Novellas

The novella is the perfect sized story for rainy afternoon, a cozy evening, or a flight or train ride of several hours. You can read it through in a leisurely day—and you want to because the story is engaging, the characters are vividly real, the prose poetic or insightful.

Novellas typically run between 17,000 to 40,000 words.

Famous novellas:

The Hour of the Star by Lispector and Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Porter are each about 20,000 words.

Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck is just under 30,000 words, as is Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

The Stranger by Camus and Heart of Darkness by Conrad are between 30,000 and 40,000.

The Body by King is about 40,000 words.

We are not saying we want stories just like these, but all of those listed are well known for a reason. They are stories that impact the reader. Their lengths are sweat spots that enable even busy people to read them, teachers to teach them, and most of all they beautifully capture humanity. These are the stories that prove literature is an essential part of life.

We want stories that resonate, examine, and enlighten. We want stories that explore the world and bring the reader to places they themselves can’t reach, we want stories that walk familiar paths with new eyes, we want stories that bring us home.