In the preface to their recently published writing guide, Writer's Companion, Carlos J Cortés and Renée Miller state, “we set out to compile everything a creative writer needs to write well into a single reference volume.” Over the next two months, Open Book will be posting the first chapter of the guide, “The Nuts & Bolts.”
CONTEST: To enter our contest to win an e-copy of Writer's Companion, send an email to clelia@openbookontario.com with the subject line “Writer's Companion.” A winner's name will be selected in a draw each month.
Read Part One and Part Two of "The Nuts and Bolts."
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1.3 Framework / Other Formats
Besides the novel, there are many additional fiction narrative formats. The most salient formats include: Novella, Novelette, Short story, Flash Fiction, and New Sudden Fictions.
1.3.1 Novella
A novella is prose fiction that is longer than a long story but shorter than a short novel. Its length ranges from 20,000 to 50,000 words. Word count, however, doesn’t define the novella. The essence of the novella is the concentrated unity of purpose and design. Character, incident, theme, and language all focus on a single issue, often of a serious nature or of universal significance.
The events of the novella turn around a single incident, problem, or issue, without subplots or parallel actions. A limited number of principal characters, perhaps only one or two, populate the story, and the events often take place in one location.
Artistically, the novella is often unified by powerful symbols.
Examples of this genre include Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1897), Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (1856), and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902).
1.3.2 Novelette
The novelette, like the true short story, features originality of theme and ingenuity of invention, but it’s not restricted to the short story word count.
It shares the same structural characteristics as the novella — character, incident, theme, plot, and setting. The distinction between a novelette and a novella is word count. A novelette ranges from 7,500 to 20,000 words.
Examples of this genre are: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Henry James’ Daisy Miller (1878), and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine (1876).
1.3.3 Short Story
A short story is a work of prose, often in narrative format of limited extension.
Stating what separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, although short story definitions based upon length differ. Since the short story format includes a wide range of genres and styles, the actual length is determined by the individual writer’s preference (or the story’s actual needs in terms of story arc), and the submission guidelines relevant to the target market. In contemporary usage, the term “short story” most often refers to a work of fiction from 1,000 to 7,500 words long.
Similar to the requirements of longer works, the five key elements that go into every great short story are character, setting, conflict, plot, and theme.
Some of the world’s best examples of the short story are from nineteenth-century American writers: Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Stephen Crane. Turn-of-the-century writers O. Henry and Jack London also provided a foundation of superb story writing. Twentieth-century short story writers who have excelled in their craft have learned much from their predecessors.
1.3.4 Flash Fiction
Flash fiction is a short work of prose, the accepted word count ranging mostly from 500-1000 words and containing all the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution. The limited word count often forces some of these elements to remain unwritten, that is, hinted at or implied in the story line.
Very short fiction has been with us since antiquity, as reflected in Aesop and Phaedrus’s fables.
Contemporary writers, such as Chekhov, Lovecraft, and Hemingway have bequeathed us splendid examples of this difficult form.
1.3.5 New Sudden Fictions
Termed New Sudden Fictions or Very Short Stories, are pieces of prose running from a couple of lines to a couple of pages. At fewer than five-hundred words, these works demand the painstaking attention to detail common in poetry. These narratives are different, not only because of their lack of space to fully develop a plot and characterization, but because they evoke a single idea or moment and have a reversal, often comic, in which the initial circumstances of the plot are transposed at the end.
Other terms, in addition to the older ‘short-short story’ are flashfic, shortfic, ficlet, microfiction, drabble (exactly 100 words excluding its title), 69er (exactly 69 words excluding the title), or nanofiction (exactly 55 words). To qualify, these must be complete stories, with at least one character and a discernible plot. A six-word short-short allegedly penned by Ernest Hemingway is:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Though some elements are only implied, it has character, setting, conflict, plot, theme, beginning, middle, and end.
"The Nuts & Bolts" is an excerpt from Writer's Companion (2011) by Carlos J Cortés and Renée Miller. Reprinted with permission.
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