Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
Count On It!
As any number of unsolicited spam messages will assure you, length does matter. When it comes to writing, that means word count. Exactly how long your story is definitely slots your creative product.
Naturally, I have a problem with this …
Here’s the thing. I run the Reality Fiction Contests in good faith with my characters, promising the winner a book of their own as the grand prize. In both Contests to date, I had no idea who the winner was going to be right up to the last Episode in Series One, and the second last Episode in RealFic Too. So it’s not like I’ve got a master plan about what comes next.
Which came back to bite me the first time around when the winner of the first contest rejected her prize. I had to write another whole novel entirely to get around that one. (The Twitchy Gal, appearing on the Reality Fiction site later this year.) Fortunately, the winner of Reality Fiction Too, to be revealed in May, was much more agreeable. I was able to turn out a story featuring that character without any hitch. That story will run after the complete posting of the current Contest.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that story looks as if it’s going to be about 54,000 words in length. I just promise the winner a book, I don’t specify that it has to be a novel. So I figured, okay, here’s the first prize novella this time around. A much thinner book than the 300,000 plus word actual Contest.
To make certain of my terms, I looked up the accepted word length for a novella. There is no absolute rule. But the generally accepted criteria allow for anywhere from 7,500 words to 40,000 words.
As an interesting sidelight, that means Episodes One, Thirteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Eighteen, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Four, and Twenty-Five of Reality Fiction Too! were all secretly novellas.
But the winner’s book is 54,000 words long.
Great! I thought. I wrote the character a novel after all! So I checked up on the accepted word length for a novel …
Not less than 70,000 words.
You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see the problem here. A 54,000 word story is too long to be called a novella, but still too short to be a novel! So what the hell is it?
A novelette, perhaps? No such word. So what do you call a story in the 40,001 to 69,999 word range!!
Was I going to have to make up a word? I explored some possibilities. A short novel — therefore a shovel? A half novel! Or a hovel? How about slightly less than a novel? A slovel.
It wasn’t working for me. Although I do kind of like the idea of a novelletta.
Left in doubt, I did what every modern writer does when he doesn’t consider a subject worthy of genuine research. I consulted Wikipedia. Finding conflicting views, of course, but this entry does give me a sort of solace.
“Novelist Jane Smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. (Duh! You think? Sorry — authorial intrusion.) However, novels can vary tremendously in length; Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words, while National Novel Writing Month requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. (National Novel Writing Month?) There are no firm rules: for example the boundary between a novella and a novel is arbitrary and a literary work may be difficult to categorise. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by sub-genre; many chapter books for children start at a length of about 16,000 words, and a typical mystery novel might be in the 60,000 to 80,000 word range while a thriller could be over 100,000 words.
“The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories:
Classification Word count
Novel over 40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story under 7,500 words”
I double checked the Dictionary. Novelette, while a Nebula Category, still isn’t a word.
Now the problem with this perception of things is that any and every publisher’s website you check out will insist upon a novel being at least 70,000 if not 80,000 words long. So it doesn’t matter therefore if I decree my 54,000 word opus to be a novel or not, no publisher is going to take it seriously as such.
So I might as well call it what I want to and do with it what I want to anyway.
Coming in June! The New John H. Baillie Novelletta, Thirty-One Across! Look for it on a blog near you.
*******
REALITY FICTION UPDATE!
And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?
Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.
But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...
What’s happening now?
Scinti and Ponytail’s wedding wraps up on Friday! A unique interlude in the Reality Fiction mythos, featuring more characters than even the author can count. And don’t miss the Ptolemy Ptrio appearing all together again for the first time in RealFic history! All four of ‘em!
Continuing Friday at: realficone.blogspot.ca
REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE
EPISODE TWENTY-ONE: THE WEDDING
Dearly, Beloved
EPISODE TWENTY: EXISTENTIALISM
Face the Hangman
EPISODE NINETEEN: ABDUCTION
Abduction/Apperception
EPISODE EIGHTEEN: MELODRAMA
“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”
EPISODE SEVENTEEN: POETRY
“landescapes”
EPISODE SIXTEEN: SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)
“Diet Ray of the Stars!”
EPISODE FIFTEEN: EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE
“The Shadow of Her Passion”
EPISODE FOURTEEN: FLYING:
“Sky Calling”
EPISODE THIRTEEN: SLAPSTICK:
“The Phantom of the Werewolf”
EPISODE TWELVE: DAIRY FARMING:
“Early One Morning”
EPISODE ELEVEN: BURROUGHS:
“Chapter Nine”
EPISODE TEN: WEREWOLVES:
“The Silver Solution”
EPISODE NINE: WRESTLING:
“Suckerslam XIV”
EPISODE EIGHT: JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:
“The Proud and the Senseless”
EPISODE SEVEN: THE JAZZ AGE:
“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”
EPISODE SIX: SUBMISSION:
“Re-Org”
EPISODE FIVE: MASQUERADE:
“The Eyes Behind the Mask”
EPISODE FOUR: SELF HELP:
“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:
Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”
EPISODE THREE: NUDIST:
“If You Have To Ask ...”
EPISODE TWO: FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:
“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”
EPISODE ONE: STEAMPUNK:
“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”
A J.H.B. Original!
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