Questions

[mikemoring]

So for quite a long time now I have periodically promised to update with the lengthy novella-style entry that I'd been preparing to write for ages. The intended post became evermore problematic, though, as life became evermore complicated (creating a more difficult piece to write, and less time to write it

Comments

[earlsacrey]

1) The person who was here before me has THE most genius question ever.

2) This isn't really an actual heart-and-soul-rending question, but I'm curious anyway. Given that the Oxford English Dictionary defines a novel as:

"A long fictional prose narrative, usually filling one or more volumes and typically representing character and action with some degree of realism and complexity; a book containing such a narrative."

With an added note that is "freq. contrasted with a romance, as being shorter and having more relation to real life."

And also given that the Writing Event's web-site itself says that "We define a novel as 'a lengthy work of fiction.' Beyond that, we let you decide whether what you're writing falls under the heading of 'novel.'"

I'm curious to know just how much 'fiction' you intend to write when you call what you're doing a novel. Is this piece going to be:
1) Heavily fictionalized.
2) Mostly the truth with zesty accents of improvement.
3) The truth with some of the gnarly bits left out.
4) The entire cold, hard, unforgiving truth.

You don't have to stick with these options, of course, they just seemed like a good scale to me.