How to writer longer stories for a SciFi novel?
I'm writing science fiction short stories and intend to later expand and stitch them together into a science fiction novel.
My problem is that (e.g.) the scenery is left / the destination point is arrived at too quickly. This doesn't mean that the story needs to be over at that point but most of the times it more or less asks for a new chapter.
Many times I could expand them as I often just basically "explain" a science fiction idea (e.g. by examination/experience of an object/phenomena) where it probably should rather be an exploration of the idea. But not always and often I'm not sure how. At the same time I aim to have the story be as non-vacuous as possible.
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A story must always be a story, which is to say that it must have a story arc. The arc of a story is fundamentally built around desire and the things people will or will not do to achieve their desire. Thus the crux of a story is always a choice the protagonist must make about the price they are willing to pay (or not willing to pay) to achieve their desire.
Different genres are defined both by the types of choices they deal with and by the settings in which they are told. The "science fiction idea" at the heart of some science fiction stories (not all SF has an original idea by any means) functions as catalyst for the character's desire or the character's choice.
If your "story" is little more than the examination of the science fiction idea itself, it is not yet a story. And while length is not strictly germane to story, it is likely that it would take you much longer to tell the story of someone whose desires or choices are impacted by the SF idea than it would to describe the idea itself.
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