I’ve mused before about whether writing short stories is really something I want to do. I’m not usually especially thrilled by reading them, and the main reason for this is that, well, they’re short. Just as I’m starting to like (or loathe) a character, and get into the story, then it stops. I think I can safely say that at least as my tastes stand at the moment, I’m really a novel reader.
But – there’s always a but – I recently found the information about an interesting novella contest. It’s being run by the online journal Fail Better (love the name!) and it’s their 10th anniversary novella contest. Free to enter, a $500 prize, but most importantly, the incentive to write a novella before the closing date of May 15, 2010. You know how I love a deadline!
I’ve never really contemplated writing a novella before, I must admit. But the idea definitely intrigues me, and with all the different ideas for novels that I have floating around in my head, I’m sure that once I examine them a bit more closely, there’s bound to be one that is better suited to a novella. For the purposes of this contest at least the Fail Better people are defining a novella roughly like this:
Length is obviously the main criterion, i.e. the thing should be longer than a short story, and not so long as a novel … one could argue—as have certain critics, whose names we wish we remembered—that a novella, in order not to be a novel, should focus on one story and one set of characters, not spending appreciable time on others, of either. In order not to be a “mere” short story, it should go into more depth, about both.
Perhaps the definition is what sparked my interest, because going into more depth about characters and story fixes the problem I have with the short story, but the length means that it’s more manageable than a novel. So, my goals are:
- Sit down and brainstorm all the ideas for novels I’ve had – this is useful just of itself, to prevent me losing a few that I’ve probably never written down anywhere.
- Figure out which of these ideas is best suited to a novella. That is, I guess, which one is concentrated solely on a relatively small set of characters. The contest guidelines also say it should be a novella that can be readily serialised, so I’ll need to think about the plot lines for that.
- Make a plan of how much to write and when, so that I have plenty of time to finish it before the deadline and still have a chance to edit it well.
- WRITE IT!
As usual, I’ll keep you informed. In the meantime, I’m curious to know if any fellow writers out there have written novellas, and how was the experience? Was it significantly less painful than writing a novel, or much the same? Please let me know any experiences you’ve had with novellas in the comments.
