Those of us who practice the mystical art of novel-writing are familiar with the minimum wordcount for a mainstream novel: 80,000 words. Shorter forms are the novella (50,000 to 80,000) and novelette (30,000 to 50,000). But let us now consider the novelini: the story too long to be short, but too short to be even a short novel. A story of 10,000 to 30,000 words, to be exact.
If you have ever begun a new novel with conflicts galore and a magnificently-detailed plot, only to find your characters solving their problems and achieving their heart's desire at the end of the fifth chapter, you are a born novelini writer.
In honor of you and me and all the other frustrated authors who always seem to have too much story and not enough words, I'm forming a new group: the Novelini Masters. We will recognize the greatness inherent in the long-short story form, share excerpts from our novelinis, and review ultra-short novels, old and new.
My first novelini project will be for NaNoWriMo: instead of a 50,000-word novel, I'm going to write a string of character-connected novelinis of no more than 15,000 words each.
Please join my group and embrace your inner novelinist.
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Comments: 9
Oh wait, if I fall short on the NaNo, I'll have one.
My problem lies more in time to finish a manuscript than anything else.
How about a couple of paragraphs to start...and then I'll add a sentence or two and add an extra sentence each time I do that until I'm going full speed ahead.
That type of thinking got me exercising. I'd say, "Okay,, just walk 5 mintues. At the end of 5 minutes, I'd keep going until I wanted to stop. But I think this is a far different situation.