Novella

In practice

A novella is a work of prose fiction longer than a short story and shorter than a novel. Most definitions put it between about 17,500 and 40,000 words, roughly 60 to 150 printed pages, though publishers and prizes draw the line in different places. Of Mice and Men, The Old Man and the Sea, Heart of Darkness and The Metamorphosis are all novellas.

Length alone does not make a novella. The form usually follows one main character or a small group through a single, concentrated line of action, without the subplots and many points of view a novel can carry. That focus gives novellas their particular power: they have room to develop a character in depth but are short enough to be read in a sitting or two, so the whole story stays in the reader's mind at once.

Novellas have a special relationship with film. Because a novella's length is close to the amount of story a feature film can hold, many famous films come from them: The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me from Stephen King novellas, Breakfast at Tiffany's from Truman Capote's, and Arrival from Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life".

A novella's opening, adapted for the screen

This opening could begin a novella or the film adapted from one. In a few lines it sets up a single character, one place, a fixed span of time (one winter) and a clear question: what will she do with it? That concentration is typical of the novella form, and it is why novellas adapt so well into features: the story fits the screen without the cutting a long novel needs.

What a novella is

A novella is a mid-length work of fiction. It has more space than a short story to develop character and situation, but not the sprawl of a novel. Most novellas follow one central conflict from beginning to end, often over a limited period of time and in a small number of settings.

The word is Italian, from novella, "a new thing" or "a piece of news", the source of the English word novel. In Renaissance Italy, novelle were short tales like those collected in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. In nineteenth-century Germany, the Novelle became a recognized literary form, usually built around a single extraordinary event.

In English, the novella was long squeezed between markets: too long for most magazines, too short to sell as a book. Small presses, ebooks and science fiction publishing have helped it return, and many readers now seek out novellas precisely because they can be finished in an evening.

How long is a novella?

The most widely cited definition comes from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, whose Nebula Awards count a novella as 17,500 to 40,000 words. The Hugo Awards use the same range. Below that, a novelette runs 7,500 to 17,500 words, and a short story is under 7,500.

Other publishers and contests draw the line differently, and some count anything from 20,000 to 50,000 words as a novella. In page terms, a novella is usually between about 60 and 150 printed pages, depending on the format.

So is a 100-page book a novella? Usually yes: at a typical 250 to 300 words per page, 100 pages is 25,000 to 30,000 words, well inside the range. A 30-page story, at around 8,000 to 9,000 words, is closer to a novelette or a long short story.

Novella vs novel and short story

A short story typically captures a single moment, encounter or turning point and can leave much unsaid. A novel can follow many characters, plots and years. The novella sits between them: it can show how a character changes over time, but usually through one line of action rather than several.

That makes novellas unusually unified. Most have one point of view, one main setting and few or no subplots. Readers often feel a novella has the intensity of a short story with the depth of a novel, which is why many writers consider it the most demanding form.

The novelette is the step between a short story and a novella. It has room for a fuller plot than most short stories, but not for the extended development of a novella. Many readers and publishers use the words loosely, so the distinction matters most for prizes and magazine submissions.

Examples of novellas

Classics: Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843), Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899), Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915), John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1937) and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1952) are among the most read novellas in English.

Modern: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (2007) and Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These (2021) show the form's range, from New York glamour to quiet Irish moral drama.

Genre and film: Stephen King's Different Seasons (1982) collects four novellas, two of which became The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me. Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", which won the Nebula Award for best novella, became the film Arrival (2016).

Novellas and screenwriting

Producers and screenwriters prize novellas as source material. A feature screenplay of about 90 to 120 pages holds roughly as much story as a novella, so an adaptation can keep the whole narrative instead of cutting entire subplots, as most novel adaptations must.

The adaptation still has to turn interior experience into action and image. Novellas often rely on a narrator's voice or a character's thoughts, so the screenwriter looks for what the character does, what the audience can see and which lines of narration are worth keeping as voice-over.

Writing a novella can also help screenwriters develop a story. Some write a prose version of an idea first, to find the character's interior life and the story's shape, then translate that into a script. Others adapt their own screenplays into novellas to reach readers before the film is made.