[Link] How Writing a Short Story Can Improve a Novel-in-Progress

by Cindy Fazzi 

Writing short stories can help establish your credentials as a fiction writer. It will give you much-needed exposure to editors, literary agents, and readers. Some publications will even pay you for it. You know what else a short story can do for you? It can serve as a vehicle for experimentation when you’re writing a novel.

Multo, my first attempt at fiction and third published novel, is the product of such an experimentation. Multo (meaning ghost in Tagalog) follows a Filipino-American bounty hunter named Domingo as he looks for the only quarry that has ever eluded him, a biracial Filipina who can disappear like a ghost.

I initially wrote the story from the point of view of Monica, the Filipina who overstays in the U.S. in pursuit of her American Dream—her American father who doesn’t know she exists.

The father happens to be an Air Force general bent on avoiding a political scandal. He hires Domingo to nab Monica and take her to immigration authorities for deportation. It’s the ultimate rejection for Monica.

The literary agents who read my manuscript deemed it “uncommercial.” They all said literary fiction was a tough sell, plus my book’s immigration theme and Filipino protagonist made it completely unsellable.

A Short Story Saves the Day

In the face of such failure, I moved on. I wrote four other novels, two of which were traditionally published without the benefit of literary representation. And yet I kept returning to my first manuscript. You see, I wrote it when I was a green-card holder awaiting U.S. citizenship. The subject of immigration is close to my heart. It’s also a political issue that never goes away as immigration reform continues to elude Congress.

Read the full article: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/how-writing-a-short-story-can-improve-a-novel-in-progress