Why You Should Write a Novella for NaNoWriMo 2021

Image: a miniature blank book held open by a thumb.
“tiny books” by wmshc_kiwi is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post is by Sharon Oard Warner, the author of Writing the Novella.


On the off-chance you aren’t acquainted with the acronym, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. November is the month, so about now, around the country and across the world, writers are sharpening pencils and clearing off kitchen tables. They’re preparing loved ones to do without them for 30 straight days or at least until Thanksgiving. And if they’re smart, they’re using October to do the prep work: character development, narrative arc, settling on setting, and so forth.

If NaNoWriMo is new to you, here’s a little history: The annual event has been around for 23 years. It was launched in 1999 by writer Chris Baty, and the challenge began with a group of 21 writers in the San Francisco Bay area. No telling how many of them finished what they started, but they must have talked it up.

By the second year, the dedicated scribblers grew to 140. And so on. Skipping forward to 2020, some 383,000 people got serious and signed up at the official website, National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo may be what you need to get motivated. The rules are short and simple. Baty devised them back in 2000, and they still apply:

  1. The writing project should be new.
  2. It should be written by a single person.
  3. It should reach 50,000 words by midnight on November 30.

Here’s the thing: Although the writers who sign up have every intention of going the distance, only a fraction reach the finish line. In any given year, fewer than 20% of official participants get it done. But that’s understandable, right? All sorts of things can trip you up when you set out to write a novel in a month. Some are unavoidable while others can be anticipated, planned for, and thereby side-stepped. If you have your heart set on winning NaNoWriMo in 2021, I suggest the following:

50,000 words is novella territory

A work of fiction that logs in at 50,000 words is actually a novella, though publishers in the United States will be reluctant to label it as such. (Why, you ask? Because you can charge more for something called a novel than for something called a novella.) The average contemporary novel ranges in length from 80,000 to 120,000 words, but many of our most celebrated fictions are novellas of around 50,000 words, the goal post for NaNoWriMo:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Sula by Toni Morrison
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

To finish what you start during NaNoWriMo, don’t plan to write a magnum opus. Instead, devise a story that fits the novella container of some 40,000 to 60,000 words.

A novella plot is manageable

Novellas are easier to plot than novels because they are constructed around one strong but flexible narrative arc with room for a subplot or two. Where plot is concerned, novellas are like screenplays. They get right down to business. Novels are McMansions to get lost in, while novellas are one or two bedroom apartments.

The cast of characters is small

Developing characters is time-consuming, and the larger the party, the more work it creates, both before (planning) and after (revising). Novellas tend to be focused on one protagonist with a small cast of supporting characters. Consider Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, for instance. The protagonist is the fireman, Montag. Secondary characters include Millie, Montag’s wife; Beatty, his boss; and Professor Faber. There are cameo characters, too—notably, Clarisse in the beginning and Granger at the end.

Novellas are situated in one place

If description isn’t your strong suit, you may dread the setting work required for a novel. Happy news: if you’re writing a novella, your characters are likely to be firmly situated in place and time. Whereas novels are often peripatetic—moving from place to place—novellas tend to be planted. And often enough, the novella’s plot is tied to the place. Think of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, for instance, which is set in the frigid, snowy Starkfield, Massachusetts. Or Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, set in and around Missoula, Montana. The takeaway? Your descriptive efforts will be focused—and they will be meaningful.

Novellas cover a shorter period of time

Chronology tends to be one of the trickier parts of storytelling. Whereas novels can stretch over decades and require calendars and tables for tracking the passage of time, most novellas take place over a short interval: a week, say, or a season. Although backstory may be significant, it’s often hinted at rather than spelled out. Hemingway’s masterpiece, The Old Man and the Sea, takes place over three days. Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day covers a mere twenty-four hours. Remember: the shorter the interval between the beginning and the end, the easier it is to plan your story.

The ending is latent in the beginning

In my experience, there’s nothing harder to write than the last five to ten pages. I have friends and neighbors who’ve written manuscripts of more than 50,000 words—though not in a month—but have never found their way to the end. There’s nothing sadder than an unfinished manuscript.

My advice is to write the ending before you get there. By that, I mean jump ahead. As soon as you have a glimmer of the finale, stop where you are and get it down on the page. When you’re writing the novella, finding your way to the end is a little easier and not just because the word count is more attainable. Many novellas have an ending that is latent in the beginning. Take Fahrenheit 451, for instance. It opens with Montag starting a fire and it ends with him extinguishing one.

A final note

Planning is key, as Julie Artz discusses in Want to Win NaNoWriMo? I also recommend identifying a touchstone, a novella that’s exactly the sort of book you want to write—but different. A touchstone can keep you inspired even as it offers you the answers to so many questions about how to begin and end, how to develop scenes, and so forth. Your best teachers are always your favorite writers.

Happy writing!

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Joy Lennick

All most interesting. I have just finished writing my ninth book, but it certainly took me longer than a month…Perhaps I’ll keep it in mind for next year If I’m still on my perch! Cheers.

Leon Stevens

Last year I didn’t get to 50K for NaMoWriMo, but it wound up being a novella (it took an extra 6 months, though)

For me it is easier to write short, as I find it hard to write many detailed descriptions, and I don’t like reading info dumps in stories, so I tend to only write pertinent information.

Nice to see a list of fantastic books that are not lengthy. Some classic literature in condensed form.

Sharon O Warner

Congratulations on completing last year’s novella, Leon! And if you’re entering Nanowrimo in 2021, best of luck!

Linda Browne

I really like this idea. I’m going to put it on my radar for next year so I can get the prep work done in October. The challenge for me will be silencing my inner editor while I write. Maybe if I think of the piece as a rough first draft, I’ll be able to do it.

Sharon O Warner

Thanks for your comment, Linda. Silencing the inner editor is a challenge for every writer I know, myself included. In fact, I’m planning to write a guest blog on that very topic. Stay tuned!