I read 18 novellas in 3 three days...

Illustration by yours truly. Alas this bespectacled young lady's book doesn't actually exist in the real world.

• Getting Started

• The Novellas

• Plotting Structures

• Recommendations

February 1st, 2025 was a cold and snowy winter’s day. I’d been in a reading and writing funk for a while now, and I decided I wanted to shake things up. I’ve always loved reading novellas and was planning on writing my own but first I wanted to understand them better. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to take on a challenge: I decided to read as many novellas as I could over a single weekend.

With almost childlike enthusiasm and a nearly open budget (these were just short stories, after all), I hopped onto the Top 100 bestseller lists, grabbed a notebook and pen, and got to work.

The goal wasn’t necessarily to read for enjoyment (though many I did!) but rather to understand novellas better. What is their core structure? What are their plot beats? Do they follow a novel’s construction just in an abbreviated form, or are they closer to a short story? What makes for a good story that’s 25k words or less?

While it actually took me 3 days and 18 novellas instead of my original goal of 12, I got what I wanted. I ended up with not only a newfound appreciation for shorter works but I also had a better idea of what worked and what didn’t. So let’s get into it!

Free stock photo from pixabay.com. Depicts a woman reading in a place far warmer but debatably less cozy then my snowed in reading cave was at the time of this challenge. Most of the images here are stock photos except for the illustrations which were drawn by your truly :)

Getting started: What IS a novella anyhow?

Please note: I’ll be using the terms book, novel, and novella interchangeably.

I once read that the average time a novella takes to read is about the same amount of time it takes to watch a TV show or a movie, so somewhere in the 30 minutes to 2 hour range. However, since I was using Amazon for this experiments, let’s take a look at their “short reads”. Amazon bases this on page counts and estimated reading time:

15 minutes or less: approx 1-11 pages

30 minutes: 12-21 pages

45 minutes: 22-32 pages

1 hour: 33-43 pages

90 minutes: 44-64 pages

2 hour: 65 -100 pages

For this reading challenge, I stuck with the 1 hour category and longer, so starting at 33 pages and up. I also kept this experiment to just the genres I was personally interested in reading. That meant sticking primarily to three genres: romance, fantasy, and science fiction.

I attempted to figure out the word count was but that varied wildly with formatting. Very roughly speaking, 50 pages = 13,000 words BUT again, formatting and perhaps just ‘Zon’s mercurial nature meant there wasn’t a lot of consistency. One novella had about 7k words and was 43 pages, another had 11k words and was 40 pages.

Of the 18 novellas, the average word count was 14,000 and the average listed page count 45-50 but these numbers were skewed by the small sample size. There were also a few shorter or longer outliers that threw everything off.

The takeaway from this is: if you want to be in short reads, try not to be more than 25,000 words. However, I did read one that was 27,000 and was in short reads. Thanks ‘Zon, you really make us work for even broad strokes of data don’t you?

Also worth noting: most of the novellas were 7 chapters with an epilogue. The longest was 15 chapters. Several had no chapters at all, but none of those were in romance. Interpret this as you will.

The Novellas

Stock photo of a very old book. I wish I knew more about this book. It's an awesome old book. The kind that future historians would call the day you foolishly opened it as "Day Zero"

I kept my project limited to the Amazon Kindle Short Reads Bestsellers.

Obviously other storefronts are probably going to have quite different results but I wanted to focus on the biggest retailer (‘Zon of course) and also books that I could easily read on my preferred device (Kindle).

I’d tried to have a decent variety in both length and genre. With a few exceptions, all the novellas were $0.99. There also are plenty of totally free books in short reads, but I didn’t pick any of those. I may make a separate reading challenge just for them some day. For this project, I wanted to stick to the paid bestsellers.

The project eventually expanded to 18 novellas over three days instead of my original goal of 12 over a weekend. Four of these I didn’t finish (DNF) for various reasons. Most of the novellas were either standalone or part of a series of linked standalones (very common in romance). I also chose one that was a Christmas special for a long running series because I was curious if I could follow what was happening without having read any of the other books or knowing who the characters were. Plus, the cover was really nice.

All authors except for one were new to me, though a couple I had seen around in “also bought” lists which I hoped meant I’d enjoy them more if they were similar to something I liked. Of the 18 novellas, 15 were (I think) self published and 3 trad. I’m not 100% sure about this but I based it off the publisher that was listed.

About the 4 I DNF

All four were DNF because of trigger warnings or plot elements that I don’t want to read. This was my fault for not doing my due diligence when choosing them. I picked my 12 (later 18) novellas based primarily on their genre and page count, not so much their blurbs or trigger warnings. This was my mistake but, hey, it all worked out in the end: the authors still got their 99cents off me and I have their books waiting on my Kindle if I ever change my mind.

My scores

After I finished each novella I scored it on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 as the lowest. My average rating across all 18 was a 5.8 out of 10.

scores (1) 5.5, (2) DNF, (3) 5.0, (4) 6.5, (5) 6.0, (6) 2.5 (ouch!), (7) 6.5, (8) 7.5, (9) 3.0, (10) 5.0, (11) 2.5, (12) 9.0 (13) DNF, (14) DNF, (15) 7.0, (16) DNF, (17) 7.5, (18) 8.0

4 DNFs, 14 read, average score of 5.8. Lowest 2.5, highest 9.

So quite a range and it goes without saying that my “score” was highly subjective. There were some books that I didn’t especially enjoy reading but I gave a higher score too because I appreciated other elements like their plotting technique and structure.

I’ve decided not to name all the books, especially the ones I gave a low score to or DNF’ed, but there were a couple of standouts I’ll talk about in more detail later (spoiler warning).

The genres

13 romance

1 sci fi

2 vampire/paranormal

2 historical

Of the 18, 13 were outright romance. Mostly fantasy romance because that’s my preference. Of the other 5, only one was a sci fi. I didn’t find much in the sci fi short reads I was interested in, at least not in the top 100 on Feb 1st, 2025. I’m not sure why but maybe because sci fi needs more worldbuilding than 25k allows for? Or, more likely, it’s just a genre that performs better in full novel form.

Among the non-romance was a vampire semi-romance gaslamp fantasy. This was a modern take on a Victorian gothic and actually my favorite book of the challenge (spoilers: it was A Marriage of Undead Inconvenience by Stephanie Burgis).

Another was a non-romance outlier that was very hard to categorize but I’ll go with “1920s paranormal thriller”. There was a werewolf mystery that had a romance element but was more of a gothic at the same time.

And finally there was a Tolkienesque fantasy adventure.

Key thing to note: The Mountain Man sub genre of romance represented 6 out of the 18 novellas I chose and were between 12-20% of the top 100 bestsellers depending on page count. Mountain Man and Short Reads are a big thing together. So big, in fact, that I’m going to dedicate a separate article just to talking about them. Keep an eye out for it in my blog list, I hope to have it up shortly.

I wanted a sexy picture of a mountain man. This was the closest Pixabay.com had to offer. Well I'm just going to have to draw my own then won't I...

Common Plotting Structures for Short Reads (and examples)

NOW we’re finally getting to what it was all about: just how are popular novellas being structured? I noticed three main approaches to plotting: the low-scope plot, the high-scope plot, and the elongated short story. There are many other structures as well, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just briefly go over these three and then I’ll break down some specific examples.

Low scope plots:

These have a brief introduction followed by a single main event and then a single obstacle that’s overcome at the end. IE three main “beats”: 1. The character(s) is introduced, 2. something happens to them, 3. that something gets resolved. Most short romances are low scope.

Low scope example (mountain man romance):

1. Introduction: The heroine is driving along a mountain road during a snowstorm. She’s upset about a recent breakup/fired/personal crisis.

2. Event: Her car crashes and she’s rescued by the grumpy mountain man hero. He takes her back to his cabin where they become stranded together as the storm worsens.

3. Obstacle overcome: They fall for each other, possibly boink depending on how spicy the story is or at least fall in love, and she decided that whatever her personal crisis was doesn’t matter and she’s going to start a new life with the mountain man.

I could write a whole ‘nother blog article just talking about short romances but, if you’re interested and haven’t read it already, definitely check out Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes, The Short Story Romance Handbook by Hope Ford, and Writing Short Romance for Pleasure and Profit by Sadie King.

Another low scope example: (fantasy adventure)

1. Introduction: The hero is an elite weaponsmaster who meets a mysterious stranger out in the wilderness.

2. Event: The hero and stranger are attacked and the stranger convinces the hero to help her rescue her home city which is under siege. They travel, enter the citadel, and sneak into the palace where the evil warlord enemy is living. (It’s worth noting that this “event” section can span anywhere from a few thousand words to tens of thousands depending on what length of short read you want to be in. It could literally just be a single, longer chapter if you want to stay in the 1 hour category).

3. Obstacle overcome: The hero fights the evil warlord and wins, freeing the stranger’s people from captivity.

And this just so happened to be the plot of Paladins of Shannara: The Weapons Master's Choice by Terry Brooks which was my second favorite book of the challenge. The author managed to successfully build a full fantasy story in 47 pages and, aside from the rushed ending, he did it very skillfully. I felt like if he’d had just five more pages it would have been a near perfect example of a action basic low scope novella.

High scope plots:

High scope plots typically are longer than low scope and rarely seen blow the 90 minute short reads. The main difference is in the middle, aka the “event” section. While low scope basically have a single long premise for the middle (trapped in the cabin, journey into the warlord’s palace), high scope have three middle beats or more instead of just the one for a total of five: 1. introduction, 2. progress towards goal, 3. major obstacle or plot development, 4. more progress and building up to the final challenge, 5. obstacle overcome and goal is achieved.

This is closer to a typical novel beat pacing and there is a risk at your novella running too long and overshooting the 25k word max. Here’s some examples of how this can work:

High scope romance:

1. Introduction: The heroine is running away from her unwanted betrothal and she become lost in the cursed woods. She meets the hero who is a fae prince who must claim a mortal bride. (yes, I did basically just describe the entire romantasy genre, don’t let that stop you if there’s fun to be had).

2. Progress towards goal: the hero spirits her away to his magical kingdom. She is afraid, reactive to her new environment, maybe there’s some animosity between her and the hero.

3. Major development: an enemy attacks, the hero rescues the heroine (or vice versa, we love a little role reversal!), and the two leads admit their feelings for each other. Optional boinking.

4. More progress: the leads begin working together as a team. Romance grows, perhaps with a few challenges that are easily overcome. Optional more or first boinking.

5. Final challenge: Her jilted fiancee appears to take her back. He is defeated. She and the hero marry (and optional… well, y’know…)

This structure really can work for both novellas and novels. If you want to keep it safely under the 25k I suggest thinking very strategically about how you handle sections 2, 3, and 4. You could shorten them to just the span of two days. For instance: she’s taken to the magical world but tries to run away from the hero (2. progress), he catches her but they’re stranded for the night and have to cuddle for warmth which results in admission of attraction and the start of their romance (3. development), by the following morning he has sufficiently convinced her to marry him and they are no longer in opposition (4. more progress). On the way back to his palace they are attacked by the obstacle (5).

Let’s look at a non romance, how about a detective thriller:

1. Introduction: The female lead is a detective who has been hired to investigated a child’s disappearance. She investigates her only lead which is a rumor that the child was seen climbing stone wall of a mansion’s grounds. There she meets the mysterious owner of the mansion.

2. Progress towards goal: The owner allows her to investigate his property. Optional romance angle or a building of the mystery with more clues.

3. Major development: She finds a major clue regarding the missing child but is then attacked in the dark and the attacker gets away before she can see him.

4. More progress: The mansion’s owner denies everything. They have a conflict, she leaves pretending to give up but then secretly sneaks back into the property to continue her investigation.

5. Final challenge: she discovers who attacked her, defeats him, rescues the child.

A good example of this is Tuesday by Adrian Blue. While it’s technically a little longer than a novella and it features a romance plot, that could easily have been omitted to keep it under 25k and still have a very solid, atmospheric and well developed mystery.

And finally, we have the Elongated Short Story plot:

This typically features a single scene thrown in the middle of a much greater story that’s left untold. The character is often in motion right from the first paragraph and the introduction is woven throughout the action. There sometimes is a final fight and resolution, other times it’s simply a slice of life. The biggest distinction between a short story and a novella seems to be the beginning. There almost isn’t one. Short stories typically have very little setup and rely on the reader just taking the leap of faith and diving right in.

There really isn’t a particular beat structure to elongated short stories but I wanted to break down one in particular: The Conjurer’s Wife by Sarah Penner. This is described as a short story but it’s also in the 1 hour reads and clocks in at 40 pages. It also felt a little more like a novella than a short story to me, but was also kind of in between the two.

The Conjurer’s Wife begins “in media res” with the heroine on stage performing with her magician husband. Various magical tricks wow the audience while hinting at a darker secret between the heroine and her husband. During the performance short bits of exposition reveal to the reader that she has amnesia after having a terrible accident. Then the heroine finds out her husband’s secret and how he can cast spells. There is a “final fight” (obstacle) where she humiliates him on stage and earns her freedom from his magic.

It was a really good short story. Well written and really creative. I loved how this one was paced and was just the right length to tell the story it was trying to tell.

I also recommend the BOB’s Bar, Tales from the Multiverse two book series. These are a collection of shorts by some very popular sci fi authors. Some are simply short stories in the form of dirty jokes, some full novellas. A good variety found here. Take a look if you’re interested in the shorter side of short reads.

To wrap things up, I wanted to briefly talk about a few other novellas that I thought brought interesting approaches to storytelling:

Protective Mountain Man by Lilah Hart

A very solidly plotted short romance read. It hit all the beats, the expected mountain man tropes, and had great pacing. A great example of short romance that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but just tells a good story well.

Elven King and First Knight of the Elves, both by Arden March

These were interesting. They had the plot of a full novel but written in under 10,000 words. Sometimes I found the pacing to be too fast and the character's weren’t very nuanced, but the plots were solid. Worth reading if you want to see ways that a lot can happen in a short span.

Tuesday by Adrian Blue

I mentioned this one briefly before. It’s the longest novella I read and I really enjoyed it. It was a paranormal mystery werewolf romance detective story with strong gothic vibes and a complete plot and character development arc. The pacing was consistent throughout and a good example of how to write a novella that’s on the longer side of the spectrum.

And finally… Undercover by Tamsyn Muir

To be honest, this one wasn’t my favorite. I struggled to review it fairly and set aside my own reading preferences, but I have to hand it to the author for her originality. You will not find another book like this, and the structure was all there. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but worth reading simply to see a completely unique approach to writing a full and developed plot at just 59 pages.

Other recommendations