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A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than that of most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word "novella" derives from the Italian novella, feminine of novello, which means "new". [1]
Merriam-Webster defines a novella as "a work of fiction intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel". [1] No official definition exists regarding the number of pages or words necessary for a story to be considered a novella, a short story or a novel. [2] US-based Writers of America defines a novella's word count to be between 17,500 and 40,000 words. [3] [4]
The novella as a literary genre began developing in the Italian literature of the early Renaissance, principally Giovanni Boccaccio, author of The Decameron (1353). [5] The Decameron featured 100 tales (named novellas) told by ten people (seven women and three men) fleeing the Black Death, by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills in 1348. This structure was then imitated by subsequent authors, notably the French queen Marguerite de Navarre, whose Heptaméron (1559) included 72 original French tales and was modeled after the structure of The Decameron.
Not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre structured by precepts and rules, generally in a realistic mode. At that time, the Germans were the most active writers of the novelle (German: "Novelle"; plural: "Novellen").[ citation needed ] For the German writer, a novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length—a few pages to hundreds—restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point (Wendepunkt), provoking a logical but surprising end. Novellen tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the narrative's focal point.[ citation needed ]
A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters are Animal Farm by George Orwell and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells) and are often intended to be read at a single sitting, as is the short story, although in a novella white space is often used to divide the sections, and therefore, the novella maintains a single effect. [6] Warren Cariou wrote: The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description. [7]
The term novel, borrowed from the Italian novella, originally meant "any of a number of tales or stories making up a larger work; a short narrative of this type, a fable", and was then many times used in the plural, [8] reflecting the usage as in Decameron and its followers. Usage of the more italianate novella in English seems to be a bit younger. [9] The differenciation of the two terms seems to have occurred only in the 19th century, following the new fashion of the novella in German literature. In 1834, John Lothrop Motley could still speak of "Tieck's novels (which last are a set of exquisite little tales, novels in the original meaning of the word)". [10] But when the term novella was used it was already clear that a rather short and witty form was intended: "The brief Novella has ever been a prodigious favorite with the nation…since the days of Boccaccio." [11] In 1902, William Dean Howells wrote: "Few modern fictions of the novel's dimensions…have the beauty of form many a novella embodies." [12]
Sometimes, as with other genres, the genre name is mentioned in the title of a single work (compare the Divine Comedy or Goethe's Das Märchen ). Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's Die Schachnovelle (1942) (literally, "The Chess Novella", but translated in 1944 as The Royal Game ) is an example of a title naming its genre. This might be suggestive of the genre's historicization.
Commonly, longer novellas are referred to as novels; Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) are sometimes called novels,[ by whom? ] as are many science fiction works such as H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1897) and Philip Francis Nowlan's Armageddon 2419 A.D. (1928). Less often, longer works are referred to as novellas. The subjectivity of the parameters of the novella genre is indicative of its shifting and diverse nature as an art form.[ citation needed ] In her 2010 Open Letters Monthly series, "A Year With Short Novels", Ingrid Norton criticizes the tendency to make clear demarcations based purely on a book's length:
On a web search engine, input "novels" and "length" and you will find tables of word counts, separating out novels from novellas, even from the esoteric and still shorter "novelette"—as though prose works were dog show contestants, needing to be entered into proper categories. But when it comes to writing, any distinctions that begin with an objective and external quality like size are bound to be misleading. The delicate, gem-like jigsaw of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Ray [ sic ] could not be more unlike the feverishly cunning philosophical monologue of Albert Camus' The Fall , but both novels are about the same length. [13]
Stephen King, in his introduction to Different Seasons , a 1982 collection of four novellas, has called the novella "an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic"; [14] King notes the difficulties of selling a novella in the commercial publishing world, since it does not fit the typical length requirements of either magazine or book publishers. Despite these problems, however, the novella's length provides unique advantages; in the introduction to a novella anthology titled Sailing to Byzantium, Robert Silverberg writes:
[The novella] is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms...it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel. [15]
In his essay, "Briefly, the case for the novella", Canadian author George Fetherling (who wrote the novella Tales of Two Cities) said that to reduce the novella to nothing more than a short novel is like "insisting that a pony is a baby horse". [16]
The sometimes blurry definition between a novel and a novella can create controversy, as was the case with British writer Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (2007). The author described it as a novella, but the panel for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 qualified the book as a "short novel". [17] Thus, this "novella" was shortlisted for an award for best original novel. A similar case is found with a much older work of fiction: The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London. This book, by modern standards, is short enough and straightforward enough to qualify as a novella. However, historically, it has been regarded as a novel.[ citation needed ]
Dictionaries define novelette similarly to novella; sometimes identically, [18] sometimes with a disparaging sense of being trivial or sentimental. [19] Some literary awards have a longer "novella" and a shorter "novelette" categories, with a distinction based on word count. A range between 7,500 and 17,500 words is common among awards. [20] [21] [22] According to The Writer, a novelette is approximately between 7,000 and 20,000 words in length, anything shorter being considered a short story. [23]
This list contains those novellas that are widely considered to be the best examples of the genre, through their appearance on multiple best-of lists. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]
| Author | Title | Published | Word count | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albert Camus | The Stranger | 1942 | 36,750 | [24] [25] [27] |
| Truman Capote | Breakfast at Tiffany's | 1958 | 26,433 | [24] [25] |
| Joseph Conrad | Heart of Darkness | 1899 | 38,000 | [25] [27] [28] [29] |
| Charles Dickens | A Christmas Carol | 1843 | 28,500 | [24] [25] [28] |
| Ernest Hemingway | The Old Man and the Sea | 1952 | 26,601 | [24] [27] [28] [29] |
| Franz Kafka | The Metamorphosis | 1915 | 21,810 | [24] [25] [28] [29] |
| Richard Matheson | I Am Legend | 1954 | 25,204 | [27] [28] |
| Herman Melville | Billy Budd | 1924 | 30,000 | [25] [29] |
| George Orwell | Animal Farm | 1945 | 30,000 | [24] [25] [28] [29] |
| John Steinbeck | Of Mice and Men | 1937 | 29,160 | [24] [28] |
| Robert Louis Stevenson | Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | 1886 | 25,500 | [24] [25] |
| Edith Wharton | Ethan Frome | 1911 | 34,500 | [25] [27] |
Some literary awards include a "best novella" award and sometimes a separate "best novelette" award, separately from "best short story" or "best novel". The distinction between these categories may be entirely by word count.
| Award | Genre | Organisation | Minimum | Maximum | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nebula Award for Best Novelette | Science fiction or fantasy | Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America | 7,500 | 17,499 | [20] |
| Nebula Award for Best Novella | Science fiction or fantasy | Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America | 17,500 | 39,999 | [20] |
| Hugo Award for Best Novelette | Science fiction or fantasy | World Science Fiction Society | 7,500 | 17,500 | [21] |
| Hugo Award for Best Novella | Science fiction or fantasy | World Science Fiction Society | 17,500 | 40,000 | [21] |
| Novella Award | Any genre of fiction | Screen School of Liverpool John Moores University and Manchester Metropolitan University’s Department of Contemporary Arts | 20,000 | 40,000 | [30] |
| RITA Award for Best Novella | Romance | Romance Writers of America | 20,000 | 40,000 | [31] |
| British Fantasy Award for Novella | Fantasy | British Fantasy Society | 15,000 | 40,000 | [32] |
| The Paris Literary Prize | Literary fiction | Shakespeare and Company | 17,000 | 35,000 | [33] |
| Black Orchid Novella Award | Mystery | Nero Wolfe Society | 15,000 | 20,000 | [34] |
| Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette | Psychological suspense, horror, or dark fantasy | 7,500 | 17,499 | [22] | |
| Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella | Psychological suspense, horror, or dark fantasy | 17,500 | 39,999 | [22] |
Brian Wilson Aldiss was an English writer and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.
Dan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works which span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. Simmons's genre-intermingling Song of Kali (1985) won the World Fantasy Award. He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.
Harry Clement Stubbs, better known by the pen name Hal Clement, was an American science fiction writer and a leader of the hard science fiction subgenre. He also painted astronomically oriented artworks under the name George Richard.
Alice Bradley Sheldon was an American science fiction author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1977 she also used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Sheldon was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities across the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.
Robert Silverberg is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Awards ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953.
Kate Wilhelm was an American author. She wrote novels and stories in the science fiction, mystery, and suspense genres, including the Hugo Award–winning Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, and she established the Clarion Workshop with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson.
Michael Lawson Bishop is an American writer. Over four decades and in more than thirty books, he has created what has been called a "body of work that stands among the most admired and influential in modern science fiction and fantasy literature."
Peter Soyer Beagle is an American novelist and screenwriter, especially of fantasy fiction. His best-known work is The Last Unicorn (1968), a fantasy novel he wrote in his twenties, which Locus subscribers voted the number five "All-Time Best Fantasy Novel" in 1987. During the last twenty-five years he has won several literary awards, including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011. He was named Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master by SFWA in 2018.
The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for English.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to fiction:
Fiction is any creative work consisting of people, events, or places that are imaginary—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. In its most narrow usage, fiction refers to written narratives in prose and often specifically novels, though also novellas and short stories. More broadly, fiction has come to encompass imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
Literature broadly is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Million Writers Award was a short story literary award presented annually by storySouth. It honored the best online short stories. The award was structured to be egalitarian allowing for anyone to nominate a story including readers, authors, editors and publishers; prize money was donated by readers and writers; and the winners were selected by public vote from a short-list of entries selected by judges.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are literary awards named after Shirley Jackson in recognition of her legacy in writing. These awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic are presented at Readercon, an annual conference on imaginative literature.
Brad R. Torgersen is an American science fiction author whose short stories regularly appear in various anthologies and magazines, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by American writer Greg Bear. It was first published in trade paperback by Pyr in December 2015.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2005 is an anthology of award-winning science fiction short works edited by American writer Jack Dann. It was first published in trade paperback by Roc/New American Library in March 2005.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by Catherine Asaro. It was first published in trade paperback by Pyr in May 2013.
A novella typically starts at about 20,000 words and tops out at 50,000, which is the minimum length for a short novel. There’s no mathematical exactness about this word range, but generally speaking, when a work falls a few thousand below 20,000 words, it’s a novelette, and when it falls under 7,000 words, it’s a short story. When it’s 50,000 and climbing, it’s a short novel, until it hits about 80,000 words, and then it’s a standard novel.
A novella typically starts at about 20,000 words and tops out at 50,000, which is the minimum length for a short novel. There’s no mathematical exactness about this word range, but generally speaking, when a work falls a few thousand below 20,000 words, it’s a novelette, and when it falls under 7,000 words, it’s a short story. When it’s 50,000 and climbing, it’s a short novel, until it hits about 80,000 words, and then it’s a standard novel.
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