Explore "The Writing of Fiction" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is sometimes said that a "good subject" for a short story should always be capable of being expanded into a novel.
The principle may be defendable in special cases; but it is certainly a misleading one on which to build any general theory. Every "subject" (in the novelist's sense of the term) must necessarily contain within itself its own dimensions; and one of the fiction-writer's essential gifts is that of discerning whether the subject which presents itself to him, asking for incarnation, is suited to the proportions of a short story or of a novel. If it appears to be adapted to both the chances are that it is inadequate to either.