Long Story Short

We are living in an age of contraction. Driven by digital communications, dominant forms of media are getting shorter. The average YouTube video is, according to the Pew Research Center, twelve minutes long; meanwhile, the average retention rate fluctuates around 50 percent — meaning six minutes is a sweet spot for our hacked attention spans. Brevity is no longer the soul of wit so much as the tiny window through which wit must leap, often to its death.

This seems to be an ideal time for the novella to take a turn in the spotlight. The literary equivalent of a tight half-hour of prestige TV, the novella — a complete work of prose fiction between 15,000 and 40,000 words, give or take — doesn’t get the love it deserves from contemporary publishing. Whereas both the short story and the novel are widely known forms with accompanying expectations, the novella isn’t as familiar. Not many...