Novels vs Novellas: The Great Debate

Most writing forums have a lot of discussion and debate over what constitutes a novel as opposed to a novella in terms of word count. Goal posts tend to get moved, usually by people who think anything under sixty thousand should be considered a novella, while NaNoWriMo famously sets the goal at fifty thousand based on averages.

Then you have the authors that boast eighty to a hundred thousand for their novels, which are usually fantasy or sci-fi. That’s worthy of some praise, it takes a lot of work to hit those numbers. But what if no one enjoys it. Or reads it. Then what? And what happens when an editor comes along and tells you to cull huge sections? Suddenly, all that work becomes superfluous.

There are even cases of some authors being prolific in terms of churning out books, but they aren’t highly regarded as being brilliant, and all their loyal fans can sometime say is, “but they’ve written so many books!” Some of the most renowned authors, like JD Salinger and Harper Lee, only wrote a couple of books. They were praised for their ability to write well, not excessively. I have an archive box full of stories and even managed to finish a few sizable novels before I graduated high school. Little to none of this will see the light of day, since there's not much I can use from them. But sometimes you have to write thousands of words to find even a small amount that is useable.

At a time when readers are bemoaning their lack of time to read short stories and novellas are becoming more acceptable. E-publishing has opened a door that was once closed to writers who had memorable and significant stories to tell that just weren’t in the ballpark of novel territory. Why should length dictate acceptance? Publishers can decide to be more flexible or maintain their rigid stance, but even a few are willing to bend on the “shorter” novels if they’re worthy of publication.

One of my favourite authors had novellas published long before his masterwork of eight hundred-something pages was produced. Some stories just won’t bend when it comes to length, others won’t let you off the hook until they’re done, seventy thousand words later. When reviewers are recognising a book was let down by a lack of heavy editing, wouldn’t you rather a decent story than something bloated? Readers want to claim bragging rights for reading “War and Peace” sized novels, and writers want their right to brag over how much they wrote, but was the story worth the time it took to read it? Were you hate reading it and not enjoying it, making reading a chore when it’s meant to be a pleasurable experience? Half the time, if you ask the reader what the book was about, or if it was good, they don’t tend to say much. Maybe it was amazing but hard to get through, or you find out they skimmed a lot of descriptive passages to get back to the action. Or they were bored on holiday and just had time to read for the sake of it.

Seems like a lot of work for such a lackluster response.