What is a Novel?
The easy answer: Novels are long works of fiction.
Note: It is redundant to say “fiction novel.” All novels are fiction.
Long answer: The first thing that comes to mind when you ask most people how novels different from other fiction forms is length. The chart below lays out the guidelines for each of the major types. Keep in mind, length is majorly influenced by genre. Young Adult novels tend to be on the shorter end of word count, while High Fantasy adult novels can be real door-stoppers of hundreds of thousands of words.
ClassificationWord Count
Novel 40,000 words or more
Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words
Short Story less than 7,500 words
But is length is only difference between a novel and a short story?
Of course not. The major distinction is the overall complexity of the narrative. Novels usually have one major plot line and a couple to several subplots, depending on length, genre, and author. Short stories, on the other hand, simply do not have enough word space for complex subplots. That’s not to say short stories are easier to write. When every word counts, it can be more difficult than having lots of real estate in which to explore ideas and plots. Novels simply allow for a larger scope of characters, settings, plot lines, etc.
So, novels are long and complex works of fiction.
But we also know that there are different types of fiction. A lot of people break it down into two camps: literary and genre.
This is poppycock.
Literary fiction is a genre. It might be more accurate to divide into literary and popular fiction. Within popular fiction, there are different genres, including mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, etc. Each of these umbrella genres also has subgenres, such as romantic suspense, sword and sorcery fantasy, space opera, police procedurals, etc. Working within any of these categories will influence everything from plot conventions to world building rules to the types of point of view used in the story.
If we think of writing novels like cooking, we’re all using the same ingredients to make our meals—just in different amounts. For example, the science fiction and fantasy people will be doing more world building than the mystery people, but understanding how world building works is important for everyone. The thriller people might be writing more plot-driven stories than the character-driven romance writers, but we all need to understand plot structure and character creation.
What type of story are you working on right now? Let’s chat about it in comments.
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I really struggle with word count.I'm almost at the end of my first draft of a YA novel and only only at 13,000. I know that I'm going to have to add scenes though.