In a guest post on Janice Hardy’s blog, Rayne Hall offers advice for writing a short story that spins off from your novel, as a marketing strategy or artistic choice.
This works especially well for series characters, she notes. Jack Reacher, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and Kinsey Millhone have all appeared in short fiction as well as novel series, in part because detectives lend themselves to spin-offs more than the protagonists of other genres. “You can easily let the series sleuth solve some minor mysteries between the novels, using the same strategies and showing the same quirky habits,” Hall explains.
This can be harder for character-driven genres, as the protagonist in your novel has already gone through the emotional growth you had in mind. Romance fiction can be trickier, since readers don’t want a heroine to have more than one true love. Hall suggests some ways to brainstorm a short story idea that springs from your novel:
- Use a scene you deleted from your novel draft and recycle it as a short story.
- Make the short story a prequel to the novel, featuring the main character’s earlier adventures.
- Use the novel’s main character as a minor character in the story, because a minor character doesn’t need to change.
- Promote the supporting cast to lead roles in the spin-off
