Novellas

The Old Man and the Sea, The Red Badge of Courage, The Turn of the Screw, The Red Pony—and many a mod­ern nov­el for young peo­ple—share the same thing: they are all novel­las. The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary pro­vides a rea­son­able (if per­plex­ing) def­i­n­i­tion of a novel­la as “a short nov­el, a long short story.”

From an adult prospec­tive, they can usu­al­ly be read in one sit­ting. Young read­ers can, and do read them that way too. When read is this fash­ion they can, and are meant to, pro­vide a sin­gu­lar­ly strong read­ing expe­ri­ence. The merg­ing of a few hours read with com­plete­ness is, I think, unique.

But it’s not gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized for the spe­cial form it is.

Speak­ing for myself, noth­ing gives me more plea­sure than set­tling into my read­ing chair and emerg­ing a few hours lat­er with a total tale that has held my read­ing atten­tion throughout—while bring­ing me to a strong, emo­tion­al con­clu­sion. When effec­tive, a good novel­la will have you think­ing about it for a longer time than it took you to read the book.

For young readers—though not nec­es­sar­i­ly a quick read—novellas are such that they do not go on (from a youth­ful prospec­tive) for­ev­er. Of course, long books—Harry Pot­ter, The Lord of the Rings—pro­vide their own kind of pleasures.

When brows­ing a library or book store, I actu­al­ly look for a slim vol­ume that tells me I’ve come across a novel­la. I like to have them a ready read­ing supply.

In fact, the novel­la is a favorite lit­er­ary form for me, both as a read­er and as a writer. Books of mine, The Fight­ing Ground, The Christ­mas Rat, The Barn, and the forth­com­ing The But­ton War fit this kind of writing.

From the writ­ing point of view, the novel­la offers spe­cif­ic chal­lenges. They need to be pow­er­ful, emo­tion­al­ly charged, even as the char­ac­ters emerge as ful­ly devel­oped, with only just enough detail of time and space to give a dis­tinct real­i­ty. They can fit in the mind of writer and read­er-as a whole, and thus need to be care­ful­ly craft­ed and then care­ful­ly read.

One of the high­est com­pli­ments I, as a writer, can receive is when a read­er tells me: “I had to read your book in one sitting.”

Novel­las can do that.