I think I'm going to take the advice given to me on another thread to write some short pieces with the characters from my novel so that I can do a better job of editing (or possibly rewriting) my first novel. I want to get a better grip on my main characters, hone my writing skills (well, get some writing skills in the first place) and get experience of editing a complete piece of work before I go back and tackle the novel again.

Before I started on my novel, I wrote three short stories and read up on how to do them. What I learned what that short stories are, well, very short and that you've got to have a twist. You also don't get much character development or depth, or any rising and falling of tension. They seem so different from novels that I think I'd rather write a novella of maybe 10-20k words or so.

I'm wondering what differences, apart from there just being room for less incident, there are between a novel and a novella; or whether there are similarities to short stories that I should be aware of. Wikipedia has what looks like a good description of the distinctions between the three but I wonder what else I should be thinking of:

A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. They have endings that are located at the brink of change. Unlike novels, they are not divided into chapters, and are often intended to be read at a single sitting, as the short story, although white space is often used to divide the sections. They maintain, therefore, a single effect. Warren Cariou wrote: The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description.

Thoughts?

Come to think of it, I don't understand what Mr/Ms Wikipedia meant by novellas having "endings that are located at the brink of change". Anybody got any idea?

can you think of any examples of famous novellas? that might help you to see what the differences are.

Recently I read a couple by James M. Cain, which I think would count as novellas (about 130pp) - The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. I suppose the difference was that the tension racked up faster, and the surprises came thicker and faster. Double Indemnity, in particular, was quite jet-fuelled in that regard (I highly recommend it). Another author might have spun it out to a full-length novel. But I didn't notice any differences in addition to the ones pointed out in Wikipedia.

Apart from those, I can't remember when I last read a novella. I don't think they get published these days, although ebook self-publishers talk about using them as loss-leaders to give away free or cheap to get readers hooked on their writing, so they might be making a comeback.

I'd rather write a novella of maybe 10-20k words or so.

But ask yourself, who would buy it?

Most people who buy a book want a good long story. Also, a novella would not be much cheaper to buy than a 'full sized' book, so that would leave the perception that they are expensive.

Nick

I suspect that the thing to do is take the Wikipedia description as an analysis not a prescription. I mean, it's presumably a fact (if you trust Wikipedia! ) that novel/las have these characteristics. But it doesn't necessarily mean they have to have. Yours could be different. I feel I should say something useful about a priori and a posterori here but I'm not quite clever enough so I will leave it to someone more fitting - Emma D? Flora Post?

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"What I learned what that short stories are, well, very short and that you've got to have a twist."

No you don't! But if you do want to have a twist, look at Jane Gardam's 'Bevis' - widely anthologised.

But ask yourself, who would buy it? Most people who buy a book want a good long story. Also, a novella would not be much cheaper to buy than a 'full sized' book, so that would leave the perception that they are expensive.

Hi Nick - primarily I'd like to write a novella as a training exercise. I think a short story is such a different beast from a novel that I don't think that writing a short story would give me the training I need.

But self-publishers of e-books are writing short stories and novellas and selling them cheap/free to publicise their writing and it seems to be working for some, so some readers must be buying.

So if my exercise turns out well, I hope it might have some marketing value further down the road but for now, it's sufficient for me to use it to get my skills up.

TBH Toast, I would just write the novel. You wouldn't learn to ride a motorbike in preparation for learning to drive a car, would you? If a novel is what you want to write, go for it.

Hi SSister - that's true about avoiding prescription but I suppose I'd just like to avoid any massive bear-traps that might I might fall into partway through that are a consequence of using a short form. If people have already thought through how to deal with the particular challenges that a novella poses, I'd like to learn from their wisdom!

TBH Toast, I would just write the novel. You wouldn't learn to ride a motorbike in preparation for learning to drive a car, would you? If a novel is what you want to write, go for it.

Hi SSister - but, argh, I did write the novel. Or rather, I got almost to the end of my shitty first draft and then realised I'd got a serious problem. And then another. And then another. And another. Pretty much everything everybody said and did. It's beyond what an edit, no matter how profound, can cope with so I'm taking the nuclear option and starting again.

So I'm currently replotting the novel and working on the characters. But what I discovered from the "shitty first draft" approach was that I was writing too fast (and too shittily) for it to actually be an enjoyable process and that I'd rather upskill a bit, and test out my characters and tone and all the rest of it, and go through an entire editing process on a short piece of work before I tackle the novel again.

I agree you wouldn't practice on a motorbike to learn to drive a car which is why I don't want to write the motorbike of a short story to prep for my car of a novel. I want to practice on the Fiat Punto of a novella before driving my Aston Martin of a novel (chance, fine thing, etc.).

I see what you mean, Toast, and it does make sense. But if a novella is that different from a novel anyway, will it help you much? I think most people write loads of novels that don't work before writing one that does - and speaking for myself, I've written loads that don't work even after having written some published ones. It sucks, but I don't know if it will make it any easier to write a novella.

I'd like to try it, though. I know I need to write more thoughtfully and skillfully rather than just blamming through and getting the story down, particularly as, by getting the story down in the first draft of the novel, I've learned enough about the story to write a much better version.

I just want to go through the upskill - write - edit cycle on a short piece so that I can build up my confidence and get my enjoyment back, on a project that will take weeks rather than months.

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Oh - and meant to say, I think that short stories and novels are very different, but that novellas and novels are much more similar, even though they have differences. What I need to work on particularly is character, tone, and how to deal with different types of scenes, which is what I can do in a novella but couldn't to the same extent in a short story.

What I learned what that short stories are, well, very short and that you've got to have a twist. You also don't get much character development or depth, or any rising and falling of tension.

Have to say I disagree with ALL of those... Specially the twist bit. Characters act as they do because of who they are, and fiction is built of character-in-action. Short fiction usually fleshes out one main change for your main character-in-action and perhaps one or two others, so that by the end, something important in their internal and/or external life is different. The change may be huge, or tiny: the perfect voice or atmosphere can make even the shortest story resonate.

TBH, if you want to use short fiction as ways to learn some of the transferable skills, or to explore particular characters or I'd be inclined to commission a variety of short stories from yourself, rather than the length of a novella, because no one project will provide all the challenges that you need to learn on. With lots of shorts you can try more different kinds of mood/conflict/characters - Also, you can, if you like, hold a whole short story in your head, which makes it much easier to pick and work and hammer at this one line, say, in view of what it's doing in the whole piece - not sure that would be so true with a 20-30,000 word novella.

And a longish short story can practice the business of moving from one scene to the next, and the rhythm of tension and release - a 5000 words story of mine might well have three or four scenes in it.

I suppose what I'm really saying is that to me, the project of writing a novella would be the worst of both worlds - especially as a short story might have a chance of an independent, published life (Some of my most successful stories started life as technical exercises) whereas a novella would be much harder to find a home for... but others might disagree.

Nothing, though, can really teach you the heart of novel-scale work: structure, pace, sub-plot, long-term, big-scale character development... except writing a novel.

Hi Toast, I think novellas (like novels) are practically unclassifiable in that there are so many different kinds it's very hard to generalise. When Wiki says that about them ending on the cusp of change, I think you could equally say that about some novels, but perhaps they mean that there is less scope for tying off endings and coming up with neat resolutions in a novella, it is necessarily a curtailed form so there is the suggestion of a resolution/moving forward rather than the actuality...? I don't know to be honest.

I've not read many novellas (simply because there are very few on the market - as others have said, they are hard to sell) but I have read Sense of an Ending and On Chesil Beach, both of which were sold as novels but are on the cusp of novel/novella categorisation in terms of word count. I guess they fit in with the Wiki description - broadly at least.

I think I agree with the others though, that, while an interesting question, fretting about the form and qualities of a novella is not really the issue here. If what you want to do is essentially warm-up for the novel, then why concentrate on writing the perfect novella? What I mean is, you might warm up for the ballet by doing floor exercises. But it probably wouldn't help to warm up by doing a tap routine.

Concentrate on what you want to achieve - if I'm reading it right this is getting into the skin of your characters, finding your voice, achieving a good plot outline - is that right?

If so, I don't think delving into the philosophical qualities of a novella is necessary for any of this. Write a diary entry from your character, write a first chapter and chuck it away, plot out a basic synopsis - all of those would do the job just as well.

Maybe your best warm-up was writing that first novel though. You probably won't make the same mistakes again (at least, not all of them, or not in the same way). Perhaps it's worth just plunging in, and trusting to your new sense of perspective?

Hi Emma and Flora - all good points, and you've got me thinking.

The plotting of the revised novel I've pretty much got straight in my head and am getting it onto paper. I think I had to make the plotting mistakes I did in order to learn some lessons and I'm happy that the revised plot is pretty sound.

I had a couple of other big issues with the first draft. One was that my protag never came alive. A lot of people say that at first, your characters don't seem real but there comes a point, sometimes quite late on, when they suddenly spring into life for you. That just didn't happen for me. I'm doing a lot of thinking about my protag now and find I'm trying to build him a bit like Frankenstein's monster because I don't know how else to do it - getting a collection of characteristics and hoping they hang together in almost an Identikit way. It's not working. For my first draft, I created a backstory for him, an inner conflict that flowed from the story, but he remained very cardboard. I've read lots of exercises on how to create characters but they don't really do anything for me - all that stuff about "How we he react if a stranger spilt coffee on him" sort of thing - I don't know, that's the point! I don't want to get to the end of another draft of the novel and find I still can't envisage my character, hence my interest in trying him out in something shorter where I can see if he's actually got any character at all. It's a real bugger because I want him to be a thriller/mystery series character (based on a unique skillset that he has) and he's a big fat nothing at the moment. I'm very stuck.

My other issue was that I was writing so fast that I think I actually deskilled as I was writing - I forgot my fragile, first-timer's learning about how to write because I was just trying to get the story down, as fast as possible.

Maybe I'm going about this all wrong...