Writing a short story in the same universe as my novel
In my post-apocalyptic novel, the MC Eris navigates the world of survivors and grapples with her newly discovered abilities. The leader of the group of survivors, and the book's antagonist, Ezrith, had a wife named Saskia who was, unbeknownst to everyone, killed by Eris. I want to write a short story that centers around Ezrith and Saskia's death and how Ezrith handled it when it happened, but I don't really know where to begin.
Should I call my short story a prequel, or, since its a short story, can it not be called a prequel? Should I write my short story so that it could be read stand-alone, without previously reading my novel? And since the short story is written about the antagonist, whose backstory is tragic, how do I keep the reader from piling all their sympathy on her?
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I wouldn't get hung up on prequel or sequel labels to be honest. This is more true when you have a story where events are happening before and after another story/novel.
However we don't have a label for "quel" for "written after the original stor". :)
In general, the length of the piece doesn't really matter. There isn't a magical threshold where a story is too short to be related. You have stories that used a short story as the seed and I know at least one author that had a poem for their "prequel". In the video world, you have shorts (4 minute) prequels to full-length movies (Brave verses The Legend of Mardu), so I think the length matters.
The last set of questions is a bit more complicated, but why don't you want sympathy for the character? What is wrong with having someone with a tragic backstory that changes the meaning of the first book. As long as it is internally consistent with their behavior, I think it is perfectly reasonable. Not to mention, everyone has moments of shining as their moments of shame; it influences who they become but one doesn't define them without variation.
Even your monsters can like bunnies.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42355. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Writing your short story as a standalone is highly useful. You want your story to be readable by as wide an audience as possible, so you don't want to depend on readers having already read your novel. In fact, a short story can serve as a sort of "advertisement" - if the readers like it, they would continue to the novel. If not, they've invested less time and money in it than the would have in a novel. So for a reader, the short story is a "safer buy". (Particularly if it is published in some sort of anthology with other writers, or even free on the internet.)
As an example, both Fragile Things and Trigger Warning (two short stories collections be Neil Gaiman) contain a short story set in the American Gods world. Both, in fact, are sequels. Both are standalones - one does not need to have read American Gods to enjoy them. One does not need any information at all, other than what is contained within each story.
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