What form should your story take?

Some stories or ideas simply lend themselves well to one form over writing. Often it’s obvious that that particular idea should be a novel, while that other idea should be a short story and the other one a poem. However, it can sometimes take a bit of time and a few false starts before an idea really starts to gel with a particular form.

I think one of the reasons for this is that sometimes, we have a tendency to start to write something before it’s really ready to be written. We assume that because we usually write in a particular form, this new idea should fit into that same form – and on we plough, only to realise sometime later it’s not working as well as we might have hoped.

This is why planning is so important in writing. Even if you are not a fastidious planner in general, it’s worth taking the time to think carefully over what form your story should take. The best idea can be rendered incomprehensible by being written in the wrong way. We need to make sure we are doing our ideas justice.

One of the reasons writers can get stuck with a particular form, no matter what the idea, is because they get comfortable with writing in a certain way, or think that they aren’t as good at different ways of writing. For instance, if you’re used to writing novels, the thought of packing a punch in a 1000-word short story or writing a beautiful sonnet can be somewhat daunting.

But we shouldn’t be afraid of things like this. We should embrace different forms of writing. Maybe we won’t always be very good at all of them, and maybe we’ll think one form would be perfect for an idea only for it to fall flat, but we won’t know unless we try different things and take the odd risk. Trying a different form could be what your idea needs to make it really come to life.

What do you think? How do you decide what form your story should take?