Not long ago the members of my book club had an interesting discussion. One of the women has been so busy. She just doesn’t feel like the has the mental energy to dive into a vast book. Another woman has been sick. She wanted an easy literary win. My husband and I listen to audio books on our way to the lake. We’d love to be able to find things that were about 4 hours long. But for whatever reason, libraries do not catalogue things by length.
What I did discover is that if I search for “novella” in the catalogue, I get over 2000 search results. I find these particular books because the authors have put novella in the title. Book #1 was This Winter a Heartstopper Novella.
According to Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest editor, a novella is between 15,000 and 40,000 words long. Before you get worked up and start objecting, saying that you’ve never heard of a single novella, calm down. Because you have. These were the examples that Brewer listed in his article here:
- Animal Farm, by George Orwell
- Ship Fever, by Andrea Barrett
- Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
- Brokeback Mountain, by Annie Proulx
- Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
A novella lies in the territory between a short story and a novel. This means that there is more space for plot development than a short story. But there isn’t as much space for subplots as you would find in a novel.
Although the examples above may lead you to believe that novellas are always literary, a story in any genre can be told in a novella. I just finished reading Marella Sands novella, Through a Keyhole Darkly. It is contemporary fantasy set in St. Louis. Some people classify Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a gothic novella. Want a novella for young readers? Take a look at The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
Just remember that you can find at least some of them by searching for “novella” as a keyword. If you do, tell me what you found!
–SueBE
One Writer's Journey 