Submitting a chapter from your book

Transitioning from short stories to submitting a book chapter? Exciting! Choose a standalone chapter with key elements: characters, setting, conflict. Start strong to hook readers, introduce characters, and conflict. Build tension, showcase character growth, and escalate to a climax. Resolve the chapter's conflict, leaving room for curiosity. Add subtle foreshadowing for depth. Polish for clarity and grammar. Seek feedback from beta readers. Aim for a closing line that lingers.

That's a tough one.

I've received comments on several submissions that my short stories are bigger stories and I should explore that option. That must mean that I left the ending hanging too much. I like short stories that connect, but stand alone. If you figure out how to get a chapter to stand alone and yet tie into a larger story, please share with me. 

I would look at prior winners entries who have done exactly that. Patrick Rothfuss is probably the most well known for doing this (?) but there are others who have. Of note his entry (The Road to Levinshir') was not the first chapter of his book. Infact, it wasn't even a chapter from the finished "The Name of the Wind" but from its sequel "The Wise Man's Fear". Now given it took him 5 years and a rewrite to end up at TNotW perhaps TRtL was earlier in the original manuscript (entitled, interestingly enough 'The Song of Flame and Thunder') but clearly not the opening. Instead, its a selected chapter, where the basic elements of a contained story existed. So if I were doing this, I would do the same - not submit the opening, but submit something that stands alone, and consider what world building edits may be necessary to make that work.

Of course he might not be the best example as PR himself even points out it wasn't really a short story given it was 14,000 words long https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2013/06/a-new-story/ and even states " it wasn’t a self-contained discrete entity unto itself".

So maybe one has to write as well as PR in order to win with something that isn't a discrete entity  

Which is why I would scour the anthologies for other people that have done the same.

I submit that you not hold too rigorously to the tenants of the novel. If you need to bend or even break something that holds true of the novel world - do it. This story must stand alone.

That can really hold you up. Like, oh, this character is a pacifist in the novel and here they need to trap a squirrel to eat. Go for it, get the win, and explain to your audience later on, if we should all be so lucky as to have the need.

I'm not sure to what extent this could be inverted, but coming at this from the other side, I recall Orson Scott Card talking about how, when you're extending a short story to a novel length, the ending point doesn't significantly change (this was something he saw as a common mistake when doing this, if I remember rightly). The short story is already concluding at the right place, and with the right emotional impact, so what you actually want to extend out is the world-building, character-building, and everything that leads into that point.

If that holds true, then it seems correspondingly like the concluding chapter (or chapters, depending on length) of a story might contain the seeds of the most impactful short story from a given novel, even if they don't seem at first glance to be the most naturally translated into one.

I'm just spit-balling around that first thought, mind you. And I'd definitely side with Dustin's view to bend the story to work in the shorter form.

@johnalex20 that's helpful, thank you!

@toddjones Yes, I will definitely share if I figure out how to do it. 😏

@gideonpsmith I remember hearing that about Patrick Rothfuss. This seems like it will be an interesting challenge to pursue. I will look through previous books and see others who have done this. Thanks!

@tj_knight good point, I will keep that in mind.

@doctorjest Alright, thank you. I knew it would be a challenge using a chapter from one of my novels, but I didn't realize how challenging it can be to mold it into a short story. This will sharpen my writing skills for sure!