Qala/Tes

Qala the Pirate Queen appears in four of my (Stephen Brooke’s) fantasy novels. She was introduced as a secondary character in ‘The Eyes of the Wind,’ in which she is still the leader of the pirates. ‘The Crocodile’s Son’ and ‘The Crocodile God’ chronicle her adventures in retirement as a member of the landed gentry (and the mother of a demigod). We turn to her childhood as a refugee in the decaying city of Tesra in ‘The City and the Sword,’ when she was known as Lellie. Later she took the name of the city as her own, becoming Tes the pirate captain before rising to the position of queen.

 

It is as Tes she appears in the novella ‘Storm Stone,’ to be released in about a month (June 28). This is a tale of her days as a young pirate on her way to the top. All the books are available in print or as free ebooks at arachispress.com

The Short and the Long

More of my novels fall into the sixty to seventy thousand word range than any other. That is my personal sweet spot, I suppose. I am well aware publishers (these days) prefer a bit more length than that. I am also aware that many classic novels fall into that same range — or shorter. Some even slip into what some define as novella length.

I do not consider any of my stories to be novellas, at least as published. ‘Donzalo’s Destiny’ is, admittedly, divided into novella-length parts that are somewhat self-standing, though making up an overall story. My shortest novel otherwise is around forty-three thousand words; definitely above the novella cut-off.

Though a novella is, essentially, just a short novel — unlike a novelette, which could be considered a long short story. The border between the two is nebulous; by word count, somewhere around the fifteen to twenty thousand point. Depending just on numbers, however, is a mistake. The two feel different. The novella will be more complex in plot and character.

I just finished a story of some seventeen thousand and four hundred words. I consider it a novelette. There are two fairly straightforward plot elements intertwined and little more. Yes, I threw in some brief words toward a subplot romance but they are not at all essential to the narrative. Nor is any character other than the narrator really explored in any depth.

Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ is one of the great novelettes, at a little over fourteen thousand words. Again, essentially two plots — or one plot, as seen by two main characters. The conflict between their views of things pretty much makes the story. Everyone else who appears is not explored beyond their contribution to that story; we don’t know much of who they are, otherwise. Not even the guide, really, who is the strongest character beyond the two leads. His subplot is definitely subordinate to theirs. He could be discarded without changing the overall plot.

What am I likely to do with my own newly-minted novelette? Haven’t the slightest idea. It is set in the universe of my Jack Mack science fiction novels (written under the Oliver Davis Pike pen name), perhaps five or six years after the events in the one most recently published. I could just offer it as a stand-alone freebie. I could write another — or two — and put them together to create a longer book. Maybe both.

Either way, I should probably get to writing on something else.

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Incidentally, the movie of ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ is one of the few that truly does credit to its source material. Definitely recommended (and I’m generally not much of movie fan at all).

Also (not so incidentally), I put together a PDF ebook of Kipling’s novelette than can be downloaded for free at Arachis Press (arachispress.com). Or one can obtain a free epub from Project Gutenberg.

Novel-whatzit

I have never written a novelette. ‘So what?’ some might ask, or even, ‘What the heck is a novelette?’

A novelette is, in essence, a long short story. Any attempt to give an exact measurement of its length will be arbitrary but typically the form is considered to be over 7,500 words up to somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000. If one goes higher, it is likely to be a novella—that is, a short novel.

At this point, the longest short story I’ve ever written stands at 5,100 words. It is always possible I’ll turn out something longer one of these days. There isn’t as much of a market for the novelette as there is for work both longer and shorter, but it was a popular form at one time. Some of the great golden age speculative fiction came as novelettes, some of the best known stories of Howard and Lovecraft.

And the novelette has had its mainstream popularity. Some of Alice Monroe’s stories fit the category. Oh, there are undoubtedly loads I could list if I felt like researching!

Why do I define the novelette as a sort of short story? Because it typically has the same sort of focus on a single plot line. It comes from the same mindset; I much suspect that most who sat down and wrote a novelette were thinking ‘short story’ when they started. It grew to whatever length was needed to tell the story.

I will mention that one of my personal favorites is ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ by Rudyard Kipling, weighing in at a bit over 14,000 words—near the top limit. In honesty, it sometimes feels more like a novella, but the narrative is kept just sufficiently focused to justify the novelette name. It really is the sort of story that could have been inflated into a novel, had Kipling been so inclined. I am glad he wasn’t; I do not think it would have the same impact.

You, of course, are free to call it what you wish. So, you ask me now, ‘What is a novella?’ It is simply a short novel. How short is, again, arbitrary. It starts where the novelette lets off, down around 15 to 20,000 words and goes up to, traditionally, 35,000 or 40,000 words. I prefer the lower number, but some now set it higher, at 50,000.

Not so long ago 50,000 was regarded as a perfectly good length for a novel. And there is more than one bloated contemporary novel that might benefit from being cut back to something like that size.

Enough of my curmudgeonly opinions. I have written novellas (and I am not counting those novels that run between 40 and 50,000 words). The first section of my Donzalo’s Destiny is a self-standing novella of some 21,400 words. I added ten more sections to finish the epic, some more self-contained than others but each with its own unique arc.

A true stand alone novella is not something for which I have any plans. But then, plans do change and new ideas do come along.

I could name a bunch of famous novellas here. A few, anyway, such as ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ ‘A Christmas Carol,’ or ‘Of Mice and Men.’ All fitted to the story that needed to be told and none the worse for being shorter than what some would consider a proper length for a novel.

Indeed, maybe the better for it.

Although I have a handful of published short stories, my focus tends to be on longer form fiction. My short stories, admittedly, have had a tendency to morph into chapters in novels. But I continue to dabble at them and could even turn out one of those in-between novelette/novella works one of these days. As always, the material will dictate the final form.