E-Shorts: Why Read and Write Them?

Last month, my co-author Meagan Spooner and I released a free short story set in the same world as our Starbound trilogy. Titled This Night So Dark, it's designed to be read before or after These Broken Stars.

We had heaps of fun writing and releasing it, and the response from fans has been amazing! We've been asked lots of questions about it, so today I'm going to talk about the best reasons to release a free story like this, and why we did it.

It's a chance to give something back to the fans.

This is, above anything else, the best reason to write and release a story for free. We've been bowled over by the response to These Broken Stars -- from the emails to the letters, the awesome fan art (hoooow do you guys do that stuff?) to the recipes! Quite simply, we wanted to thank our readers for being amazing, and a free story felt like the best way to do it.

You can tell a story that doesn't fit into the big picture.

At the start of These Broken Stars, you learn two things about Tarver very quickly. First, he's considered a 'war hero'. Second, he doesn't want to talk about how he earned those medals. Meg and I always knew the story behind his fame, but there wasn't any place in the novel to tell it. It would have been a distraction from the main storyline. Releasing it as a short story gave us the chance to share it in a different forum, so those who have been wondering (and judging by the emails, you guys really wanted to know!) can find out the truth about Tarver.

It's a chance to meet new readers.

Picking up a whole novel is an investment in terms of time and money -- a short story is a way for an author and reader to get to know each other with less commitment. Think of it as catching up for a coffee, instead of launching into a dinner-and-a-movie date straight away. Short stories and novellas are a great way to check out the writing and world of a new author, to see if you want to jump into the series. We hope This Night So Dark will be a chance for new readers to check out the series, and perhaps join in the fun.

It helps with the wait!

Authors are readers too, and we hate waiting for the next book in our favourite series as much as you guys do! We can't waaaait to share This Shattered World with you all, next month. In the meantime, short stories are a great way to bridge the gap, help with the agony of waiting for the next instalment, and they're also a great way to ease you back into a world before you pick up the next book.

What about you guys? Do you read e-shorts and e-novellas? I'd love to hear your favourites!

The New E-Short Stories tied to Novels

Two days ago my first published piece came out. It’s an e-story called “Portrait of a Starter.” This is part of a new trend where publishers want e-shorts to accompany the novel. It’s the first time my publisher, Random House Children’s Books, has put out a debut author’s e-short before their book. They started last year publishing e-shorts by well-established authors such as Michael Scott, Lauren Kate and others who write YA fantasy.

Part of my contract was to create three short stories, in addition to my two-book series (which is called a duology). There will be three e-shorts this year, one before STARTERS is published, and two after.

I love writing short stories, started writing them as a kid. Back then I probably just wrote off the top of my head, but now I find they can take longer to write, per page, than novels. They are an entirely different beast. And sometimes now, I see my friends slaving away over short stories when I can’t help but feel that they could use that time to write a novel, which would get their careers started faster. So, as a side note to writers, I say do them once in a while to hone your craft, but always keep working on a novel if you want to make a living.

But back to my contractual agreement. My only requirement was to set the story in the world of STARTERS. I could use any character’s point of view. Now this sounds easy, right? Wrong. I have a lot of surprise twists in the novel that I didn’t want to give away in a story people would read before the novel was to be published a month later. And I had a unique setting that takes place in the future. It wasn’t like I was writing about the French Revolution. How much time is there to set up a new world – and especially, the reasons for it – in a short? I wanted to keep the narrative drive, set up just enough of the world, but not too much to give too much away.

Someone in publishing suggested the short be written from an Ender’s point of view. Now that could be an interesting approach, but as a debut author, I didn’t want readers to think my YA series was going to be from the point of view of someone 100 years old.

So I was staring at the cover wondering what I should write and then it hit me. Michael, the best friend of the main character Callie, is an artist. In the book, he’s often drawing the desperate Starters he sees living on the streets. My cover happened to be a drawing of Callie (that’s another story I’ll tell you sometime). So I worked it into the e-short, that Michael starts this sketch of Callie but she takes off on a mystery trip. He’s secretly in love with her, perhaps to the point of obsession, and so he follows her, not having a clue about the strange things he’s about to see.

Lenore’s post about dystopian endings made me think of how I want a hopeful ending – especially to the end of the series – in my YA dystopians. But when it comes to short stories, I’m more willing to accept a darker ending.

So have any authors here been asked to do these shorts by their publishers? Or have any of you written short stories, and how you feel about writing them?