Novel, Novella, Or Novelette?

I’ve been exploring the real world of creating fake worlds – fiction. Like seeking fireflies at night, I dream of writing a book someday. I figure it should be short for starters, to increase my chances of completion (which in itself I’d consider success). But how short should it be?

Word Counts

While rummaging through websites about the writing craft, my eyes gazed at a sparkling headline: The Novella: Stepping stone to success or waste of time? Talk about hive-mind. It’s like the web knew what I was thinking!

The beginning of the lengthy piece is the best explanation I’ve found distinguishing different fiction book lengths, like Large, Medium, Small, and Fun Size!

“A novella typically starts at about 20,000 words and tops out at 50,000, which is the minimum length for a short novel.”

The first thing that came to my mind was NaNoWriMo with its 30-day blitz to 50,000 words. You can author a novella in a month!

Here’s the breakdown of book lengths:

• Standard Novel – 80,000+ words
• Short Novel – 50,000 to 80,000 words
• Novella – 20,000 to 50,000 words
• Novelette – 7,000 to 20,000 words
• Short Story – up to 7,000 words

The word counts above are general ranges. But, at long last, it’s nice to know. Only recently did I ever hear the term, “Novelette.” I wondered what that was. There’s so much about the writing world I’m ignorant of. So I keep reading up.

Weighing Words

For me, the measure of word count versus page count makes the prospect of authoring a book more feasible. It sets a target to aim at.

When I write blog posts in Google Docs, for example, I check my word count at the end of my first draft to see how verbose I was. I shoot for an average of 500 to 1,000 words a post. Then my inner editor unleashes word-wrath! I get to be my own Grammar Police.

Words count, so check word counts. Speak little, say much. Be brief, concise, succinct, simple. It’s challenging.

That said, I’m out.

Did you know the length of a Novella?