On Writing and Storytelling: So Much for the Modest Little Novella

So Much for the Modest Little Novella

I have an announcement.

The novella has escaped containment.

When I began And the Horse You Rode in On…, I envisioned a relatively modest story about Jim Garraty and Mark Prieto during an important period of their childhood. I knew where it began. I knew roughly where it was going. I figured I would tell the story, keep things reasonably compact, and move along.

The story had other plans.

We have now reached December 1976, and Jim and Mark are well into sixth grade, which in those days was still elementary school. But Jim is becoming increasingly aware that elementary school isn’t going to last much longer. Junior high looms on the horizon, an unfamiliar country waiting for him at the end of the school year.

He’s got enough to worry about before he gets there.

Sixth grade is more demanding than fifth grade was. There is homework. Lots of homework. Music has become increasingly important to Jim. Friendships are changing and becoming more complicated. The opposite sex is becoming considerably more difficult to ignore. And somewhere beyond all of that is seventh grade, apprehended mostly as a vague but increasingly unavoidable threat.

In other words, Jim has plenty to worry about.

And plenty of homework.

What surprised me is how naturally the story expanded once I stopped trying to make it fit the dimensions I originally imagined for it. Scenes that might have been summarized deserved to be lived. Supporting characters needed room to become people instead of scenery. Small moments began connecting with things readers already know about the adults Jim and Mark will eventually become.

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve realized that sixth grade deserves the room.

There’s something peculiar about that final year of elementary school. Jim and Mark are unquestionably still children, but the boundaries of childhood are beginning to shift around them. They’re discovering new interests, new complications, new ways of seeing other people and, occasionally, themselves.

That takes time.

So I’m finally calling And the Horse You Rode in On… what it appears determined to be:

A novel.

I’m not going to reveal much about where it’s headed. Half the fun is letting these discoveries arrive when Jim encounters them, and there are several things ahead that I very much want readers to experience without advance warning.

For now, though, I’m pleased with the progress.

My modest little story isn’t particularly modest anymore.

I think that’s a good problem to have.

And somewhere in December 1976, Jim Garraty still has several months of sixth grade ahead of him and junior high waiting on the other side.

I suppose I’d better keep writing.