In the 11 years I’ve been writing fiction, I’ve only completed one full length novel. The two others I started sit stranded at around 30,000 words — the characters fated to remain frozen mid-action surrounded by the crumbling facades of my world-building. I just can’t muster the commitment needed to revitalise them. Yet, in those same 11 years, I’ve written a multitude of short stories, numerous poems and seven novellas.
When setting out to write the Ghost Assassins of Bijou series. I made the deliberate choice to write them as novellas. Each of the five stories are between 22-29K words in length, so roughly 100 pages in book form with a reading time of 2 - 4 hours. While each novella stands alone, as a series, they read as a layered and complex novel.
In a 2014 essay, Allan Gurganus said, “A novella, containing the best of poem and novel, gives us the whiplash of one and echoes of the other.” I find beauty in the stark brevity of novellas and prefer the sharp stab of emotion to the drawn-out torment of longer-form novels. Then again, I also rip off plasters and dive into freezing water…so my reading preferences reflect my life-style perversities.
When I consider my favourite reads from the last few years many of them are novellas:
To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
None of this is to say that I don’t like reading novels or even sagas, I do, but I prefer the shorter form. I’d rather read a series of short books set in the same world / universe, than a seemingly endless saga rolled into an enormous single offering. I’m easily bored and often skim-read large swathes of a saga to leap from one action scene to the next. Whereas, I'll cling to every nuance and word of a well-crafted and perfectly formed novella.
As a writer, the novella has given me the freedom to be innovative in how I use words to create emotions and responses. In the Ghost Assassins of Bijou novellas, I’ve made use of songs and haiku to invoke a sharper emotional response than could be achieved with even the most beautifully crafted paragraphs of prose and dialogue. I've also experimented with different points of view.
I don’t consciously follow formats such as the Hero’s Journey or the 3-Act Structure when I’m writing a novella. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a flow to the storyline or a lack of tension, it just means the points of high emotion, high tension and relief occur organically and often in ways that aren’t expected or anticipated. When read as a series, the high points hit differently.
Like Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries and Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy, the Ghost Assassins of Bijou is a series of novellas. In this way the series offers the complexity of a novel — deep world-building enriched by multiple points of view and subplots weaving through an overarching storyline — with the artistry of a poem.
Novellas offer a deeper exploration than a short story, while being more focussed than a novel. Our minds are busy, and our senses overwhelmed. Every day we’re assailed by an avalanche of unfettered information that we must critically assess to determine what's true, what's important, and what's critical. When I read a book, I want to escape and be distracted from the horrors and mundanities of our increasingly dystopian world.
So, when I write a book, I write it for me. And this is why I write novellas.
When setting out to write the Ghost Assassins of Bijou series. I made the deliberate choice to write them as novellas. Each of the five stories are between 22-29K words in length, so roughly 100 pages in book form with a reading time of 2 - 4 hours. While each novella stands alone, as a series, they read as a layered and complex novel.
In a 2014 essay, Allan Gurganus said, “A novella, containing the best of poem and novel, gives us the whiplash of one and echoes of the other.” I find beauty in the stark brevity of novellas and prefer the sharp stab of emotion to the drawn-out torment of longer-form novels. Then again, I also rip off plasters and dive into freezing water…so my reading preferences reflect my life-style perversities.
When I consider my favourite reads from the last few years many of them are novellas:
To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
None of this is to say that I don’t like reading novels or even sagas, I do, but I prefer the shorter form. I’d rather read a series of short books set in the same world / universe, than a seemingly endless saga rolled into an enormous single offering. I’m easily bored and often skim-read large swathes of a saga to leap from one action scene to the next. Whereas, I'll cling to every nuance and word of a well-crafted and perfectly formed novella.
As a writer, the novella has given me the freedom to be innovative in how I use words to create emotions and responses. In the Ghost Assassins of Bijou novellas, I’ve made use of songs and haiku to invoke a sharper emotional response than could be achieved with even the most beautifully crafted paragraphs of prose and dialogue. I've also experimented with different points of view.
I don’t consciously follow formats such as the Hero’s Journey or the 3-Act Structure when I’m writing a novella. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a flow to the storyline or a lack of tension, it just means the points of high emotion, high tension and relief occur organically and often in ways that aren’t expected or anticipated. When read as a series, the high points hit differently.
Like Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries and Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy, the Ghost Assassins of Bijou is a series of novellas. In this way the series offers the complexity of a novel — deep world-building enriched by multiple points of view and subplots weaving through an overarching storyline — with the artistry of a poem.
Novellas offer a deeper exploration than a short story, while being more focussed than a novel. Our minds are busy, and our senses overwhelmed. Every day we’re assailed by an avalanche of unfettered information that we must critically assess to determine what's true, what's important, and what's critical. When I read a book, I want to escape and be distracted from the horrors and mundanities of our increasingly dystopian world.
So, when I write a book, I write it for me. And this is why I write novellas.
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