Young Writers Society

"Novel" (or even "story" when used in the same context) is a term that creeps up quite a bit 'round here. As it should But have you ever stopped to think of what it really means? What is this thing that we aspire to write? Well, I looked it up and, as always, the definitions are interesting. "Novel is the second album released by singer Joey Pearson." Interesting. Alright, irrelevant, you caught me.

Dare we touch this one with a ten foot pole? Of course we dare, provided that you accept the caveat that novels are so varied that any definition is likely to be inadequate to cover all of them. ...

^ I thought this was a fun definition. Maybe just the phrase of poking the definition with a ten foot pole.

a work of fiction that is longer and more complex than a short story. In a novel, setting, plot and characters are usually developed in great detail.

^ I didn't like this definition so much. Upon closer examination, I suppose it's alright, but at first glance, it makes a short story seem like an incredibly simple/pointless thing, which it isn't necessarily.

# S: (adj) novel, refreshing (pleasantly new or different) "common sense of a most refreshing sort"

^ This definition was by far my favorite, defining a novel as fresh/refreshing set of ideas. Perfect ^_^


All of these definitions (along with others) can be found on this search page from Google. There are also other fun writing-type things in the links to where the definitions came from.

So the point of my post? I suppose, what do you define a novel as? Would you write one any differently after thinking about its precise definition?

I agree
The first one does sound like it is saying that a novel is a long, drawn-out version of a story.
The second one is better.

Well, the booker prize defines a novel as anything over two hundred pages in normal print (I think). Ian McEwan nearly wasn't shortlisted because On Chesil Bay wasn't two hundred pages or over (or something along those lines).

According to Write101, the average novel is between 60,000-100,000 words long, though I hear sci-fi and fantasy tend to be longer, while young adult fiction tends to be shorter.

On the other hand, the SFWA Awards call a novel anything 40,000 words or more, while the NaNoWriMo FAQs state that 50,000 words is more like a novella than a novel.

(Mm, fuzzy statistics.)

They very strongly by subject and novels are meant to be fully developed stories that are drawn out and make the reader empathize or identify with the characters through many unimportant scenes that are used strictly for character developement.

Sure Lord of the Rings did not need the celebrations or the dialogs, but they were critical to character developement. Sure Dune didn't need all the incredibly long and detailed dialogs and scenes that had little if any value to the story other then building great depth and feeding the readers mind with the world.

These differences are what make a novel. Short stories cannot put in history and lots of character backgrounds without becoming bloated or distracted. As Edgar Poe stated: Short stories are meant to be read in entirety in a single sitting. This differs from novels which are multichaptered works that must continue to entrall the reader and ensure they are able to quickly be asborbed back into the writing after picking up the book again.

Novella, novel, epic... all things are required to flow and move with great detail. These things really make a novel. While editors and publishers may feud over standards, things won't change. There is no set standard for what a novel really is, but it is anything that does not meet short story requirements.