Many literary fiction writers start their careers with short story collections. In recent years, short stories have become hard to sell, and so publishers and writers have come up with a new way of categorizing short story collections to make them seem more like novels (novels are much more popular among book buyers.)
Why Linked Stories?
Two forces combined lead to this story cycle phenomenon. One is that it is easier for writers to get their first book published if the chapters of the book can be published separately in literary magazines. Publishing three or four chapters leads to recognition from literary agents looking for their next literary fiction client.
In order for writers to sell the chapters separately, each one needs to stand alone. In this respect, it seems like a reasonable plan to publish a few stories and then come out with a collection.
Book Publishers
Book publishers develop an interest in a writer if they see that she had had several short stories published, but they have a very hard time marketing short story collections, so they would prefer the author to present them with a novel.
Put these two facts together: Writers need to sell individual stories in order to get notices, and publishers need novels to sell, and the linked story phenomenon is born.
Dissonant Forms
The trouble with blurring the distinction between story collections and novels is that the two forms are actually quite different, and readers picking them up have different expectations for each form.
Short stories are tightly written. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. At the end, the curtain closes, and the story is over. In a novel chapter, there is more mental space. Each chapter moves the plot forward, but not everything introduced needs to be explained or concluded.
Forms of Fiction
There is a true hybrid form of literary fiction that combines elements of short stories and novel chapters and creates something that is bigger than a group of short stories but more delicate and interwoven that a novel.
When writers do this well, their collections do more, mean more to readers, work in multiple ways to achieve multiple means—more than if they had simply written a novel or a story collection.
John Updike’s Too Far to Go is an example of a novel-in-stories that does not mislead the reader. In this book, each chapter follows the Maple family through many years of a marriage, and although each chapter stands alone, the book read straight through adds up to a whole story.
Eva Gordon - Eva Sage Gordon
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