THE WRITERS INSTITUTE

Hugh Howey
The Novelette: Science Fiction's Little Jewel

3 days: Wednesday - Friday, November 14 - 16 | 2 - 5 p.m.

 

Course will take place at Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus

Want to register? Click here for instructions.

 

Over the course of three days, we will turn your idea for a science fiction story into a rough sketch of a novelette. Longer than a short story and shorter than a novella, the novelette has a storied history in the genre of science fiction. They fill anthologies, have graced all the great sci-fi magazines, and have launched many a career as a novelist. The novelette even has its own Hugo and Nebula award categories.

Ranging from 7,500 to 17,500 words, a novelette can be drafted in a few days, but they can take much longer to polish into perfection. We will discuss the challenges of fitting a beginning, middle, and end into a smaller frame, methods for developing characters in a handful of sentences, and how to fashion worlds in only a handful of words. By the end of the workshop, you should have the skeleton of a completed piece ready for revisions and then publication. We will also discuss how novelettes can be turned into longer works and why their commercial potential has exploded thanks to the digital revolution.

Hugh Howey's own novelette, Wool, sold hundreds of thousands of copies on its way to becoming a #1 science fiction bestseller on Amazon. Later serialized into a novel, it has been picked up by Random House for a hardback release in the UK this January. In Hollywood, the film rights were optioned by Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian. Collected into an omnibus, Hugh's novelettes have spent over four months in Amazon's top 100 list and landed on both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Hugh is a full time writer living in Jupiter, Florida with his wife Amber and their dog Bella.

Want to register? Click here for instructions.

 

Date and Time
Wednesday - Friday, November 14 - 16
2 - 5 p.m.

 

This is a non-credit course.