Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A How to overcome the fact that I can't write long stories?

I have written some short stories (in fact, they are flash fiction). When I'm writing short stories, the ideas and the structure come to my mind by themselves. Something different happens when I ...

6 answers  ·  posted 12y ago by Alexandro Chen‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:25:01Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/5894
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Alexandro Chen‭ · 2019-12-08T02:25:01Z (over 4 years ago)
I have written [some](http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction/) short stories (in fact, they are flash fiction). When I'm writing short stories, the ideas and the structure come to my mind by themselves.

Something different happens when I try to write long stories; It starts with something simple, but then I add more and more stuff until it gets too complicated. Another thing that happens is that I lose interested in the story after some weeks. I just feel that it is not a story that I want to write. Other times, I just tell myself: I have nothing else to say in this story, it should end here.

Does this happen to a lot of beginners? How to overcome this problem?

(Sometimes I think that I should just accept my fate as writer that only writes short stories. Or just write novels that are composed of interconnected short stories, like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten.)

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2012-06-07T10:36:33Z (almost 12 years ago)
Original score: 18