Hello. I haven't posted here in a while as I've been working on my novella and decided not to put every chapter on the critique section. How is everyone doing in these troubling times? If anyone followed my original planning and conception, this is a kind of portal fantasy in which a man tries to find his brother, with the help of a friend, within a fantastical world shaped by the lost brother's melancholy imaginings. Something that's causing some negative thoughts about my latest project is that I seem to have written a novella--I'm more than halfway through--that feels more like a novel. That's not a good thing, I don't think. There's only a handful of characters and I've purposefully tried to make the world building vague and undefined so as to give it a dreamlike quality, but the amount of events and places that feature are perhaps too much. I know there are no real rules in writing and people can write as they wish, but I find myself doubting the structure of the work. In sixty pages or so I've covered two short chapters in the real world, two in a magical forest, one in a city, and one, which I'm currently writing, is situated in highland pinewoods. There is a definite and natural progression from each of these places, but I'm afraid this feels like too much for a novella. Furthermore, a wasteland then a mountain scene will be the climax for the story in the last few chapters. I suppose my worry has come about from reading several novellas recently which focus on just one or two settings and they're very small scale and domestic in comparison with what I seem to have made. It was always my intention to feature multiple landscapes, but the concept seems more fitted for a novel. It's my hope, however, that my deliberate reduction of names and general "lore" in this fantasy work counteracts the variety of places. Hm. I suppose you have works like The House on the Borderland which cover quite a lot in terms of event, space and time.
Hi, I'm new to the forum so this is my first answer, but I just wanted to stop by and tell you that your idea sounds really intriguing and I would love to read it one day. If you can send me a link to the sample chapters you mention in your post, I will take a look at them. I feel like I often struggle with what you're dealing with which is that we want to write so much in so little a space and often just end up overwriting. Believe me, I'm guilty of this. I have a novel-in-progress that's nearing 600 pages and probably only halfway done and I know I'm going to have to massacre many things before it becomes something an editor will even look at. To answer your question about whether it's too much, I think you already know the answer and you're here asking us to change your mind. I'm not going to do that. 60 pages in 6 chapters are already burgeoning the realm of the novel. Novellas usually contain shorter chapters and peak out at about 40,000-50,000 words. If you've overshot that mark then just commit to the novel and write your heart out. From what you've described here, this is something that deserves more time and space than a novella. Good luck!
Thanks, Blotta. I appreciate the response. I definitely think the idea could be expanded out to a novel, but I was specifically writing a novella so as to give myself a more achievable goal and, if I'm honest, provide an easier read for potential publishers and beta readers. I've written so much personal work for so long that I really want to get something finally "out there", but I think a novel will slow that process down. I suppose I just worry about time a lot. I am, however, only 27... I'll probably finish it, by which time it'll be a short novel, then I'll see if I can market it as such or expand it to a work of around 200-300 pages long or so, whatever's necessary. Oh, and my first two chapters can be found on my post history entitled something like The Inward Gate - Chapter 1 & 2. These first two chapters don't show much of the fantastical aspect though. The story is something like a cross between Mythago Wood (Holdstock), The Wildwood (de Lint), and, in some respects, Alice in Wonderland. It features a giant King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, a four-tongued creature that eats trees, and a band of travelling knights who hail from a city of once-living statues, among other curious conceptions.
Dude, tell the story you need to tell. Let it grow and become what it wants, and then let the end result speak for itself. There's no particular reason to go for a novella instead of a novel.
