‘What is a novella?’ is the head-scratching question I receive when telling people that I have two novellas published on Amazon. To that, I always smile and reply, saying ‘Think of novels as the big sister, the first born who’s been earmarked by your doting parents to achieve big things. Think of novellas as the little brother, who to some might seem to be the second favourite child, but is nevertheless full of ambition himself and models himself after his big sister.’
That’s just that — novellas are a smaller novel. Stories that, to some, do not hit the highs and lows that a full-flavoured novel can give you, but they are stories that nonetheless have the same basic components that you often find in novels. This include character arcs, a slowly-unravelling plot, as well as adequate pacing and timing of the individual story beats. However, since novellas are typically only between 17,000 to 40,000 words, it never gets the same depth or width for any of those elements, as compared to their more un-restricted brethren in the form of novels (40,000 words or over).
Due to this natural restriction, many authors shy away from writing novellas, citing a lack of reward for all the time spent writing one. Admittedly, a limited word count does not do wonders for your novel, nor sprinkle it with any extra flavour that will entice the reader to come back for more. However, I believe that every aspirational writer should try their hand at writing novellas at least one, as I believe that writing a novella can be a valuable experience in not only learning how to write a story but a lesson in how to write a good story at that.
The following are the three key reasons why every writer should try their hand out at writing novellas:
Thinking about a plot is easy, writing about it is much harder. At least it was for me, when I started my own writing journey a couple of years ago. When it’s in your head, a plot is nothing more than your imagination pulling together the different and disparate influences in your life to tell a cohesive beginning, middle and end. Everything sounds good when you’re thinking and contemplating about it in silence. In time, it might sound good enough for you to start thinking about putting pen to paper on your idea.
That’s where the trouble starts for most writers. Ideas that seemed good in the head now doesn’t seem good when writing it out. The pacing could be off, the character could have turned out differently than what you thought of in the beginning, or the story is taking turns that you never thought of when you were just thinking about your idea. That’s why writing a novel is difficult — you need an idea that’s not only good enough for a novel that you can write more than 40,000 words about, but you also need an idea that’s cohesive enough, from start to end, that you can write in more than 40,000 words about. The question you should ask yourself is why start big when you can start small? Due to the aforementioned restricted word count to qualify as a novella, it’s the perfect vehicle to test your ideas, to fully flesh it out in a more manageable and low stakes setting, working out the dents and kinks of your nascent plot before it’s ready to take the world by storm.
For example, I used my novella ‘Codebreaker’ to test out a plot I’ve been thinking about, a cyber sleuth in a not too distant future, that uses his tech know-how and a variety of modern gadgets to bring down criminals. Writing the novella allowed me to not only perfect the initial idea I had in my head, but it also allowed me to add ideas I thought about later into the narrative, to shape it and mature it to the point where I was confident that the plot was solid enough for a story to be told within the 40,000 word limit. Due to the success of my novella, I am now thinking of porting the plot into a full-blown novel, assured by the novella’s positive reception that it could turn out well as a fully fleshed out novel.
Similarly, character arcs are something that first time writers struggle with, especially writers who don’t have lots of reference points when it comes to poignant real life stories with highs and lows. Anybody can write a character, but skilled writers know how to give protagonists with shades of grey or turn an outright antagonist down the path of redemption and heroism. It takes an active mind, able to pull on the thread of different character backgrounds, experiences, motivations, hopes and dreams to combine them into something resembling a character-driven story. Arcs are more than just character journeys, they are the sum of their decisions that are rationally anchored in their personality, which is shaped and crafted over the length of the novel.
As such, it may be difficult for some writers to flesh out arcs. With so many pages to fill, so many key plot points to remember and exposition to deliver, writers can fall into the trap of not fully developing a character to a point where, if they are involved in a pivotal point in the story, their decision does not seem rational as it is not anchored in any motivation or personality trait that was previously revealed or discussed previously. Character arcs that are meant to explain these decisions are left half finished, which leads to the story feeling half finished as well. Developing character arcs in novellas, however, is decidedly simpler than trying your hand at it for novels. Although the lower word count might seem to count against you in fully developing your characters, in contrast I found that it forced me to focus on what’s important to my characters development, cutting out the inconsequential bits and pieces to their background, personality or relationships with other characters.
For example, in ‘Codebreaker’, I made sure to focus on what made my protagonist, Alexander Hastings, tick. What were his interests? What were his motivations? What did he stand for? Once those three questions were answered, it was a simple task to keep these motivations at the forefront of the story from beginning to end, effortlessly looping the arc from tech-savvy scoundrel to technically brilliant detective. If it were not for the lower word limit, writing and detailing out Alexander’s personality would have been an infinitely more difficult task than just narrowing my focus down, due to the lower page and word count that are a natural element of novellas.
Finally, novellas help writers excel at the one skill that all writers are bad at — word economy. You would think that writing novels is just that. However, there is writing, then there is writing. A novel that is filled with words without end, words that sound nice but don’t contribute anything to the overall story, setting or plot, are novels that are bound to either frustrate readers or put them to sleep. A novel that is filled with just the right amount of words, that convey just the right feelings at the right time, are the kind of novels that readers come back for again and again.
That’s what word economy is all about. The limited use of words, or control use of one’s literary ability, to not only get your point across succinctly but to still do so in a creative and descriptive manner. With novels, word economy is a much harder process to control. So many pages to fill and so many words to write with so little time to spare. Writers fall into the trap of vomitting words onto a page, hoping that it will make some sort of sense come the end, only to realise that they will probably have to re-write half of their manuscript because the words that wound across the pages crashed somewhere between chapters four or five, without an edit in sight. Writing novellas can force authors to appreciate word economy, to use as few words as possible to explain the overall plot, the character motivations and the goal that the protagonist is trying to achieve.
Learning about word economy was definitely my one big takeaway from writing ‘Codebreaker’. Previously, in my attempt to write a full length novel, I had the tendency to just put word to page, an endless string of sentences that knew no beginning, nor did they have an end. Writing a novella, and the word constrictions that follow, forced me to focus on writing only what was needed to tell the story I wanted to tell. This helped to round my novella off nicely, in terms of story and plot, whilst ensuring that it is well paced and even in places, rather than jumping all over the place. It’s a skill that I’m definitely going to be using when writing my debut novel, or any other piece of writing for that matter.
I hope that, by sharing my experience writing novellas, it inspired some of you to try your hand at it. If it did, yay! Feel free to read about my tips on how to write your very own novella, if you feel up to the challenge. Until next time, write away!