Guest Post by Carol Browne
As authors go, I consider myself to be fairly ignorant when it comes to the mechanics of my craft. I’m like someone who drives but hasn’t a clue how the engine works and can’t tell one make of car from another. I find myself perplexed at times by the multitude of genres and their crossovers. Similarly, the many structures and formats one is supposed to adhere to are tiresome. Perhaps I don’t like rules and regulations, or it could be I’m too lazy to learn them.
Recently, when I finished my latest work, a novella called Reality Check, I decided to address my ignorance of basic literary structures by finding out exactly what constitutes a novella.
The novella (Italian,‘new’) started to develop as a literary genre during the Renaissance (notably in 1348 with the The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio), and in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries the genre acquired various rules and structural requirements.
With a word count of between 17,500 and 40,000, the novella tends to be more complex than a short story but has far fewer conflicts than a novel. Frequently a novella is designed to be read at a single sitting.
Chapter divisions, subplots, different points of view, and changes in genre are not features commonly found in the novella. It turns its back on the wider world to focus instead on personal development. It’s like taking a short story then embellishing it with descriptive passages, expanding on the characterisation, and exploring the conflicts in greater depth.
You’d be surprised to know how many great literary works are novellas—Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, to name but a few.
I’m surprised to find that Reality Check meets the requirements, albeit by accident! Out of interest I also note that German writers see the novella as a narrative of any length that focuses on one suspenseful situation or conflict, with a decisive turning point that leads to a reasonable but surprising conclusion. Reality Check has ticked all the boxes there too. All I need now is a publisher!
Carol Browne regards Crewe, Cheshire, as her home town and graduated from Nottingham University in 1976 with an honors degree in English Language and Literature. Carol writes speculative fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is also a ghost blog writer, proofreader, copy editor, and copywriter. Along with a passion for gardening, Carol is an avid animal lover.
Carol lives in the Cambridgeshire countryside with her dog, Harry, and cockatiel, Sparky.Pagan and vegan, Carol believes it is time for a paradigm shift in our attitude to Mother Nature and hopes the days of speciesism are numbered.
Stay connected with Carol on her website and blog, Facebook, and Twitter.
Showing posts with label novella. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novella. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Monday, October 26, 2015
#NewRelease His Temporary Fix by @SofiaGreyAuthor @EntangledSelect #militaryromance
Book title:
His Temporary Fix (a Love at the Beach novella)
Author:
Sofia Grey
Release
date: 26 October 2015
Publisher:
Entangled Select
Genre: Contemp military romance
Tagline: One night is all it takes
Blurb:
Zack is on short-term leave to attend a funeral, and he's walking a fine line. The loss is unbearable...and he'll do whatever it takes to distract himself from it. Especially if it means a night of searingly-hot sex with Holly Jacobs. Only his brilliant idea isn't exactly going according to plan.
One night isn't
nearly enough. But if it goes much longer it might end in broken hearts…
Excerpt:
I ran the few yards, shouting “Gwen, Lily, heel.”
They ignored me. By the time I reached him, the guy had sat up, a dazed
expression on his face. He looked young, not much older than me, with dark eyes
in a tanned face and what I figured was several days’ worth of rough stubble. Hot
in a rugged, edgy way.
He tugged off the cap and ran a wet
hand through short dark hair, and I caught a glimpse of dogtags on his chest.
His gaze flicked up to me, and the breath caught in my throat. I’d expected to
see anger, but instead, he looked lost.
Dropping to a crouch by his side, I tried to
grab the girls before they did further damage. “I am so sorry.” Gwen barged
into me, the force knocking me forward onto my knees and almost into his arms.
Could I be any more embarrassed? “They don’t normally behave like this.” I
grabbed at their collars, but they danced out of reach. Of course. “They must
like you.” Jesus, how lame. I cringed when the words left my mouth, but
it drew a hint of a smile from him.
“I guess.” He shoved at the wet sand and
scrambled to his feet, then held out a hand to me. It would have been rude to
refuse, so I let him help me up. His grip was strong and sure, albeit wet and
sandy, and I tried not to stare at his sodden trousers. Lift your eyes,
Holly. Muscles were clearly defined under his T-shirt, and the jacket did
little to hide the breadth of his shoulders.
I focused on catching the dogs and managed to
grab Lily on her next pass. Before she could wriggle free I clipped the chain
to her collar. Now for Gwen, always the rebel. “I’m sorry,” I repeated into the
silence. “I had no idea they’d do that. Are you okay?”
I got the distinct impression he wasn’t
listening. He glanced first at his hand, then at his boots. “It’s gone,” he
mumbled. “I’ve fucking dropped it.” He hunkered down and swished around in the
shallow water. “Help me. I can’t lose it.”
Holding Lily securely, I bent down beside him.
“What are we looking for?”
“A bracelet.”
I peered into the water. The light was fading
fast, and our chances of finding anything were slim at best, but I caught a
glimmer of something near my foot. I swooped to grab it before the next ripple
shifted the sand, and my fingers closed around smooth metal. A silver link
bracelet with blue stones and a flat silver plate with a name engraved. I
squinted to read it. Marie?
“This one?” I held out the piece of jewelry and
even in the semidarkness I saw his eyes light up and a smile break out across
his face. Wow. I thought he was hot before, but he was actually gorgeous.
“Thank you.” He closed his fist around it and held
it close to his chest. Marie must be his girlfriend. Or wife. Even a baby
daughter. My imagination ran riot.
“It’s very pretty. Does that say Marie?” I
should have slunk away at that point, but the desolation that flooded his eyes
kept me locked in place.
“Marnie.” It was just a whisper. He swallowed
hard. “Her name was Marnie.”
There’s always that moment where you have to
make a choice. To walk away or to get involved in someone’s problems, and God
knew, I’d been tangled in too many people’s issues already. But how could I
walk away? He looked as though his entire world had crashed down around his
feet. I’d beat myself up for it later, but right now, I had to stay. “That’s a
beautiful name. Your girlfriend?” Was. He said her name was
Marnie, my subconscious shrieked. Past tense.
Author
links: www.SofiaGrey.com
Author
bio:
Romance author Sofia Grey spends her days
managing projects in the corporate world and her nights hanging out with wolf
shifters and alpha males. She devours pretty much anything in the fiction line,
but she prefers her romances to be hot, and her heroes to have hidden depths.
When writing, she enjoys peeling back the layers to expose her characters’
flaws and always makes them work hard for their happy endings.
Music is
interwoven so tightly into my writing that I can’t untangle the two. Either I’m
listening to a playlist on my iPod, have music seeping from my laptop speakers,
or there’s a song playing in my head – sometimes on auto-repeat.
Check
out the playlist for His Temporary Fix on Spotify: http://bit.ly/1PxDl8w
What reviewers are saying about His Temporary Fix:
“One sentence in and these characters drew me
into their world, and had me hanging on every word. Their touching story
captured my heart.” – Misty
“This was a very enjoyable quick read. ” – Betty
“I do love reading novella's for a quick fix, a
quick pick-me-up, in between long novels. When they can pack emotion,
connection with the characters, a great plot and storyline into less than 120
pages, well, that leaves me very satisfied and wanting to read more by the
author. His Temporary Fix gave me all that and then some. ” – Lee
For a chance to win any ebook from Sofia's backlist AND a swag bundle, leave your details in this Google form. One name will be drawn on the 31st October, and yes, she will send swag worldwide :)
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