Upcoming Opportunities

Sharon Oard Warn­er (F) – online only via Zoom
Writ­ing the Novella

Why write a novel­la? And why write one before embark­ing on a nov­el? Because the novel­la is the inter­me­di­ate form: It’s more expan­sive than a short sto­ry, but trim­mer than a nov­el. Novel­las used to be con­sid­ered awkward—too long to fit com­fort­ably in the pages of most lit­er­ary mag­a­zines and too short to be pub­lished alone. But, in our cur­rent cul­ture, the novel­la is, to quote Debra Sparks: “Goldilocks form, not too much this and not too much that but just right.”

Browse any of the dozens of novel­la lis­ti­cles online and see what I mean:

• 60 Short Books You Can Fin­ish in Basi­cal­ly One Sitting
• 20 Extra­or­di­nary Books You Can Read in One Sit­ting — Esquire
• 11 Short Nov­els from around the World That You Can Read in One Sit­ting — Elec­tric Literature

In this three-hour Zoom class, you will learn about the his­to­ry and struc­ture of the novel­la. We’ll sort out the dis­tinc­tions between short sto­ries, novel­las, and nov­els. Final­ly, I will pro­pose a method for draft­ing a novel­la of your very own. We’ll con­clude by brain­storm­ing and shar­ing ideas.

Watch an inter­view with Sharon Oard Warn­er.

Down­load the Taos Writ­ing Con­fer­ence fly­er.