But Really Though, Which One’s Harder?

The other day I was listening to a show and one of the people* told us about the only class he dropped in college; an intro to poetry class:
“The teacher started by asking “Which is hardest to write, novels, poems or short stories?”
The guy in front of me gave the right answer- “Novels, because they’re long,” and she said “Wrong.”
So I gave a long essay-question answer like “Well they’re all forms of expression so it depends on what you bring to them.”
And she said “Wrong. The hardest thing to write is poems, because they have to rhyme.” “

So let’s start off with the obvious.

For, what, ages? poetry hasn’t had to rhyme. I mean, how long has the haiku existed? And beyond that, rhyming ain’t that tough; I rhyme all the time. For fun honestly. Look, my husband and I used to flirt with each other (and sometimes still do) by communicating in rhyme. Sometimes it’s a reach, but come on, teach. Rhyming isn’t the hard part of making poetry an art. (Honestly meter is harder.)

Then let’s move on. Writing poetry, novels, and short stories are very different. Let’s say I’m trying to express that it’s snowing in each instance. In a novel I might say:

The wind blew icy crystals of snow down from the mountains, biting any exposed skin of those who braved the cold. It howled through Alaken’s Pass with the sound of raiding wolves, leaving Jennifer shuddering with recollections.

I establish setting and mood but I revel in it for a few sentences. In a novel I want someone deeply immersed in the setting so I take time to let them feel it with sensory details. I establish some geography with mountains and a pass and hint at wolves and danger in Jennifer’s pass. I also heighten that sense of danger with the “braved the cold” sentence.

If I’m trying to establish a snowy setting in a short story, I’d do something more like:

Jennifer came into the lodge with the bag full of Macguffins, stomping snow from her boots and shaking snowflakes from her shoulders and hat.

In a short story, I need to condense. We don’t need the mountains right now? Let’s forget ’em. We need to know 1) snow outside, 2) we’re inside, 3) it’s a place they’re using lodges instead of other stuff, 4) Jennifer has the Macguffins and there’s enough she needs a bag, 5) the movement going on. Each word has to be more carefully weighed. Atmosphere needs to be evoked in more immediate words. This segment is shorter than the novel segment but we’ve established snow already and moved a lot more.

Could I put either of these segments in either a novel or a short story? Of course I could make that work but I’m not writing an entire novel here for an example, deal with it.

Now if I’m trying to establish the feeling in a poem, I’m going to approach it completely differently. I’ll even make it rhyme since that’s what makes poems hard, obviously.

Don’t open the door! Keep the window shut tight.
The forecast says there’ll be ice tonight.
The wind, she howls; she moans and screams
The cracking of ice fills my ears and my dreams.
We crowd ’round the fire, blankets clutched close
To stave off the cold that reddens the nose.
An army of flakes with silent steps crowd
To bury us in their funereal shroud.

Now, out of these, I’ll admit the poem was the hardest. But here’s the thing- I could be nearly done with that poem. But the short story and novel? So much longer to go. So which is hardest?

Well, that’s the next difficulty. Anyone can write a poem. Elementary students write haikus and couplets. Anyone can sit down and write a short story. Can anyone write a novel? Well, probably; depends on your dedication and focus; novels by far take the longest to write and edit of the three. So by that metric, novels are hardest. BUT.

Ask any random novelist to write you a poem and for a great many, I’d hazard that they haven’t written much poetry since they were assigned it in school. So they may well have amateur stumbling rhyme schemes and meter at best. Ask a novelist to write a short story and see how many of them struggle to hit a low word limit, or get too bogged in details, or maybe overcompensate and don’t describe anything at all. Ask a short story writer to write a novel and see if they can fill out enough to actually pull people into their story. Or if they lose interest and switch to a different story a third of the way in because their attention has wandered. Ask a poet to write a novel or short story and see if their characters live up to their descriptions.

Am I saying you can’t be good at all three? Of course not! I actually hope I’m relatively decent at each. But they are different skills. Discussing this with my writing group, one of them compared it to saying pole vaulting is harder than running a marathon. Or vice versa. They’re related, of course- both are athletic skills- but being good at one doesn’t mean you’re good at the other, and comparing the two is ridiculous.

On the other hand, practicing at multiple different skills makes for a more well-rounded writer, and skills in one can enhance ability in another area. Someone who could both run a marathon and pole vault would be a better all-around athlete than someone who only did one. And likely they’d see other benefits as well.

But all of that brings me to my last point. Did this teacher seriously just tell her students that they’re going into the hardest version of writing? Is she trying to get people to drop her class? Or does she think that poetry is better if it’s harder? Because look, people, art has value for what it is, for what you put into it, and for how it makes people feel, not for how difficult it was to create. If you pour your heart out onto a page in novel format or if you paint your feelings in words in a poem, both of them are beautiful expressions.

So, to sum up:

Which takes the most time? Novels for sure. Which takes the most skill? Poems. Which is the best? Depends what you’re trying to do.

Novels aren’t necessarily harder. Poems aren’t harder. Short stories aren’t harder.

And to judge their value by which is hardest is ridiculous.

*The person in question was Brennan Lee Mulligan on an Adventuring Party for Dimension 20: Never Stop Blowing Up. It’s very unrelated to what was actually going on in the show in question but boy did that story make me feel things.

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