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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 nov...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:34Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42357 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T10:56:00Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42357 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
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.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-02-19T22:42:56Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 1