Novella

I had to post how very stoked I am to have my new novella totally preplanned thanks to the wonderful things I’m learning in the writing course How To Think Sideways by Holly Lisle.

This lady is so the real thing, and unbelievably generous in sharing what she has learned over the years as the writer of 32 published novels.  Wow!  Although it’s not a one-to-one thing, I feel very personally mentored.  And excited!

What’s the new novella you ask?  Well, some of you will remember back when I called down lightning (Lesson Three)  and got several story ideas generated.  One of them had to do with a belly dancer and some trans-dimensional slavers, and, oh yes, a social revolution.  That’s the one.  I thought about making it novel-sized, but there are some very specific things I want to write about with this one, without any distraction.  I was heartened to read the following at ONFICTION.ca

Whereas often a short story is about being on an edge, a novel usually allows us to become immersed in a world so that it becomes normal to us. The novella is distinct from these forms in that, although it allows the same kind of immersion as the novel, it is not about a variegated world, but a world in which a psychological issue is singled out, with other aspects pared away.

Often listed among famous novellas in chronological order are Aphra Behn’s (1688) Oroonoko, Charles Dickens’s (1843) A Christmas Carol, Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1886) Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kate Chopin’s (1899) The Awakening, Anton Chekhov’s (1900) In the ravine, Joseph Conrad’s (1902) Heart of darkness, Thomas Mann’s (1913) Death in Venice, Franz Kafka’s (1915) Metamorphosis, Ernest Hemingway’s (1952) The old man and the sea, George Orwell’s (1945) Animal Farm, Muriel Spark’s (1962) The prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

…The theme in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is: What would it be if we were each divided into a socially responsible part and a socially irresponsible part? In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness, the theme is: Are civilized manners and behaviour merely a thin veneer?

So novellas are telling a story (the above include many styles) but they are each centered around a theme.  I’ve often said I like stories just to be stories, but the truth is, my favourites are ones that matter, that have touched on something significant.  This is the realm of theme.

Imagine my relief at reading this article and discovering that the length of story I want to tell is actually ’supposed to’ be centered on a single theme!  I haven’t put my theme into a slick question form yet, but it could be: To what extent is personal freedom a chosen state of mind? I’ll work on it some more and keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.