I’m a long-form writer (and reader) — multiple 100K-word series entries, for choice. Now, I know how to construct some short story forms, and have done so (even sold one commercially), but they’re just not my preferred choice for writing.

With one exception — as adjuncts to a series.

When I focus on writing a series entry, there’s a set of events out of which I have to structure it, important drivers for plot setups, mystery reveals, character actions, exciting conclusions, and so forth — like any long tale. But the more I focus on the characters and their history in the long form, the more small side stories suggest themselves as possibilities (frothing up in my head), even when they have nothing to do directly with the main thrust of the tale. Where it makes sense, I shoehorn those tidbits into the main book and make an adjustment, but sometimes… sometimes there’s just no way to do that without disturbing the rhythm and flow or making a mockery of the rational progression of the plot events.

What sorts of stories? Well, there was the wedding between two main characters that took place between books 1 & 2. There was the origin story for one young side character’s first discovery of her powers, or the story of where the hero’s dog came from, both many years before the first book. There’s the glimpse of a collision of worlds between the hero’s original family and his new one from an unexpected angle. In other words, these stories were bits about background relationships, consequences to events, capabilities, origins, etc.

Now, yes, I could have artificially constructed some sort of flashback or round-the-fire tale for each of these and shoved many of these story fragments in there, but they weren’t things that the novels needed to present for the structural functionality of their tale, and (more importantly) they were concise little stories of their own, complete by themselves, and really needed that separation from the main series to present themselves appropriately. On the other hand, they weren’t really standalone, since they (mostly) assumed prior knowledge of the characters and situations in them, taken from the series proper.

So, of course, I made a little collection of them as an additional entry to the main series. Anyone who reads the whole series tends to buy the little story collection, too, for just a little bit more — exactly as I’d hoped.

I’m delighted, not so much for the minor one-more-product-to-sell aspect, but because when I write long form I feel like my characters are alive, and I want to find a way to tell the stories about them that occur while I’m spinning out the long form, to do them justice, without degrading the structure of the big series entries… and the side short story is the right vehicle for it.

How do you handle the stories that suggest themselves to you off the reservation, when you’re writing long form? Do you adjust the plot plan to make room for them? Do you make them a little collection of their own? Or do you scrub off the serial numbers and present them as standalone tales in some other universe, supplementing them with the necessary background explanatory material?