I’ve had a handful of emails related to writing in this last week or two, and I thought I’d answer a couple of them here as well as in email for others who might be interested. I figure if one person is wondering, others might be too! If something helps and you’d like me to do more Q&A posts, please let me know. Comments of any kind are always welcome.
Wilson asks, “I’m putting some final touches on my first longer length work, a fantasy novella, first of a planned series. Any input or suggestions on the length? It runs around 150-160 pages right now, and I’m curious if I should forge ahead and turn it into a full-length novel, or if a series of shorter novellas will work as my first releases. Any thoughts?”
With ebooks, there aren’t any rules on length, and we’re seeing a resurgence in the long-shunned novella (it wasn’t economical to publish them before — they were too long for magazines and too short for mass market paperbacks). From an author’s point of view, the novellas are appealing since they can be written and edited more quickly than novels, and it’s also a way to keep your name out there and publish more regularly.
Personally, I’ve found that readers tend to like novels best (at least that’s what mine have told me), but I’m seeing more and more novellas in the Kindle Store (and some of them are selling very well too — Hugh Howey’s uber-seller, Wool, is a collection of novellas). If readers enjoy your work, they’re often happy to get your stories in whatever format you’re willing to write, so long as they’re priced appropriately (i.e. you might do something like 99 cents for a short story, 2.99 for a novella, and 4.99 for a novel).
I have short stories, novels, and a series of novellas out there. I think a series has power in any format. It allows you to play around with low or free pricing on the first one (wait until you have more out to worry about this), in the hopes that folks will be drawn in and want to read the others. Also, once readers become attached to a theme or set of characters, they’re more likely to buy the next one than if you write something totally different.
As for which would be better for you to write, my advice would be to tell the story you want to tell and not worry about word count. When it’s done and you’re satisfied, you can check the word count and see whether it falls into the novella (about 17,500 to 40,000 words) or novel length and then market and price accordingly. What you want to avoid is adding filler or padding the story to increase the word count. Your first instincts are often best when it comes to pacing, and readers will call you out if you’ve got extra scenes that don’t move the story forward or aren’t critical to the plot!
Claire and a couple of other folks have asked (I’m paraphrasing)… I have trouble sticking with a novel long enough to finish. How do you get past that? What happens if you’re half way through and realize your story isn’t good enough? Or you think of a new idea that’s more promising? Do you plan everything out ahead of time or do you wing it?
I always had trouble finishing stories when I got started too. I used to write 1/3rd or 1/2 of a novel, then stop working on it for a while, and somehow I never made my way back to it. Two things that helped me were to make sure I was writing about characters that were fun for me (as you can probably guess, I enjoy doing the dialogue and having the guys crack jokes), and also to force myself to keep going, even if I thought the story had started to suck. A lot of times when I went back and read what I’d written later on, I’d realized it had turned out better than I thought. And of course there’s always editing to fix the clunky stuff. If you make yourself finish projects, you eventually get into the habit of completing things, and it gets to be a lot easier.
A writing quote from Elmore Leonard that helped me was, “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” I realized you don’t have to write the boring travel scenes or sections designed to get the characters from Point A to Point B. If you write in scenes, you can simply put in a scene break and start up again when the next important (and interesting) thing happens in the story.
As for planning, I used to just wing it, and I think that’s one of the reasons I didn’t finish things. I’d get to a certain point and not know what should happen next, so I’d wander off until I “got inspired.” (Usually that meant I started something new and forgot about the first story.) Now I do an outline before I get started, usually a basic run down of the major plot points. I often end up deviating when I’m actually writing, but I find I’m much less likely to get stuck if I know how the story is going to end before I start writing.
I feel like writing and planning are sometimes strange bedfellows, at least in terms of how they relate to the rest of your life. For me anyway, I would generally consider myself to be a very structured, organized person–in other words, the kind of person who you would expect to make detailed outlines, do tons of advance planning, etc. when it comes to writing. But the funny thing is that I’ve realized that I’m a total pantser as a writer. I do like to think about the story ahead of time and have kind of a rough roadmap laid out in my head of where the story is going, but then I just sit down and start writing and let the creative side of the brain take over.
Hmm . . . I wonder if that’s the explanation right there? Because regardless of whether you’re doing extensive planning first or writing by the seat of your pants, your best work will emerge when you are tapping into that creative voice, that white-hot heat. So my advice to writers would be to find that white-hot heat and run with it, even if it turns out that you end up using a different writing method than you might have expected.
I know there are writers in both camps, so it’s definitely about figuring out what works best for you. Sometimes it changes over time too. That’s definitely been the case for me!
Each novel I write requires different amounts of outlining, but in general I plot less ahead of time the more I write. I could never finish a novel until I finally wrote out a plotline. I’ve done some extremely detailed plotting, but now I just write up a general page or two of synopsis hitting the highlights.
And speaking of changing over time, the thriller novel that I’m writing now has been totally different than the fantasy one. I tried to write it by the seat of my pants and ended up stuck repeatedly, likely due to the larger number of plot threads and POV characters that are involved. I’ve had to take a step back a couple of times now to get everything back in order. It’s been enough of a drag that I’m actually planning to do more outlining at the start of the next novel and see how that goes.
So question? How do you handle the publishing and selling of the hard copies of your books? Do you use Amazon or another company? I cannot decide what to do about print copies and I want to have them as well.
I use Create Space, and another popular outfit amongst self-publishers (and many small presses for that matter) is Lightning Source. They’re print-on-demand publishers, they’ll get you into the major online stores, and they’re both relatively inexpensive for setup.
Other way ’round for me. Planning takes all the juice out. I write best when I realize it’s okay not to know what’s happening & set out to do whatever I–as I experience the story, as it unfolds on the page–find most interesting in the moment of creation. Eventually a resolution presents itself. Just last week, during my “Weekly Challenge” story (I publish ’em on Wednesdays), I deliberately tried to write myself into a corner. Didn’t work, but it was a lot of fun to try.
Boring stuff to read is also boring to write, so I don’t do a lot of it. Sometimes I do have to go cut out lazy-bits, though. We all have off days.
Also I’m ruthless about using the keyword “blah” to put in notes to myself where I realize I could do some research or I’m creating an inconsistency. After a totally uncertain number of “blah” notes I occasionally start to feel stuck/foolish, so I go back & fix ’em. And then get back on the horse. But I try to go all the way to the end.
This is much faster than any sort of planning, which I see as a synonym for slacking. For me. YMMV etc.
It’s definitely different for different writers. I only spend about two hours outlining a novel and figuring out the major plot points and end up with something 2-3 pages long, basically a roadmap for the manuscript. This keeps me from getting stuck along the way, which saves me legions of time. 😀
For me the joy of discovery comes in writing the dialogue and the moments of character interaction. The plot is just a device through which I get to explore the lives and relationships of these characters. Aside from noting general themes, I don’t plan any of that stuff ahead of time.
I also find that having an outline to go back to really helps out when you get stuck, or get to that 1/2 or 1/3 of the way point. Taking a break from the manuscript to work on something else is also something I try to do a lot of; you just get sick of the same piece of work after awhile.
Excellent article, as always, Lindsay!
Regarding the novel vs. novella question: Mark Coker (founder and CEO of Smashwords) often mentions the greater commercial viability of longer titles. He’s done several surveys that have shown the best selling titles on Smashwords are usually long, even by novel standards (115K+ words), and he actively warns writers away from trying to break novels into multi-part releases, like a series of novellas or episodes.
But I’m with you, Lindsay. I recently finished a first draft of a book that I thought would be a single novel, but it turned out to work better as a series of novellas. I read Coker’s words and fretted over whether I should try to make the book into a more pure novel, but in the end I’ve decided to release the story in the form that serves it best–so a series of novellas it is.
I read that post too. I Bring the Fire Parts I-III could almost be published in one giant eBook, but I really couldn’t see people taking a chance on 600 page novel of a self-published unknown author.
I believe novels sell best, too, but if you can write four novellas that sell half as well in the time it’d take to write that 120K novel… well, you’re ahead of the curve then. 😉
Of course there’s no way to tell how the numbers will fall until the novels and novellas are actually out there. The nice thing about e-publishing, though, is that we have the opportunity to explore the style that appeals to us. I love novels at heart, but I’ve run into writers who prefer short stories and others that adore publishing serials.
I like Mark Coker, but the data he uses on that post is extraordinarily flawed, I think. And keep in mind, his data does not reflect on what works at the biggest player in the market, Amazon. I won’t break it all down, no time, but of the data presented, if you take out the biggest sellers and focus on the next tier, you will see a different picture.
I think he was only looking at the romance genre, too, wasn’t he? It seems like I remember him gathering that information for a romance writers convention, but maybe that’s my imagination.
Can you really charge $2.99 for a novella? I have a short little 32K word story to release soon. I thought I couldn’t get more than $1.99 for it. Would love to get the 70% royalty.
Well, Dean Wesley Smith would have us charging $2.99 for short stories. 😀
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=7891
I like to do more affordable prices for readers, but I think 2.99 is fair for a meaty novella. My second Flash Gold story is $1.79 IIRC and is around 23K words. My third FG novella is over 40k and I went with 2.99. I’d probably try to get 2.99 for anything over 30k, because the lower royalty rate is tough to stomach for something that takes quite a bit more work to write (and costs more to have edited) than a short story.
Personally, excluding short stories and first books in a series, I charge $2.99 for anything of novelette length 7500-17500 words. If I had any novellas, I’d charge $3.99 or $4.99 based on length, and my novels are $5.99. Honestly, my one novelette sells just as well (poorly) at $.99 or $2.99 on Amazon where it will apparently never price match. Everywhere else it’s a free lead in story to a loosely related series.
Thanks for the answer, Lindsay! What you said makes a lot of sense, and of course a story will only be as long as it needs to be.
In my case, I discovered, after last year’s NaNo project (which started out as a fun project), that I had a ready-made series, with two novellas already basically written. I planned a short story as a sort of prequel, and then discovered that it wasn’t a short story at all by the time the story was finished 35,000 words later. 🙂
I am so glad I ran across this blog entry. It makes me feel SO much better about my 2-3 month hiatus after getting so close to finishing the first drafts of several projects. I just plain ran out of steam. This entry gives me courage to start again today, now that I don’t feel like such a quitter.
My evil writing instructor said most authors have at least one WIP 1/3 to 1/2 of the way done that they never return to, because the middle of a novel is the hardest part. I have no unfinished works so far (not counting a dozen or so idea files for novels that are at most a premise, back story, and a few scenes), but I haven’t started anything longer than a short story without an outline. It’s always a very flexible outline and often, the final version’s last half bears little resemblance to the original plan. I’ve never had an ending until I’m 90% finished.
Even so, I’ve gotten stuck. To make sure I keep going, I work with a plot beta reader. She starts reading when I’m about 1/4 of the way in, then if I get stuck, I talk to her on FB chat. She coaches me and encourages me to keep going, and if I procrastinate, she starts asking when she’s going to see chapters again. My current plot beta doesn’t write, but is an avid reader, but some authors use writing partners for this role, and plot beta for each other. Writer plot betas can offer suggestions on story ideas that you can use as springboards for your own.
A couple of my friends have part novels, and I suspect it’s more about their high standards than anything else, as half the reason they’re unfinished is either they feel the first part is no good and needs a rewrite, or they can’t think of anything as good as the first part. Sometimes you just need to do a brain dump of everything, good and bad–get it on paper! Then perhaps all that not-so-great second half just needs some fine-tuning.
When I started writing fiction, I wrote the scenes that were easiest to write first, then filled in, rather than approaching the story in a linear fashion. I had an outline, but it was not carved in stone. If later, the scenes seem wrong, you can cut them out (save in case they fit future writing!), rewrite the brilliant bits into another scene, move them around each other, etc. Writing the bridging can be hard, because it’s not that creative, but you learn. It’s not for everyone, but it may be a solution for some.
I just wrote my first “seat of the pants” work, and it was a short story. I found that for every one very productive writing day, I had two days in between where I didn’t touch it while I pondered the next scene. The story came easily then, and I wrote other things in between. That’s probably why writers love their blogs!
Obviously, one size doesn’t fit all, even for one novelist! I listen to how others work and may not think it’s best for me now, but it may be the exact solution on a future novel.