I've been asked to write a few novellas to accompany the release of my YA Steampunk series next year.
They can be any character or event in the series. So...yay! Between 2500-5000 words long. Whoa...what?!
At first I was concerned at the time frame. I have until summer, but they want a few and thats a tight timeline for all the different ones I have in mind.
Then I started writing...OMG this is hard! I don't have enough time/pages to do what I want with the little vignettes and backstory.
There's so much more to the characters and the world. I know, I spent years creating and fine tuning them both.
BUT...I can DO this...right? *sigh*
So the average novella is 20 pages which is around 5,000 words. Thats a lot, right? I handwrote out a story beginning. I thought I was being brief but I'm at page 11 already so I have to slash, slash, slash!I guess it feels like time measured out in pages is a bit constraining. I have to cut out extraneous things like too much setting description, etc. And that's sort of difficult if your world is a steampunk post apocalyptic version of New York...like we're talking major world building needed here.
I'm hoping it works out. I have in mind 5-8 novellas so hopefully I will get the process down pretty soon.
Never realized how challenging this would be. Hats off to the other authors out there whose free novellas I gobbled up and loved...you guys rock!
+Raquel Byrnes