Novella Writing
Back on the 23rd of July I blogged about a new sci-fi novella that I fell into writing. By that I mean that I had only planned on writing the synopsis, but before I knew it I was five chapters in. I continued writing the novella sporadically, then I stopped writing for all of September. I stopped partially because I was working on flash fiction and translations, but those reasons are really excuses. I really stopped because the novella was threatening to get into novel territory, when I really wanted to write a single themed novella with a couple of companion short.
I love all kinds of writing, be it a 100-word piece of flash fiction or a 100,000-word novel. But I think that the novella is my personal sweet spot. I wrote about this before. The novella rarely manages to get time in the literary spotlight, but I’m quite convinced it can be the best form of fiction if the author is focused on a few characters and a single, underlying theme.
Word count gave me a strange form of writer’s block. Because I was focusing on trying to keep the story to novella length, I struggled to keep it trim and I stopped writing. I couldn’t figure out how to manage a time jump in the story without writing chapter upon chapter to successfully weave it in. A week ago I got back to writing the novella, and yesterday I think I figured out how to manage the time jump smoothly without adding another 30,000 words.
The sci-fi novella now has a name: Dwellers. It’s going to be a long novella, probably a short novel, but still focused on the underlying theme of the protagonist dealing with his racist and ableist views while trapped on a virtually uninhabited world. This will be the first instalment of the chronicles of the Confederation of Nations.