Discussion»Questions»Books and Literature» Do you know of any novel which started life as a short story in its own right, and later got built upon with time into a longer work?
This short, true story:Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, served as the basis for the Novel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
Another example is Ursula K Le Guin's short story "Semley's necklace", It was later expanded and published as a novel "Rocannons World". Both are fine writing and well worth reading.
This post was edited by JakobA the unAmerican. at June 15, 2018 5:02 PM MDT
Anne McCaffrey's Catteni sequence - Freedom's Landing, Freedom's Choice, Freedom's Challenge and Freedom's Ransom. First written as a free standing "short" entitled The Thorns of Barevi (included in her anthology Get Off the Unicorn), it was originally an unashamed "smut" story and McCaffrey was disappointed with it - so she rewrote it as the first chapter of a novel (which then became a tetralogy), omitting the rape-cum-willing submission of the heroine (which became a love/lust between the two protagonists but MUCH later, with her quite as much the instigator as he and not the climax or even the point of the story) and it's a brilliant sf fantasy.
I have been thinking about entering a short story contest. (I have won 7th place in a large metro newspaper contest that had 1000 entries) This short story could easily expand into a novel, but to hold the quality that is in the short story, well, I don't think I have enough years left on the calendar of life.
