What makes a story a novella

I will never share or sell your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time. A short story is an intense experience — something to linger over and savour. Difference 1: Length and pacing The most obvious difference between a novel and a short story is length. Read that line again. Let it sink in. Difference 3: Complexity of conflict Short stories contain problems that are resolvable quickly. Difference 4: Timespan …? Difference 5: Depth The biggest difference between a short story and a novel, though, is how deep the writing goes.

Sophie Playle is a professional fiction editor. She specialises in developmental editing, critiquing and copy-editing, and loves working with authors and publishers who are passionate about high-quality storytelling. Speculative fiction, fantasy, science fiction and literary fiction are her genres of choice. Find out more: liminalpages. Sign up to Liminal Letters Insights into the world of fiction, from the desk of an editor. The theme should be expressed as a statement, a general observation about human nature.

To help you construct the thematic statement, make a list of important images, topics, etc. Try to create a statement that includes the words in your list. Skip to main content. Search for:. Setting Setting is a description of where and when the story takes place.

Ask yourself the following questions: How is the setting created? Consider geography, weather, time of day, social conditions, etc. What role does setting play in the story? Is it an important part of the plot or theme? Or is it just a backdrop against which the action takes place? Does the setting change? If so, how? Study the time period, which is also part of the setting, and ask yourself the following: When was the story written? Does it take place in the present, the past, or the future?

How does the time period affect the language, atmosphere or social circumstances of the short story? Characterization Characterization deals with how the characters in the story are described. Ask yourself the following: Who is the main character? Who or what is the antagonist? Melville House has a wonderful series of reissued novellas. If there are various places to expand, it sounds more like a novella.

Consider your characters. In short stories, writers usually create characters in a sparse way. In a novella, you need to develop them, to go into more depth. Also visualize particular scenes in your mind.

Plan several important scenes as well as thinking of the book as a whole. Expand the scenes. In short stories, we may cut the scenes short, but the novella allows you to more fully develop them. Fully describe the action. Let the dialogue build. Add some twists and turns to the plot. Surprise the reader! Keep the pace lively and brisk, the story moving swiftly along. Smiley: Because a novella is only about a hundred pages long, the reader will give the writer a little more leeway for different types of complexity — but you can only choose one type of complexity.

But once you choose which type of complexity you want to focus on, you can really make that complexity intense and almost overwhelming, because you have to put it on the page, explore it, and wind it up in a fairly short time.

A good model is Kafka — much of his work gains intensity because it is focused and not very long. He immerses us in strange situations, explores the situations, and leaves the background out. Weil: Focus relentlessly on whatever the core of your novella is. The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, a full-service arts organization that publishes original books and produces a weekly online magazine and monthly podcast. It also sponsors semi-regular live events and local classes and workshops.

Nouvella , an independent publisher dedicated to novellas by emerging and established authors and founded in by Deena Drewis. Outpost19 , an award-winning book publisher committed to delivering provocative reading.

Its published works include critically acclaimed novels, memoirs, biographies, short fiction and essay collections, novellas, and anthologies. Titles are distributed by Ingram Publisher Services. How many novellas have you published in the past few years, and what are your publishing goals for the novella in the future? We take our role as a non-commercial publisher seriously, and therefore we are open to all of those forms.

In that sense AQR is among the scarce platforms that publish works that are generally too short or too long to be published in mainstream magazines. Other than the practical consideration that we do not have unlimited space in our print editions, the length of a work is certainly not what primarily drives our decision-making.

We will likely continue in this vein for the time being, although that number mostly depends simply on how many great manuscripts we get of that size, not any predetermined quota. Try writing a six-word story. It's not easy, but it's possible to write a complete story with conflict and resolution in six words, according to flash fiction enthusiasts. The most well-know example of a six-word story, often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway , is, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

You can read more examples of six-word stories on Narrative Magazine's website with a free account , which are more carefully selected, or you can browse user-submitted stories on Reddit. Some authors also write flash nonfiction, composing six-word memoirs. Now that you are more familiar with some of the forms of short fiction, why not give it a try? Flash fiction can provide a helpful change of pace and help fine tune your writing skills. The limited word count forces you to consider the weight of every action, every character, and every word.

Writing good short fiction takes time and practice. Sometimes it's the shortest pieces that can take the longest to write. Register and Subscribe. Site Search Sign In. Writing Writing. More Cancel. Related Content. Short Fiction Forms: Novella, Novelette, Short Story, and Flash Fiction Defined When it comes to fiction, a short narrative can be found in many forms, from a slim book to just a few sentences.