Happy Thursday my fellow writers. I’m a day late, so forgive me. I just finished up edits for Secrets of Jenkins Bridge which is a novel at over 50K words. And all I could think was how long it took me to go through the editing process on this one compared to my novella, The Swan Cove Murders. I’m beginning to believe my forte is leaning more toward writing novellas than a full novel.
When writing a novel, granted, there are more pages to write about the settings, descriptions, and more time to develop the characters, both primary and secondary, over the time period of the story. But, there are also more pages to edit overall, possibly more subplots that need tying up at the end of the story, etc.
When writing a novella, it is more fast paced therefore I can’t drone on about the sun setting or the leaves changing colors or anything else. I have to get straight to the nitty gritty and stay that way throughout the entire story. But, for me, this makes it easier for me to ensure there aren’t a lot of loose ends, or secondary characters that aren’t working out for the story, and truly, I can’t put more than a couple of secondary characters in this type of story. Again, time and page restraints.
There are authors who like writing the full length novel, but I’m finding it may not be for me. Or maybe it was just this one (my baby) that was tough. I think in the future I’ll write another full length novel and see how it goes, but for now, I’ll be writing a few novellas.
Which do you prefer writing, the novel or novella? Which do you prefer reading?
I'm over at Kindle Paranormal Authors today.Stop by for a visit.
I'm over at Kindle Paranormal Authors today.Stop by for a visit.
AVAILABLE NOW @ Soul Mate Publishing: The Swan Cove Murders Release Date coming soon: Secrets of Jenkins Bridge
A day late is all right!
ReplyDeleteI've never written a novella, although my novels tend to be short. Maybe I should try one?
I think you should. Like a 3 book series:)
DeleteMe gusta alernar los dos tipos, al igual que alterno los géneros. Lo que si he notado es que el 80% de lo que leo está escrito por mujeres, y es algo no predeterminado. Saludos.
ReplyDeleteAlernar I like both types, as well as alternative genres. What if I've noticed is that 80% of what I read is written by women, and it's not default. Greetings.
ReplyDeleteMine's actually close to 50/50.
DeleteI should try to write a novella. I'm so bad with description. I might excel at that.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you made it through your edits.
HMG
I've written both, although only my novels are published. If I ever step back into fiction again, I have an idea for a set of four novellas.
ReplyDeleteI thought I wanted to write novels, but everything is coming out at around 40k :-)
ReplyDeletei would so love to be a writer. I prefer to read novels since I love lengthy descriptions, however I'm not sure I could manage to write such a lot! But then again, maybe I'd feel trapped in a novella and want to have more space to write. Who knows!
ReplyDeleteNikki – inspire nordic