How do you tell how long a story is? (Patreon)

This is a question that’s been on my mind recently, since I’m now on (at least) the second story that seems to be bigger than I expected.

I often borrow a phrase from the late science fiction writer Algis Budrys and say that (nearly) all stories start with a character in a context with a problem: the beginning of your story’s going to define who your main character is, what their situation is, and some kind of difficulty for them. The story is about them trying to solve the problem, encountering complications, and eventually succeeding or failing, followed by a dénouement that re-centers the main character in their new normal. Budrys makes this a neat little diagram:

If I was pressed to define the difference between a vignette and a story without resorting to “a vignette is shorter,” I might say that a vignette shortcuts this. The vignettes about Saida being eaten all have a character (Saida) in a context (wherever that incarnation of Saida is) with a problem (somebody is going to eat her), but there’s not really any middle to those pieces—they jump straight to the end. (How will Saida get out of being eaten by Red Savina, Clover, or Miss Flint? She won’t.) So that’s one way of looking at, although there’s a better way I’ll get to in a minute.

But, Budrys’s diagram loosely describes a story whether it’s the length of “Disruption” (5,000 words), Big Trouble (25,000 words), or Moira (130,000 words). Just like the vignette, the key is really in the middle there.

In “Disruption,” Tyler’s problem is that his game studio is failing rather than somehow taking him toward world domination. He tries to solve the problem by summoning demons. This creates another problem—the demon mice—quite beyond his ability to solve. (From Tyler’s perspective, this story certainly doesn’t end in validation, but it does from the reader’s, since they presumably want to see Tyler fail spectacularly and see sexy demons wrecking shit.)

In Big Trouble, Nora’s problem is the case that Elsa brings to her in the first chapter. Then it becomes who’s blackmailing Edgar. Then it becomes who killed Elsa. And what East-West is actually smuggling. And psycho bunny model. And so on. You’ll often see writing instruction that refers to “try/fail cycles”; this is what Nora is going through repeatedly.

Moira’s problem is…well, poorly defined initially, because the first few episodes are vignettes written without an eye toward a larger story to tell. But ultimately, her problem is that she’s a goddess who all but renounced her divinity after the other gods abandoned her. She slowly rediscovers her purpose in the face of a new, unexpected threat to the mortal world, and comes to unexpected revelations about why she’s still there and what she needs to do.

So in a short story, there’s really not much more than Budrys’s seven points: you have a problem and you have a failure to solve it, but you don’t have a lot of time to go past that. The more try/fail cycles you have, the more likely the story is to be a novella or even a novel.

But. As I’ve learned the hard way (on a non-macro project that took years and years to get off the ground), a novel isn’t just a novella stretched out.

A while back, I talked about how stories have a plot arc and a character arc. The plot arc drives the story: in “Heavy Forces,” the plot is about Jed the mercenary trying to help his team stop Saffron the rampager-for-hire from destroying Port Firecloud. The character arc drives the theme, and illustrates the main character changing (or, in some cases, deciding to remain steadfast): Jed comes to the disquieting realization that the giant jackal woman stomping the spaceport is actually the good guy and he’s with the villains.

So here’s the other way of looking at vignettes that might be better: it’s true they don’t really have middles, but they also don’t truly have character arcs. In a short story, a character generally has some kind of epiphany. The “So-and-so eats Saida” vignettes aren’t about Saida coming to any meaningful realization (“here we go again” doesn’t count). In the “Mouse Vignettes,” Hellain the mouse arguably does have an arc over the course of the entire series, but you only really see that when taken as a whole—when it’s seen as an episodic story.

So what’s the difference between a novella and a novel beyond word count, then? Well, it gets back to those complications. In a novella, there’s still usually only room for one character arc, maybe two. Nora in Big Trouble doesn’t have much of an arc, but detectives rarely do; the character who changes the most is arguably Edgar, who’s in a markedly different place—thematically, not just physically—at the story’s end than he was at the start. In Moira, though, most of the characters have thematic arcs, from the new goddesses learning to use their power more responsibly to Parker deciding that remaining true to what she believes requires her to make some drastic changes in the last act.

Okay. So. Great. How do you know how long your story is?

Well, for Hurricane, I didn’t intend to write something too long, but the more notes I filled out, the more it seemed like I had something…complicated. It was Serrano’s origin story, but Serrano is supposed to be related to Chipotle, who now has a canonical version from Saida & Autumn. So that makes this a Mensura story. If it’s Serrano’s origin story, then it probably takes place before S&A, which changes which characters are available to me (Autumn and Jen most likely aren’t students there yet, for instance). S&A also made the band that Serrano was in with her cousin Chiltepin canonical, so that should be part of the story. Last but definitely not least, if Serrano ends up being able to do what she did in “Coyote Sky,” how does that fit in Mensura? She can’t destroy it! And why isn’t she known as a literal storm goddess there?

I came up with some tentative answers in notes, but…like I said. Complicated.

So this is the real measure, maybe: you get a sense of how long your story’s going to be when you get a sense of just what the story you’re going to tell is. Not just who your main character is, what her context is, and what her problem is, but who’s around her and what their problems are. Does the story involve her trying to find out what the problem is? Does it turn out the problem isn’t what she thinks it is? If someone’s causing the problem, what’s their rationale for it? What do they want, and how do they get tangled up with the protagonist?

That’s enough for a novella. For a novel, there’s going to be more people involved, bringing in their own wants and needs, issues and motivations. Chiltepin wants Serrano in her new band, perhaps, but Serrano’s resistant—she’s struggled to make it on her own as a performer, and she’s resentful of Chiltepin’s relative success. And maybe we start out with a problem that’s mysterious to Serrano: who can she call in to solve it? Well, by happenstance (or not?), she lives in a town that has a college of wizards right there.

So now we have Serrano with multiple problems: she’s struggling in her career (and if she’s broke, that brings a whole host of other problems, like making rent). She has a complicated relationship with her more successful sibling, which makes it hard for her to accept the (possible) lifeline that joining the new band would represent. The story’s main plot driver is something in her life weird enough that she wants to see if she can find a consulting wizard. And, as the writer, I aim to get from there to her getting the powers of a storm spirit. Is that good or bad for her? Will she be a responsible demigoddess? (“Coyote Sky” suggests “ha ha ha, no.”) And, oh yes, nobody else in her family is a ’taur and we haven’t seen any in Mensura yet, so if that’s canon, how do we explain that?

And this is how you end up with a story that’s bigger than you expect. It’s not just “I have some big destruction scenes in mind.” You’ve got more threads to weave together, more questions to answer, more themes to burrow into.

Also, I may have some big destruction scenes in mind.