How to write a novella

Author Freya Marske offers advice for the chronically verbose, in three not-so-simple steps.

(From an author who’s so far written 8 novels and 1.5 novellas, which should give you a fair idea of which of the two I tend more naturally towards.)

1) Weigh the ingredients

A short story can get away with simply exploring a concept, or with one thing happening to one really interesting character. A novel happens when the concept is the starting point, and the journey outwards from that point has a certain level of complexity—of plot, of breadth, of cast size, or some combination of these.

A novella is... something in between.

When I first had the idea for Cinder House, I knew at once that it was a novella. It had a decent conceptual hook – Cinderella, but she’s a ghost stuck in her father’s house – and the story would map loosely onto the existing fairy tale, which meant that there were fixed beats I could choose to follow, subvert, or ignore.

It wasn’t hefty enough to be a novel, unless I added serious amounts of plot unrelated to the Cinderella story. But it wanted to be more than just the inciting idea. Fairy tales tend to have very small casts and limited scope. This idea wanted to expand.

So: take your idea, or rather the bits and pieces that are hanging out together and kind of hinting that they might like to be combined into a delicious whole. Weigh them in your mind. Do you only have enough to make a quick, delicate concoction? Will you need a dense, decorated, multi-tiered monstrosity to contain them all? Or—the elusive in-between? (You can choose where to extend your metaphor here. A blueberry muffin?)

Outlining can help. If you’re a neurotic four-act planner like I am, then the first stage of a novella’s outline might look similar to a novel’s. What kicks off the action? (And for a novella, how early can you get away with it happening? In Cinder House, Ella dies in the first sentence and turns ghost in the second one. Boom! We’re off!) What twist or key event happens at the midpoint? What’s the book’s climax? And where does it end?

In a novella, the space between these key signposts will be smaller. To boil it right down: less stuff will happen in a novella.

Depending on your genre and favoured methodology, you might work with slightly different signposts, or indeed, go parkouring in anarchic glee across the landscape of structure. But I found it very comforting, when shifting into a new format, to carry over the bones of the process that had already served me well as a novel-writer.

2) Keep your eyes on the path

I was going to say ‘Now stop thinking so much about the size of things and just enjoy writing your first draft, and trim it in edits!’ – more on that below. But I think there’s at least one good piece of process advice I can give, especially for writers who prefer to discover the story as it comes out onto the page.

Try, try your very best, to keep within the bounds of the path that will lead you to the ending you want. Avoid the urge to step off and go gathering flowers, no matter how many wolves tell you they’ll add a nice touch to your finished product. (Sorry; I just finished a fairy tale retelling. It’s automatic.) You can always add flowers – subplots, extra characters, backstory, extraneous worldbuilding – in the next draft, if they seem to be missing. But if you’ve weighed your ingredients correctly, then following the main thread of story as it unfolds should leave you with a solid foundation that’s neither too short nor too long.

And look, I know: sometimes characters get mouthy or introspective. They want to start an argument or waffle on about their deepest darkest feelings. And you need good characters; you should listen to them, and sometimes let them waffle for a bit. But if you get the niggling sense that you’re veering into the weeds, look back at the map. Where’s your destination? Take your characters by the hand and head firmly in that direction.

3) Apply weedkiller

Honestly, this is my favourite part of the process. I complain about drafting and I detest structural edits, but I adore the final necessary stage for any verbose overwriter: going through and deleting stuff.

This is assuming that you, like me, took a few wilful detours to collect flowers. Or maybe just got very into describing the path you’re on. (Ironically, the novella I’m writing currently – also fairytale-ish, though not a retelling this time – involves a lot of descriptions of a flower-strewn path in a forest, 80% of which I will probably end up pouring weedkiller upon during edits.)

My revised draft of Cinder House was 3,000 words over the strict definition of a novella. So I picked up my spray bottle and went to work. I could write another whole essay on how to reduce your wordcount without sacrificing beauty or meaning, but I’ll just say: it helps to cultivate a gleefully violent enjoyment of the process.

And that’s it! Go forth, be ruthless, and enjoy.

Cinder House by Freya Marske is published by Tor (£16.99)

Interested in writing your own fairy tale retelling? Read these top tips.