A writer asks Alle: “Can my novel-in-stories stand alone as shorts/a novella?”

Alle C. Hall
1 min readMar 6, 2024

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Do you think I should try to submit excerpts as short stories? Look for an agent?

If you are publishing a novella, 40–50K is a good word count to aim for. A novelette comes in at 7,700–17,500 words.

For most agents to be interested in the project, you will need to bring it up to at least 70K words. You can do a lot of research on lit mags that take novellas, but I think you will have better luck placing short stories.

It takes me a ton of work to adapt a chapter into a story, but I’ve done it six times, all resulting in publication: New World Writing. Tupelo Quarterly, Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, and Another Chicago. This one placed as first finalist for The Lascaux Prize.

I list in the order which the chapters appear in As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back.

If you’d like to receive my article about adapting short pieces from a longer work, subscribe (always free!) to my newsletter or coerce one other person to do so. Let me know that you did so: theonlyallehall@gmail.com

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Alle C. Hall

Author, teacher, speaker. Novel: As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back: 11 honors, incldng Nancy Pearl Book Award finalist & two #1 Kindle spots.