On repurposing content from novels and other longer works

Note: This post has been revised to incorporate information about serialization that I’d overlooked previously.

This week, as I hunker indoors amidst a deep freeze here in Middle America, I’ve also been wading into the thick slog of my novel in progress (NIP). It’s been slow going at times, as I press on through the morass, a bit like an explorer who has lost his compass and looks backward to see if it’s too late to turn back. It feels daunting and lonely, and in more than once I’ve wondered if the slog is worth it.

Also more than once I’ve wondered if I were to abandon the NIP I could salvage parts of it for a short story. In my more hopeful times, I wonder if I could extract a chapter or two, give the words a good scrubbing and some polish, and submit them to a literary magazine as an excerpt.

The answer to both questions is, of course, yes. But I need not scrap the novel project altogether to do either.

This morning I read a guest post in Lit Mag News (a terrific Substack) that tossed a much-needed beam of light onto my writing path. Written by JoeAnn Hart, a writer who focuses on environmental issues, the post — “Unlocking the Novel (or Memoir) for Lit Mags” — was just the boost of inspiration I needed today.

Hart writes:

[W]hen I find myself lost in the weeds, I will often step back to write a short story or essay that has absolutely nothing to do with the novel at hand in order to clear the brain.

I’ve done this a couple of times in December. Or I should say, I’ve started a couple of short pieces but they are little more than fragments at this point. That shift in writing did help me shift from the single-minded focus of the NIP, for a while, but then I started to feel guilty that I wasn’t working on the novel.

Hart continues:

Sometimes though, writing a shorter piece isn’t a step back from a book-length project (novel or memoir), but a deeper dive. It might even be an impetus. The first chapter of Float, my second novel, was originally a short story. As soon as I finished writing it, I knew the story wanted more out of me, going so far as to suggest it wanted to be a novel when it grew up.

An excerpt from a longer work can often stand on its own with minor tweaks, she says. “Sometimes all it takes is a little nip and tuck to create a narrative arc with an ending that feels satisfying.”

Other times, if “your first chapter stubbornly remains a chapter,” you might be able to submit it as an excerpt to any of several literary magazines that are open to publishing excerpts. With either approach, it’s important that a writer do the research to find out which lit mags would be receptive. It’s also helpful if your work aligns with a lit mag’s theme.

What excerpting does do is get the word out that there is something interesting in the works, and more than that, it gives a writer hope, a vulnerable asset that needs to be refreshed over the long haul of novel writing. So let bits of your work see the light of day in a lit mag, and maybe you’ll move that much closer to making hope a reality.

An adjacent topic Hart does not address touches on in her essay has to do with serialization. Serial novels were popular in the 19th centuries when writers like Charles Dickens released their books in installments in periodicals. This approach helped Dickens expand his audience. Maybe it could work for us, too? At least one writer on Substack (Scott Spires) is going to give it a shot in 2025. And several writers use WattPad to publish and share their work in installments.

Hart mentions one literary magazine that is open to serialized works, Azure. “If your submission is part of a novel-length work or feature-length screenplay, there exists the possibility of publishing it in installments in future issues,” the Azure editors post in their submission guidelines. “In this case, please indicate your intentions in your cover letter.”

I think I’m at the place where I might extract some words from my NIP and shop it around as either an excerpt or a stand-alone short story. Or both.

What do you think?

Have you repurposed novel excerpts as short stories? Or memoir excerpts as essays or creative nonfiction pieces? How did it work for you? How about serialization? Sound off in the comments below. I’d love to know your thoughts.

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