Short fiction is a wordful format. Many writing classes for kids and college students exclusively study short stories because some of the greatest writers in history have focused on this specific medium. From James Baldwin to Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe to Ernest Hemingway, you could exclusively read short stories and not have enough time to read all the classics in your lifetime. 

Novellas are perhaps a slightly less popular short format because, well, what is a novella? Is it a novel that’s too short? A short story that’s too long? 

A novella is a story that falls between a short story and a novel. The Gotham Writers Workshop defines it as between 1,500 and 80,000 words. If you’re the kind of writer who prefers shorter formats but sometimes feel too boxed in by the short in short stories, you should consider branching out into novellas. 

Novellas Make a Great Series 

Even as a short format writer, it’s normal to want to move your characters through more than just one adventure. But it can be discouraging to feel like your plot is best suited for a shorter format but also feel like that one plot leaves you wanting more. 

While you could absolutely write an ongoing series of short stories with the same characters, novellas also work really well as a series. Think about Martha Wells’ smash hit series The Murderbot Diaries, which just got the TV treatment from Apple this year. The novella format gives Wells enough space to flesh out her far future science-fictional world, but the short format keeps her plotlines tight and the action propulsive; it's hard not to devour one installment after the other, all in one sitting. 

Genre series like science fiction and fantasy work really well in the novella format because the author needs more word count to set up the reality of the world, whether it’s magic systems or space travel. Mysteries are also fantastic novellas, as a certain detective from Baker Street proves. Short story mystery writers can use novellas to write a bigger installment with their sleuth character, usually when they’re handling a particularly dramatic case. 

Novellas Fill Out Story Collections

A short story collection is just that: a collection. That means the short stories should tie together in some way. There needs to be a reason they’re bound up in the same book as the others. And finishing a short story collection off with a novella is a fantastic way to really tie the thematic elements together. 

Consider Carmen Maria Machado’s now classic debut, the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. The short stories are all experimental, bending genres, sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, and sometimes devastating. The novella included in the collection, “Especially Heinous,” is a reality bending take on the infamously long-running TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that must be read to be believed. 

It makes absolute sense that a collection of weird fiction stories, where Machado plays with form and tone, would include a spectacular and strange take on something so culturally ubiquitous as Law & Order. The novella and stories make each other more cohesive by being included in the same collection.

Short Fiction Helps Build Career Momentum

It can feel frustrating for short story writers in today’s marketplace—most bestselling famous books are full-length novels. But short story writers also have a lot more options to get published other than a big publishing house. Literary publications, culture websites, and even famous magazines like The New Yorker publish short stories. 

Short story writers sometimes feel like it’s hard to get readers to give short stories a chance, despite their relative convenience and accessibility. But even if it can feel rough out there trying to get the general public to read short stories, everyone who cares about fiction knows the literary world is lost without its shorter formats. And it's those people who are well-placed to help you in your career. 

If you also write novels, it might actually be your shorter works that get you your agent, not a manuscript of a novel. Novellas are an especially good representation of your skills to an agent, as they show you can sustain a longer story but you also know how to cut the fat. And many publishers will publish novellas simply as shorter books, so it might be an easier sell to them than a debut short story collection.

The Story Knows What It Is

Regardless of whether you have any opinions about what kind of writer you think you are, your number one responsibility is to your story. How many words does it need to be fully realized on the page? Are you stretching things out to hit an arbitrary word count? Or are you smooshing details together so you can hit the limit set by the literary magazine you’re submitting to? 

As an author, you must allow your artistic expression to take up whatever amount of space it does or doesn’t need. Whatever label ends up on it afterward is always less important. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.