I’m still working on my vampire story, but I’ll have the first draft done before I go to bed tonight. I started it last Thursday, and my goal was to have it finished by Sunday night, but I trashed everything I wrote before Saturday multiple times and that put me behind where I’d hoped to be.
The experience of writing a short piece has been interesting. There isn’t a lot of room to let everything unfold the way there is in a full book, but I discovered this is a fun length to work with. Of course, I haven’t sent the first draft to my writing buddies yet either, so maybe the entire thing sucks (no pun intended) and then I won’t be thinking it’s that much fun after all. 
Because of the length, I did a couple of things. First, my hero and heroine have a past relationship, and though they didn’t stay together, they’re both still in love with each other. That allowed me (I think) to have a believable romance going on in the story. The second thing I did was keep the plot very simple and Seere and Isobel will be able to resolve it more quickly than any of my heroes and heroines get to do in my longer stories. I hardly even tortured them either unless you count the time they’ve spent apart.
I did surprise myself a little, though. I hadn’t planned on doing any world building. Because of how short it is, I thought I’d just go with standard vampire lore, but that isn’t the way it worked. Isobel gave me a ton of information on her people. I doubt that any of it is earth shatteringly different, but it isn’t the standard Hollywood vampire background either. There’s also very little of this in the story–just enough for things to make sense–but I think it adds a richness to what is there because I know so many more facts and details.
The weird thing is that I never wanted to write vampires because I didn’t feel as if I had anything new to say, but after this story, I’ve become really interested in the world and I would like to explore it more. Of course, now vampires have been done to death and I’ve got other story ideas that are more unique I’d like to write, too, so I think it ends here. I’m glad, though, that I agreed to do this and spend time in this world with this h/h.
WTG, Patti! Writing short is really, really hard. I want to write a 20K novella next month and I may try the same trick of giving the hero/heroine a past off stage that I can build on. The worldbuilding will kill me, because I’ve spent an entire month+ on it already.
I can’t wait for this antho — I love vampire stories!
The past relationship is a good idea. And simple is always best.
My agent won’t even look at my vampire stories. She says she can’t sell them. And I want to say “but, but, but…” with True Blood on HBO and Twilight being so…so..saturating, I thought there would be another swing for new vampires. Ah well…
Thanks, Joely!
My novella in Shards of Crimson was 20,000 words and that was actually a harder length than the vampire story. This one needed to be around 6500 words. I, of course, went longer and came in around 7800.
Having a past helps because of the space and there were times I had to pull out sentences because it wasn’t necessary to the story, but it was world building stuff that I knew.
Good luck with your novella!
Patti
Hi Rene,
With this word count, it had to be really simple.
But it worked out okay and I had fun, so that’s important.
I’m not surprised about your agent and the vampire stories. The market has been so inundated with them that it’s going to take a while before editors want to see any more. IMO, of course.
Patti