How do you find the right size for your story? And speaking of size, what do novellas do differently than both short stories and novels? What even is the difference between a novel and a novella? How many characters do they usually have? How many subplots? How do you know if your story should take the form of a novella or a novel? We dive into all these questions (and…you guessed it… more!) in our conversation.
A note on the structure of Season 19: in between our close reading series (six episodes where we dive into an element of craft through a close reading of a specific text), we’ll be doing two wild card episodes! These episodes are random topics that our hosts have been wanting to tell you about, we just didn’t know where they fit. So we MADE a place for them to fit!
Thing of the Week:
Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (a collaborative, storytelling-based RPG)
Homework:
Take a short story that you either love or have written and write a list of things that could be added to expand it to novella length. Now do the same for a novel, but make it a list of things that might need to be cut.
A Reminder!
That starting May 12th, we'll be focusing on Worldbuilding and reading A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. If you’re going to buy this book, we have this bookshop link available for you to do so! (If not, go support your local library!) https://bookshop.org/lists/close-readings-season-19
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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar, Mary Robinette Kowal, and DongWon Song. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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19.19: A Close Reading on Worldbuilding: An Overview and why A Memory Called Empire
19.18: How to Build Fictional Economies
19.16: An Interview with Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar
19.15: A Close Reading on Voice: Tying It All Together
19.14: A Close Reading on Voice- Epistolary Storytelling Through Voice
19.13: A Close Reading on Voice: Blue's Perspective - Confidence and Vulnerability
19.12: A Close Reading on Voice - Red's Perspective - Muscular Prose
19.11: A Close Reading on Voice- An Overview, and Why Time War
19.10: Introducing Our Close Readings Series
19.09: LIVE Recording - Rituals, Rites, and Traditions
19.08: NaNoWriMo Revision with Ali Fisher: Working with an Editor
19.07: NaNoWriMo Revision with Ali Fisher: Intention
19.06: NaNoWriMo Revision with Ali Fisher: Length
19.05: LIVE Recording - Revisions with Mahtab Narsimhan
19.04: LIVE Recording - Pacing with Guest Fonda Lee
19.03: Behind The Scenes with our Producer and Recording Engineer
19.02: Q&A Episode with WX Core Cast
19.01: Interview with Abraham Verghese
18.53: Funding the Writing Life
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