In the self-publishing world, though (as I’ll come onto in a bit!) there’s no question of being “allowed” to do anything: lots of self-publishers do write novellas, and publish them. Many novelists would love to write novellas like Ian McEwan … but publishers are only interested in the shorter form if it has the name of a bestselling author attached to it. When I first got into writing, almost twenty years ago, the conventional advice was to write novels of 70,000 words minimum: agents and publisher would be very reluctant to take on a shorter novel because the cost of printing versus the amount they could charge for it meant it wasn’t worthwhile.Įven as recently as 2012, an article in The Times (“ Ian McEwan is lucky to be allowed to publish novellas”) claimed that: In general, novellas will have fewer characters and subplots than novels, but just like novels, they have a plot, rising tension, a climax, and so on. There’s no clear structural difference between a “short story” and a “novella” and a “novel”. (Much less, and it’s a short story much more, and it’s a novel.) What’s a Novella?Ī novella is a novel of roughly 20,000 – 40,000 words. You may well have read some without thinking of them as novellas (most readers, and most writers marketing their work, just call them “short novels”). Novellas have, since e-publishing took off, become far more popular than they used to be. It’s going to be a short, stand-alone novel: a novella. This is the first time in more years than I care to count (nine, yikes) that I’ve been working on a long piece of fiction other than my Lycopolis trilogy. A couple of weekends ago, I headed off on an overnight writing retreat and started work on a new fiction project.

Lenora tor books