.<\/p>\n\n\n http:\/\/www.space.com\/32384-writing-scifi-requires-a-sense-of-scale.html<\/a><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ken Liu (incorrectly referred to by the OP below as “Lee”) is a prolific short story writer and, as of recently,…
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