Novella: the Perfect Length for Horror
by Kelsea Yu
Having written everything from flash fiction to long novels, I’ve thought a great deal about what makes horror work at different lengths. And while I can fall for stories of any size, I do think there’s something special about the horror novella.
In horror short stories, the brevity is both blessing and curse. You can write a tale that feels like it could be told over a campfire. It’s easier to keep the suspense alive, and you can leave the ending open. Horror exists in the imagination, and when story length forces writers to be economical, the heavy lifting is done by the reader, whose mind is free to go wild with possibilities. But there’s also not much time to grow invested in the characters or to build up to the horrific climax.
Horror novels have all the space to explore emotional depths, and many of them do so beautifully. But maintaining reader interest is more challenging. On one end of the scale, there’s the Stranger Things problem, where the monster is only scary before we see it. On the other, continual vague hints at off-page horror can be wearying. It’s easy to tip from suspense into frustration—and once readers are there, it’s hard to pull them back in.
Novellas are the best of both worlds. At 17,500 to 39,999 words—as defined by The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as other major genre awards—there’s room to develop the characters and offer up glimpse into their pasts. There’s time to immerse readers in the setting, to build thick atmosphere that’s conducive to dread, but enough left unsaid to allow reader imaginations to flourish. You can show peeks at the monster, glimpses of the horror, without overstaying your welcome or exhausting your reader.
And once the horror begins, you can continue escalating through the end without worrying about breaks, about readers growing numb.
My first novella, Bound Feet, takes place over a single night in a haunted Chinese garden and ghost museum. Best friends Jodi and Sarah break in to perform a Ghost Day ritual honoring their deceased children. Not long after, Jodi glimpses something monstrous and, impossibly, hears her daughter’s voice. From there, the danger escalates throughout the night, along with Jodi’s desperation to find her child—in whatever form she might now exist.
In building the story, I allowed myself indulgence in the setting, leaning into the beauty—and the creepiness—of the garden. I had room to incorporate snippets of Chinese ghost folklore tales. I could dive deep into Jodi’s emotional state on the anniversary of the worst day of her life. And I loved being able to build each scene off the last, the horror sharpening and intensifying as the night went by—until, at last, it reveals itself at the climactic moment.
With my second novella, I struggled to find the right story length. It began as an attempt at a short story, but I found myself unable to fit everything I wanted in. It needed to expand—and so it did, over the course of years, into the novella that hit shelves this month.
In Demon Song, Megan recounts a tale of the summer she and her mom spent living in a haunted Chinese opera house. The most basic version of her backstory comes in a rush upfront—as it did in the original version—but as the novella progresses, she shares more bits and pieces from her past along with things she learns about her mom’s life. Meanwhile, the history of the opera house and the horror at its heart reveal themselves along the way, culminating in a final, dramatic ending. (Trying not to spoil anything here!)
Writing this tale at novella length allowed me to lean into the grandeur of the ancient opera house setting, incorporate snippets of a retold Monkey King folklore tale and Chinese history, give readers enough of Megan and her mom’s history to imagine the rest, and hint at what happens between the time of the tale and when Megan, now older, is recounting it. And it let me keep the entire story set in one place—something I tend to get bored of when writing novel length.
I appreciate the efficiency and economy of novellas, and I love that the horror genre has embraced them so wholeheartedly. Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth demonstrates escalation beautifully, both with the haunting by the ghost bride and with the increasing tensions between friends with complicated histories. In Linghun, Ai Jiang gives us a window into a strange, melancholy town while leaving enough to the imagination to let the story’s implications linger. P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout is enviably efficient, drawing upon horrific histories to build a base that need not be explained entirely on page while setting up for a powerful, supernatural twist.
Ashley Deng’s Dehiscent offers glimpses into a terrifyingly realistic future we can imagine all too well, focusing on those key moments that drive home the secret horrors behind the last safe haven in a dying world. And in Stargazers, L.P. Hernandez gives readers enough to feel invested in the father-daughter duo trying to survive a strange sort of apocalypse without overplaying the mystery of the horror.
J.A.W. McCarthy’s Sleep Alone, Laurel Hightower’s Crossroads, Eden Royce’s Hollow Tongue, and Catherynne M. Valente’s Comfort Me With Apples are also brilliant horror novellas that show off the beauty of the form.
I can’t speak to how any other authors conceptualize their novellas, but if you’re looking for a starting point, I can give you mine. Begin with a character or relationship. Dive into their past, give readers something about them to care about. And then, for one or two hundred pages, put them through the wringer. Strip them down until all that’s left is the thing they want most in the world, and make them pay for it, one way or another. And most of all, have fun!
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