Writing the Novella

This course concentrates on the craft of writing a form of fiction that combines the precision of the short story with the more expansive narrative ambitions of the novel. Typically, between 15,000-40,000 words, the novella offers writers the opportunity to create an extended story that nonetheless maintains its focus on a limited number of characters with relatively few subplots. Thus, an understanding of scope is essential to both writing and studying novellas. Like novels and short stories, novellas are one of the primary genres of fiction; as such the novella form can be utilized to tell stories in any number of subgenres, from Southern Gothic to Science Fiction. Because of their focus and relative brevity, novellas are also widely considered the perfect form for adaptation to the stage, film, and television.