Joe Abercrombie – The Heroes – video interview at NYCC

Joe Abercrombie writes bloody fantasy books.  Bloody, bloody good, bloody fantasy–yes to all.  You may have heard of him.  Certainly if you follow my columns you have.  I’ve interviewed Joe before for this site, and I asked him all my good questions then (utter lack of foresight, I know) so for this face-to-face time a couple weeks back at New York Comic Con we mostly just talked about his upcoming book The Heroes. 

Well, Joe talked, while I kept my fingers crossed that my camera was picking up his answers.  You can pretty much make them out from the background noise, so bonus that I didn’t have to decipher them for a transcription.  Points off on presentation since I can’t take back the question I flubbed because I forgot what I was going to ask halfway through the set-up–what can I say, I have ADD and Comic Con is packed with distractions–so you get to watch him give me the WTF look for a second before graciously answering anyway.  And then even more graciously answering the mulligan I asked for later, which you can read below the video.  So kick back, pump up the volume, and get an earful (or at least an eyeful) of Abercrombie.

Elena’s re-do question on the thing about short stories being a different form from novels, and novellas being better for practice.  ACTUAL QUESTION: Would you agree with that assessment, that short stories are a very different form with a different intent/purpose?  If so, what would you consider to be the intent of short stories and does your preference for novels have to do with a dislike of that intent?

Joe’s response: I guess short stories need by definition to be a lot more focused than novel-length works (especially works of epic fantasy which tend towards the huge and labyrinthine).  Usually they’re not long enough to really describe a satisfactory development in a character (to have a full “arc”, you might say), so generally you’re making a simpler point – depicting a few characters as briefly as possible, establishing a situation and setting up some kind of twist or reveal.  I don’t know if they’re a very different form, since in a way I’ve always seen novels as being composed of individual scenes and depictions which, hopefully, should all punch their own weight as well as contributing to the whole.  But certainly long stories are the ones I’ve always been interested in, especially in fantasy, both reading and therefore writing.  I like the opportunity to really develop several characters and see how they interact over time.  There’s also, honestly, a much better market for novel length work than there is for short stories, which for me makes it difficult to justify writing short stories without some specific purpose in mind, generally promotion of my longer work in one way or another….