Fifty thousand: the magic number. From a writer’s
perspective, this number is luckier than seven, more infamous than thirteen,
and deserves first place more than one does.
See, fifty thousand is the wordcount we all strive for. The
one that we race toward every year for NaNoWriMo, the number that makes us get
a little warm inside.
When our manuscript reaches that majestic number, we’ve
written a novel.
On Wednesday, my current project hit 200,000 words. Yup. Agram Awakens is now only four thousand
words shy of my target goal, with two and a half chapters left in the rough
draft. I passed the magical “novel” number months and months ago.
But let’s look back, before Agram Awakens. I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo last year titled Barnslow Died. It’s on its third draft,
now, and it’s hovering at 50,083 words.
Before that? I wrote a story that barely reached 39,300
words.
Oh dear.
What happens when your story finished, but you’re only at
39,300 words? What if you’re at 42,000? 15,000? Do you just… stop? Give up, put
the book down, walk away? Or do you stretch it out, pump an extra ten thousand
words in just to push the story into the novel zone? I mean, is it a real story
before then?
I say yes. Your
manuscript is a story, no matter the wordcount. See, just because you can’t
call it a “novel” doesn’t mean it’s not a good story.
Instead, you’ve written a novella.
And here’s why that’s okay:
The Truth About Numbers
In math, numbers are important. They’re the reason math is a
thing. Even when advanced math trails off into x and y and z and tan(x) or
f’(x,y) or some other function, they all came from numbers first. Without
numbers, we wouldn’t have math.
You might say that numbers are vital.
What about in writing?
Turns out… you don’t need numbers to write. You can write a
whole story without using a single number. It can even be a good story. Therefore, we can conclude
that numbers are not vital to
storytelling.
Including when it comes to word count.
You don’t have to
surpass a certain number of words to tell a good story.
In fact, maybe you
shouldn’t. I know a gentleman (he’s a judge, actually) who write flash
fiction using as few words as possible. He can tell a story in under one
hundred words. Can you imagine? Having to tell a story, create reader-character
connection, set up conflict, carry through a plot, and resolve the whole thing
in less than a hundred words?
It’s amazing.
Having read some of his flash fiction, I daresay some of
them are better than entire novels I’ve read. A book that uses 80,000+ words to
show me a story pales in comparison to a piece of fiction with only 82 words.
Why? Because story
isn’t about the number of words or the number of pages. It’s about the emotion
and the engagement you create with your reader.
Simplicity in Small Doses
The words themselves are more important than how many of
them you use. If I were to take the short story I shared on Monday, Broken Snapshots, and double its word
count, it would lose some of its power. A lot, actually. The story isn’t meant
to be told in four thousand words, that would make it far, far too long. The
pacing would be thrown off, the point-of-view would begin to feel dry, and the
emotion would be strained to the point of disappearing.
Pumping a story full
of words can make the story go stale. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth,
like eating an orange after brushing your teeth. You can’t name the taste, it’s
just bad. The extra words feel forced
as you read, and they probably felt forced to write as well.
So what do you do when your story falls short?
You call it a novella.
There are several ways to define novellas, I just like to
call them “books with less than fifty thousand words”.
AKA, short novels.
“But Aidan, I want to publish
my book!”
It may be true that some publishers will turn you down
because your manuscript is too small, but there are novellas out there that are published. The most famous example
may be The Old Man and the Sea, by
Earnest Hemingway, which sits just around 30,000 words.
In addition, you may as well lump together all the
elementary-level stories out there, because most of them aren’t near fifty
thousand words (such as the Magic
Treehouse series, the Hardy Boys books, and more).
Publishing shouldn’t be a problem when it comes to too few
words. In fact, publishing shouldn’t be
the point anyway. Telling a good story should.
My novella from 2014, The
Elenivir has a target audience of 12-15. Based on that alone, its wordcount
is almost perfect. And it’s not a
novel.
Your story should
only contain the number of words it takes to complete it.
Writing a Novella for You
Novellas have an advantage for you, the writer: they’re short. You don’t have to spend
hours a day writing thousands of words to finish it. You can write a novella in
a month, writing for an hour or less a day.
In fact, I recommend all writers write a novella at some
point. Much as taking a break from novel writing to write short stories or
poems can rejuvenate your creativity, so can writing a novella.
Novellas let you take
a break from the big projects to renew your energy and concentration. When I wrote The Elenivir, I’d just come off writing a 90,000 word novel, Asher’s Song. The project I was looking
to brainstorm was rather intimidating, because the more I developed it, the
more Agram Awakens looked like a
monstrosity.
I wasn’t ready to write it.
At the same time, however, I was high on the rush of
emotions that comes with successfully finishing a story. I had to write something, because my hands and brain
were itching to use that flood of success and emotion and creativity. So I dug
through my novel ideas and found this silly little idea about these cat-sized
dragons that gifted their owner with magical abilities.
Thus, The Elenivir was
born. It gave me time to prepare for writing another novel while giving me an
outlet for my creativity. I can’t claim that it’s any good (in fact, I don’t
intend to let anyone read it until I’ve given it a thorough edit, if I ever
manage to get around to it). The point
isn’t the word count, and the point isn’t to create something worth publishing.
Write your novella for you,
first and foremost.
Find a story you’ve always wanted to write, even if it’s a
little cliché, a little silly, a little naïve. Let your imagination fill the
pages of a shorter tale, let yourself be giddy at finally getting to write that
story.
Give yourself that joy and that relaxation.
Without The Elenivir,
I don’t know that I’d have started Agram
Awakens when I did. I certainly wouldn’t be reaching 200,000 words. Not now, maybe not ever.
:3 I've actually been thinking a lot about story length lately. (And moping that all my finished ones are novellas) That was a very apt post.
ReplyDelete*places celebratory fedora upon your head*
Story length can be such an interesting thing, especially when we get it into our heads that it's super crucial that it be a certain length. *nod*
Delete*keeps fedora because fedoras*
This is great. I started to plan out a story and realized that the word count would never reach over 50,000 words and I was thinking about trying to lengthen it, but this is very helpful.
ReplyDeleteI'm just going to keep my little story. :3
And I really like the idea of novellas giving people a break from the larger projects. I usually try to write a few short stories in between big projects. But now I want to try a novella. ^_^
Novellas are actually really nice to read, too. They're just the right length for a car-ride, and they give you a good breather after a really long one. *nod*
ReplyDelete^_^