Novel, novella, novelette, short story–what is the difference?
• Novel: more than 40,000 words • Novella: 17,500 – 40,000 words • Novelette: 7,500 – 17,500 words • Short Story: less than 7,500 words At a panel at L.A.con IV on the differences in different forms, Silverberg said that Edgar Allan Poe said that the essence of the short story is that one thing happens. A novel, on the other hand, has a confrontation, which leads to a new plot direction, which leads to a new confrontation, and so on. A novella, Silverberg continued, is a short novel (less than 30,000 words). It has room for the sub-plots and the richly developed ideas of a novel, but not enough to sustain a novel. Silverberg also said that the novelette is an artificial creation of editors; the novelette and the novella are variant terms for something between a short story and a novel, he said. The full panel can be found at http://fanac.org/worldcon/LA_Con/x06-rpt.html#different>. 99. Science Fiction Archives The SF-LOVERS archives are at http://www.sflovers.org The Internet Speculati
