How long are novellas

The reasons vary. Price point can be an issue because, like their commercial counterparts, small presses do have to stay afloat. Like other forms, novellas must earn their keep, and this may come down to having a viable marketing strategy. They submit short fiction, flash fiction collections, collections of prose poems, or novels. For me, a small press publisher, a novella would be a perfect sale, because fiction sells better than poetry, generally, and shorter novels cost less to produce.

They also take remarkable concision and all-round artful storytelling. Some magazines have created a platform to publish novellas outside their pages. Under its Working Titles outprint, The Massachusetts Review publishes novella e-books 7, to 25, words , and Ploughshares now offers its digital-only Solos 7, to 20, words. So there are homes, then, for your novella.

How does the novella happen? Do writers plan it in advance, aiming for a certain number of pages or words? What special features does the novella form have for writers, and what story elements determine its length?

How do editors view this form, not only from a marketing angle but also for its special capacities? What tips do both writers and editors have when it comes to the novella as a form? Four novella writers speak out, followed by four small press publishers who have found a place for novellas in their lists. She lives in New York City. Jane Smiley , author of 14 novels, three novellas, two short story collections, five works of nonfiction, and five YA novels.

For example, a recent flash piece I wrote uses a Delmore Schwartz quote as a starting point, about how the mind is a city like London, and the piece tries to embody that idea in a short space, in a flash of thought. And as a reader, I need the time that pages provide to think about those ideas.

I started writing The Western Lonesome Society in very much an exploratory sort of mood. In this case, there are several stories within the main story. It seemed to me that the concept would only be interesting for so long. Early on, I knew I was writing a book of about pages.

Jane Smiley: I wrote all three of my novellas in the s. All three of them were explorations of particular emotional experiences. I have not written any novellas since. I think they were triggered by the emotional complexity of having children, and juggling them with marriage and a career involving students and writing books.

The ideas seemed to need focus and concentration but also a degree of length. I think that a short story works sort of like a lightning strike, and I felt that I needed more time to develop the situations. But at the same time, I wanted to explore the feelings of the characters with greater focus than I thought I could in a novel. Deal: In a novella, nothing is a distraction. There is no filler.

Not that a novella has to be spare — it can be a burst of luxuriance — but nothing can be superfluous. And if you read it in one sitting, which you can, you can become immersed in the world of the book from beginning to end. And I think this allows the writer to build up some resonances and reflections that might get lost in a longer format. It also allows for some experimentation that might get tedious in a longer book. For example, in That Night Alive, the sentence that ends one chapter is the same sentence that begins the next chapter.

McBrearty: The novella opens up a lot of possibilities, including more scenes and a larger cast of characters. The short story may take some asides, flashbacks, flash forwards, but most of the time the use of these is much more limited than in the novella.

The Western Lonesome Society also allowed me to take several different points of view. Personal Writing. Historical Books. Travel Books. Business Books. Humor in Nonfiction. Creative Nonfiction. Write Better Poetry. Poetry Prompts. Poetic Forms. Interviews With Poets. Why I Write Poetry. Poetry FAQs. Get Published. Build My Platform. Find a Fiction Agent. Find a Nonfiction Agent.

Write My Query. Sell My Work. Business of Writing. Breaking In. Be Inspired. Writing Prompts. The Writer's Life. Writing Quotes. Vintage WD. From the Magazine. WD Competitions. The books follow on from one another, so read Lycopolis first. Some books, while short, have such intensity and depth one thinks of them as longer than they are. Some authors never use ten words if they can use a hundred. I know what you mean — some books are deceptively short, and they leave a lasting impact.

Plus, I find that while I can race through some long-ish genre novels, even short literary ones take me a bit longer, which I think affects my perception of how long they are…. My mini-ebook Time to Write has all the tips you need to get started. Pop your email address in below to join my newsletter list. You'll get Time to Write plus other free ebooks, as well as my weekly blog posts Mondays and short newsletters Thursdays to help you make the most of your writing time.

Note: I will never spam you or pass on your email address to anyone else. You can leave the newsletter list at any time. So how long is a novel? How Long is a Novel? A novel is anything over 40, words. Around 80, — 90, words is about average. How Long is a Novella?

How Long is a Novelette? How Long is a Short Story? What if Your Novel is Really a Novella? For instance: The Turn of the Screw Henry James — a shade over standard novella length at 42, words.