A novella falls into what used to be a creative desert between short stories and full length novels. No more.

People don’t always want to give the time to reading a novel that it requires, especially since novels are getting longer and longer and longer until sometimes a reader can measure a book’s thickness in inches! And yet, , though they don’t want to spend so much time, they often want a story with more depth than is possible in a short story.

Enter the novella. Here’s what it is and what to know when writing one:

1. It’s normally between 20,000 and 30,000 words long though different publishers may have different length requirements that better fit their own business model.

2. It’s a straight-line, single subject story.

3. If plot twists or sub-plots are essential to the story they will be kept to an absolute minimum and will not be…