{"id":5530,"date":"2011-07-20T16:13:41","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T22:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=5530"},"modified":"2011-07-20T16:13:41","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T22:13:41","slug":"sholpan-or-the-great-novella-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/sholpan-or-the-great-novella-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Sholpan, or The Great Novella Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So now that I&#8217;m finished with <em>Desert Stars<\/em>, the next project I&#8217;m working on is a companion novella to <em>Bringing Stella Home <\/em>titled <em>Sholpan.<\/em>\u00a0 While <em>Bringing Stella Home\u00a0<\/em>is about James and his quest to rescue his brother and sister, <em>Sholpan<\/em>\u00a0is entirely from Stella&#8217;s point of view and traces her rise in Hameji society, from prisoner and slave to&#8230;well, I won&#8217;t ruin it for you.<\/p>\n<p>I started writing it on Monday, and so far it&#8217;s been a lot of fun. \u00a0In some ways, it&#8217;s kind of a break for me, since I already know the story (most of the material is lifted straight from <em>Bringing Stella Home<\/em>, with a few extra changes to make the viewpoint tighter and build more character development).<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, though, it&#8217;s a challenge because I&#8217;ve never written in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Novella\" target=\"_blank\">novella<\/a> format before. \u00a0The definition\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/archive\/awards\/faq.htm#6\" target=\"_blank\">as given by SFWA<\/a>, has mostly to do with length:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For the purposes of the Nebula Awards, the categories are defined as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Novel \u2014 40,000 words or more<\/li>\n<li>Novella \u2014 17,500\u201339,999 words<\/li>\n<li>Novelette \u2014 7,500\u201317,499 words<\/li>\n<li>Short Story \u2014 7,499 words or fewer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>However, I can&#8217;t help but feel that there are many other artistic elements to consider. \u00a0For example, the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms gives this definition:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>novella\u00a0[n\u014f\u2010<strong>vel<\/strong>\u2010\u0103], a fictional tale in prose, intermediate in length and complexity between a\u00a0short story\u00a0and a\u00a0novel, and usually concentrating on a single event or chain of events, with a surprising turning point.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Other sites I&#8217;ve browsed (including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegalaxyexpress.net\/2011\/03\/on-science-fiction-romance-short-form.html\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a>\u00a0from The Galaxy Express, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irosf.com\/q\/zine\/article\/10580\" target=\"_blank\">this review from 2009<\/a> of several small press novellas, and another interesting post on <a href=\"http:\/\/inventingreality.4t.com\/shortstoriesvsnovellasvsnovels.html\" target=\"_blank\">short stories vs. novellas vs. novels<\/a>) leave me with the impression that novellas typically<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>can be read in one long sitting, such as a train ride,<\/li>\n<li>center around one major conflict, idea, or issue,<\/li>\n<li>have more room for rich settings and lavish descriptions,<\/li>\n<li>tend to focus more intimately on character,<\/li>\n<li>are compact enough to take risks with voice and theme, and<\/li>\n<li>can end without a definitive conclusion to the central idea or conflict.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I must confess, I&#8217;m not an avid reader of novellas. \u00a0I&#8217;ve read some of the classics, of course: <em>Dr. Jekyll &amp; Mr. Hyde<\/em>,\u00a0<em>The Time Machine<\/em>, <em>Animal Farm,\u00a0<\/em>etc, but in terms of modern sf novellas, all I&#8217;ve really read is <em>I Am Legend<\/em> (and\u00a0a few golden\/silver age &#8220;novels,&#8221; if you count them). \u00a0Point is, I&#8217;m not an expert on novellas by any means.<\/p>\n<p>However, the novella seems like a very promising format for epublishing, especially in conjunction with a novel. \u00a0Readers can pick up the novella for $.99 and get both a sample of the writer&#8217;s longer novel-length stuff, as well as a complete story in itself.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what I want to do with <em>Sholpan. \u00a0<\/em>I want to write a less-expensive derivative work that&#8217;s artistically sound in its own right, while also driving interest in the full length novel. \u00a0Besides, it&#8217;s just fun to experiment with new styles and formats.<\/p>\n<p>If this is successful, I can see myself writing a companion novella to most, if not all of my novels. \u00a0And who knows? \u00a0Maybe I&#8217;ll be able to sell some of those to more traditional print and electronic markets. \u00a0It&#8217;s worth a shot, and no matter what happens, I&#8217;m bound to learn something new.<\/p>\n<p>So yeah, that&#8217;s my current writing project. \u00a0If all goes well, expect to see it out sometime this fall. \u00a0And if you have any comments or suggestions regarding novellas, please share! \u00a0I&#8217;m very interested to learn anything I can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So now that I&#8217;m finished with Desert Stars, the next project I&#8217;m working on is a companion novella to Bringing Stella Home titled Sholpan.\u00a0 While Bringing Stella Home\u00a0is about James and his quest to rescue his brother and sister, Sholpan\u00a0is entirely from Stella&#8217;s point of view and traces her rise in Hameji society, from prisoner&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/sholpan-or-the-great-novella-experiment\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sholpan, or The Great Novella Experiment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,541],"tags":[89,112,193,560,174,529,527,166,518,177,599],"class_list":["post-5530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-sholpan-novella","tag-career-decisions","tag-character","tag-conflict","tag-ebook-pricing","tag-ideas-and-concepts","tag-indie-publishing","tag-novellas","tag-setting","tag-sfwa","tag-theme","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1rc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5530"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5535,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5530\/revisions\/5535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}