Short-to-Screen
An efficient market for the short story
The short story market is adapting, as markets are wont to do.
Back in the day, people would spend years perfecting their dream manuscript. That was the slow world. We’re currently living in the fast world, where investing time that turns out to be fruitless is a losing game.
Additionally, we all know the direction our attention span is headed. If you frequent a bookstore like Barnes & Noble, you may have noticed that the promotional titles featured at the café checkout are consistently novellas. Novellas are hot right now because they’re a faster read than the traditional novel.
Based on that trajectory, the next stop is the short story. Short stories are much quicker to write (much, much quicker), but they have their own challenges. That same brevity can make them challenging to craft. You need to be ultra clear on what it is your writing about because the story does not take the time to meander the way a novel does.
They’re also difficult to sell because there are fewer publishing outlets. The presence of short story literary magazines has shrunk massively since the onset of the ebook. These days, there are only a handful.
The way we consume entertainment has shifted
Popular fiction has been honed and fashioned by selective readers so that, at this point, the most desirable plots of novels look very much like the plots of movies. People want stories that are engaging, poignant, and innovative, and we have increasingly proven what that kind of story looks like. That doesn’t define the story’s genre or flair, there is still endless room for creativity and individuality, it’s just the channel that it gets funneled through is being refined.
I’ve watched this unfold over time through both the lens of a book coach and an everyday enjoyer of books and movies. It was all confirmed when I came across a post by producer Max Winters. That’s the pen name for Chris Goldberg, a past literary scout for 20th Century Fox who acquired the rights for Gone Girl, The Martian, and The Fault in Our Stars.
In a recent post, Winters made clear that the next stories he’s looking for are short ones that prioritize concept as the sharp selling point. Here’s what he said:
If your stories hit 7 out of 7 below, I’ll happily read:
1. In a genre that actually gets made in today’s climate: Horror, action, action comedy, grounded sci-fi, romcom, live action family, thriller etc. Pure drama is tough. Period piece is tough. Hard fantasy is tough. Hard far future sci fi is tough.
2. High concept. Do you have the next idea like SPEED? Great. Elevator pitches. Big ideas. Can it be sold on a tagline? Poster? Trailer? Great.
3. Castable. Are there roles that movie stars will want to play? Can this attract talent?
4. Tone. Is there a clear tone and voice to the piece? It should not read like a treatment for a movie. It should be fun to read as a story on the page
5. Is it written cinematically? In other words are we reading scenes that can be imagined on screen? Full on internal monologues or stream of consciousness or super literary and experimental - not likely going to work.
6. You can end on a cliffhanger. But try to at least have a setup. An opening scene, or better yet Act One. You can even have more. See how “Animal Rescue” by Dennis Lehane contained the exciting third act twist that sold the short story as the movie THE DROP.
7. No need for more than 30 pages. I have sold a 9 page short story for film. My 14 page short story sold to Netflix.
Why this works
The post got a lot of attention as writers were eager to pitch their work. Others wanted to interview him to gain his insight. They could see he was onto something.
If a story hits the seven points Max Winters laid out, it meets what the market has proven it wants to consume. On top of that, it’s short. As we discussed above, this means it’s quick to create and quick to pitch. If it doesn’t get picked up, you can pivot quickly.
As someone who has worked with many writers on both short pieces and long, here are some reasons the short story-to-screen market is quietly growing.
1.) Modern stories portray the concept up front. You don’t often see the Stephen King approach anymore where the girth of the story is mundane, borderline literary, and the genre snap comes at the end. One of the criteria of the Writer’s of the Future contest is that your fantastical elements be present on the first page. People want to be hooked.
2.) Short stories are best written when the storyline is as clear to the writer as possible at the starting line. There should be no excess plot, and no uncertainty as to what’s going to happen. A novel takes time to meander through the story, stopping to ask the characters questions and explore the landscape. A short story is a path cut straight through that forest in the manner the crow flies. This means an agent or other professional can quickly gauge if the story has potential for more.
It may seem backward to take a big idea, make it streamlined, all so someone else can expand it, but this is actually evidencing the story has mobility. A lot of times, when you take a standalone novel, the story has run its course in that space. There’s nothing wrong with that if the story is meant to be read, or even if it’s going to be a movie adaptation. But the big trend these days is series. For that, there needs to be a lot of unspoken potential wrapped into the concept.
3.) Premise is the upfront idea. The climax is really an effect of that. So, what’s being sold here is episode one, and that creates a lot of room for experimentation.
4.) The parts of writing a novel that people tend to struggle with most often are longform structure and act two fodder. That is, all of the connective tissue that happens in the middle of the book. This approach eliminates that and allows people to let their premise stand on its own two legs.
Practice Wisely
As novel writers, most of us write because we love the written word, and there’s a huge market of readers for that. However, writing to market is a constant struggle, especially because the market is ever-changing and it can be impossible to anticipate what people want.
The strategy of creating more short stories that showcase high concepts is a tactic for practicing smarter. It provides an outlet to churn out more ideas and then filters those for the best ones standing.
Good ideas are a dime a dozen, but great ones are gold.
Interesting