I was just asked by a publisher to write a small novel!

[Kyriakos]

Some bit of good news... I was asked a few hours ago to write a larger work than my usual stories, a small novel. It would be a bit over 60 pages in A4 (so i guess up to 90 or so pages in book form).

Apart from being honored by the publisher specifically asking me to write the work, i am happy that they asked for a horror-related story. They are willing to test the public's taste for darker literature, due to the general mood brought by the crisis as well.

Although it is not certain they will end up printing the novel, they have mentioned many times in the past, and now, that they regard my work as being of high level. I am quite optimistic that the novel will get a printed form in a few months, and i will try to make it as best as i can, despite not being very keen on producing this particular scale of work.

-I would like to ask you if you think there is something to be aware of when writing a novel, if one is used to smaller stories (most of my published work is around 8 pages).

-Also it might be beneficial for me to read whether you prefer different kinds of development in a small novel, than the one you are more interested in while reading shorter stories.

I have already started writing the work, and have an idea of its total form. It is a dark story, but at least it begins when most of the darkness has ended.
Up to now, in nearly 2 years, i had 17 published short stories in printed periodicals. However a novel would surely mark the pinnacle of this journey to the mountainous terrain of letters, at least the first pinnacle, from which one can observe what infinities appear further ahead :)

[em onty]

I read somewhere (more than once, I think) that the simplest way of getting your hooks into a reader at the start of a long story is to begin with the saddest scene you can think of. I've mentally translated that into "begin with the most [emotion to vary with the themes of the story] scene you can think of". So perhaps in your case you want to give the reader a real chill on the first page.

Also, as a reader I've noticed a general rule recently, which might be useful. (Though it seems pretty obvious, its amazing how many authors forget it.) Opening a lot of strands of a story gets the reader excited. Closing them all successfully is hugely satifying for said reader. On the other hand, not closing them all by the end really shakes the reader's faith in the author.

Good luck!

_______________

Edit: Regarding different kinds of development, I generally hope to have a character explained/explored to/for me in a short story, like a snap shot of life; whereas in a novel I'm more interested in how a character I've been introduced to changes over time.

[Calidore]

Some bit of good news... I was asked a few hours ago to write a larger work than my usual stories, a small novel. It would be a bit over 60 pages in A4 (so i guess up to 90 or so pages in book form).

Apart from being honored by the publisher specifically asking me to write the work, i am happy that they asked for a horror-related story. They are willing to test the public's taste for darker literature, due to the general mood brought by the crisis as well.

Although it is not certain they will end up printing the novel, they have mentioned many times in the past, and now, that they regard my work as being of high level. I am quite optimistic that the novel will get a printed form in a few months, and i will try to make it as best as i can, despite not being very keen on producing this particular scale of work.

-I would like to ask you if you think there is something to be aware of when writing a novel, if one is used to smaller stories (most of my published work is around 8 pages).

-Also it might be beneficial for me to read whether you prefer different kinds of development in a small novel, than the one you are more interested in while reading shorter stories.

I have already started writing the work, and have an idea of its total form. It is a dark story, but at least it begins when most of the darkness has ended.
Up to now, in nearly 2 years, i had 17 published short stories in printed periodicals. However a novel would surely mark the pinnacle of this journey to the mountainous terrain of letters, at least the first pinnacle, from which one can observe what infinities appear further ahead :)

Congratulations!

In English, the word you're looking for would be "novella". If you want examples to look at, the first that comes to mind would be Stephen King's Different Seasons, which is a collection of four novellas (though these are closer to drama than horror).

[Kyriakos]

Thank you Em_Onty and Calidore :D

I had only once written a novella before, 5 years ago. I think i can make something better now though, in this sort of length. The story does not actually begin with a striking scene, it rather begins after the horror has ended, or at least the main horror. It begins with serenity, and a walk near the sea at the edge of the large city.

I am really happy that they asked me to write the novella for them. Best news on literature i ever had...

[qimissung]

Congratulation! How lovely that you're getting the chance to make your writing dreams come true.

[Kyriakos]

Thank you Qimissung :)

[tonywalt]

Congratulations! Keep us updated!

[Scheherazade]

All the best! :)

[Delta40]

Don't start with the weather!

[Ecurb]

Don't start with the weather!

Kinglsey Amis's advice to novelists: "Never mention clouds."

[Calidore]

Don't start with the weather!

Or with somebody waking up. Especially not with someone waking up and observing the weather.

I'm willing to make an exception for "It was a dark and stormy night."

[qimissung]

How about some more writing tips from the masters? Jack Kerouac's are my favorite.

http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/269

[Calidore]

Thanks for the link, qimissung. Those will be fun to read.

I've always liked Billy Wilder's simple description of the three-act structure: In the first act, you get your hero up in a tree. In the second act, you set the tree on fire. In the third act, you get him down from the tree.

[qimissung]

lol, well Billy Wilder was pretty brilliant. :D

[Kyriakos]

Thank you all :)

The first sentence of the novella is about the narrator expressing his joy that the vast work he undertook has now been finished- he wrote many thousands of pages in the space of a year, for reasons which become apparent a couple of pages later :)

[mona amon]

Sounds really good, Kyriakos. Good luck! :)

[Kyriakos]

Thank you :)

[Lokasenna]

Yes, well done indeed!

[Kyriakos]

Thanks Lokasenna :)

I am currently at page 11 (was up to 13, but erased the last couple of pages...). I still have up to 2 months to complete the novella (another 50 pages at least), but it is starting to present some problems due to the size of it.

I want to avoid writing a really long short-story, cause it won't work :/ I had the idea that this could be some sort of interlinking web of metaphors with a prominent "reality" which gets presented in parts, along with the metaphors and recollections from past times in the narrator's life.
However by now i have mostly described in general the main beings in the story, along with clear allusions to its labyrinthine nature. It seems i can only begin the larger recollection part at the moment, which i originally had started by presenting the university era of the narrator, but now am of the view that i will just refer to the early childhood era (end of elementary school).

What i disliked the most was that i tended to present even more primary metaphors as i went on, and this can easily make the work quite difficult to follow. Whereas the story is indeed about the translation of a phenomenon into words and consciousness, i am pretty sure that i will be better off if i just focus more on the actual main images, and not the secondary and allegoric ones.

Given that this will be my first published novella (if all goes well), i have every reason to think that it will be met with less interest if it is already some kind of inaccessible enigma :/ That is exactly what i must avoid at all costs.

So i guess i will focus for ten or so pages on the elementary school era and its end, and from there just crawl back to the main part of the story, and the hallucination which is in the epicenter of it...

[Kyriakos]

Some news, since i had sent the first version of the first chapter to the publisher...

The publisher said that my literary style is very much to their liking, but it would be better if i could phrase some of the pages in a simpler way- moreso the first pages of the work.

I am sure they have a point, given that it is highly likely that the readers picking up the book (if it comes to that) would not have read something by me prior to that moment unless they read printed literary magazines.
So i replied that "it would be a shame if such a reader would be faced with a towering wall when first coming into contact with my work".

So yeah, i said that i will try my best to simplify the work, and even moreso the first part, so as to negate this kind of effect on the reader's part- while keeping the same meaning of the lines...

Problem is, though, that the rest of the story, next to its first chapter, is rather more complicated :/ So i don't know what to do in regards to that. I will just finish the story (in around a week) and then think of it again, and contact them.

[almonde]

Congratulations! We'll be rooting for you. Keep us updated please :)

[Kyriakos]

Thank you :D

No final decision yet (they have read it for nearly 2 months now...). However i now have 20 printed short stories in lit magazines so i guess i will get a book contract soon anyway and i am happy with that :)

[mal4mac]

Start with the weather!

"London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor
sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As
much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from
the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a
Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine
lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots,
making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as
full-grown snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for
the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses,
scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers,
jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill
temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of
thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding
since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits
to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points
tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits
and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the
tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and
dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on
the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping
on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and
throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides
of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of
the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching
the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck.
Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a
nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a
balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much
as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by
husbandman and ploughboy...."

http://www.dickens-literature.com/Bleak_House/1.html