It's a Long Story

by John M. Floyd

I have often heard fiction writers say, "Write whatever you like, but make sure it's either long enough to be a novel or short enough to be a short story."  Meaning, of course, that anything in between is hard to sell.  And what's in between is called a novella.

Hiking into No Man's Land

Marketability is of course not quite as big an issue these days, since the publishing and self-publishing of e-books has allowed novellas to be presented as easily as novels and shorts--but the novella does remain something of an oddity.  For those writers (like me) who continued to publish quite a few stories the traditional way, there just aren't many print markets out there that will consider novella-length manuscripts.  Very few high-circulation magazines accept novella submissions, and not many anthologies either.  The only easy way to publish novellas in print form seems to be via collections by established authors like Stephen King, who group four of five of them together in a book.

This past year, I sat down just after the Christmas holidays, when all our kiddos and grandbabies had left and our house was as quiet at Tut's tomb, and wrote a 16,000-word western mystery.  That's not quite in novella range (some editors consider the starting point to be around 20K) but it's close enough to make that story difficult to sell.  So why did I write it?  And why didn't I at least make it shorter or longer, so it would "fit in"?  Well, if you're a writer, you know the answer to that: some stories just have to be a certain length.  To have added more would have seemed like "padding" and to have taken anything out would have hurt the story.  As it turned out, I'm satisfied with it--but I do realize there's a real possibility that the manuscript might never be read by anyone but me, and that I might one day wind up using it for scratch paper, or to prop up a wobbly table leg.

Lights, camera, action

There seems to be only one real advantage to writing novella-length stories: they translate well into screenplays.  When a short story is adapted to film, something has to be added to it.  (Example: 3:10 to Yuma.  Elmore Leonard's short story begins when the two main characters are already in town, sitting in the hotel room; by the time that scene happens in the most recent film version, the movie's more than halfway done.)  Conversely, when a novel is adapted to the screen, something has to be left out.  (Example: almost any novel/movie you can think of.)  So far as I know, there are only three ways to successfully avoid those problems:

1. Adapt a novel into a miniseries (Centennial, Lonesome Dove, Shogun, The Winds of War).

2.  Adapt a short story into a short film or a half-hour TV drama (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, One Step Beyond, Death Valley Days, Twilight Zone).

3.  Adapt a novella.

Again, well-written novellas usually become good movies.  I'm reminded here of two by Stephen King: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and The Body.  Those were adapted into the outstanding films The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont) and Stand by Me (Rob Reiner), and I believe one of the many reasons that both were so good was that they were so faithful to the original stories.  There was little need to either trim or inflate them.  The same holds true for Norman Maclean's novella A River Runs Through It, which became the excellent movie by Robert Redford.

Notable novellas

I can't resist listing a dozen of my favorites:

The Postman Always Rings Twice -- James M. Cain

The Time Machine -- H. G. Wells

Of Mice and Men -- John Steinbeck

The Mist -- Stephen King

The Third Man -- Graham Greene

I Am Legend -- Richard Matheson

Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad

Tenkiller -- Elmore Leonard

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- P. K. Dick

Legends of the Fall -- Jim Harrison
Shopgirl -- Steve Martin

The Call of the Wild -- Jack London

NOTE: Many of the above did result in darn good movies.  And some didn't.

Just a few questions, ma'am . . .

What are some of your favorite novellas?  In general, do you find them more enjoyable than novels or shorts?  Less enjoyable?  Do you have a preference?  (I don't.  To me, length doesn't matter if the story's good.)

Besides, the term "novella" is subjective.  I've heard people refer to A Christmas Carol as a short story and to The Old Man and the Sea as a novel.  But who really cares?  Good fiction is good fiction.

I also heard someplace that if you'd like to read Herman Melville and you aren't in the mood to read 800 pages about a hunt for a sperm whale, Billy Budd is a reasonable alternative.  (Sounds reasonable to me.)

. . . and a definition

The following silly poem might be a good way to close this silly discussion.  I call it "In Literary Terms."

"A short story's simple, but what's a 'novella'?"

Joe asked writing teacher Ms. West;

"And how do I know 'novelettes' when I see them,

And what's a 'short novel'?" he pressed.

"In fact, why not just call all three the same thing?"

Joe continued while scratching his head.

Ms. West just leaned forward, face solemn, eyes twinkling;

"Well, that's a long story," she said.

Stealing Slicks

For those of you wondering what calf brandings and riding along Custer's Trail (dealt with in my last two blogs) has to do with Sleuth Sayer's theme of mystery, crime and criminals, hang on, this is where it all comes together.
About mid-career, the agency sent me back east to Conspiracy School. Here, the Wise Men taught us how to use evidence from already existing cases along with witness testimony in order to bring grand jury indictments against drug suppliers further up in the hierarchy. It was a way to reach out and touch some of the hard to get guys. To implement this training, I took full advantage of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines which stated that a defendant could get a lesser sentence if he cooperated.

The starting point for this cooperation was for the defendant to sit down with me for several hours in which he provided details of every deal he'd ever done, to include the who, the where, the when, the amounts, how it was transacted and what telephone records, motel records, airline tickets, vehicle rentals, financial records or other evidence might exist for me to build a case, even if the supplier was in another country. It was grueling work, building a time line and going over and over the facts to pry out any useful gem of information.

At the end of our sessions, I had learned to ask three simple questions:

1. Have I asked all the right questions?
2. Is there anything else you haven't told me?
3. Are there any other crimes we need to talk about?

It seems that once, during a call back interview when I confronted a defendant about leaving out some information in a previous session, his excuse was that I hadn't asked the right questions, thus my utilization of Questions 1 & 2.However, it was the answers to Question #3 that sometimes provided unexpected stories. Like the time I debriefed a guy we'll call Charlie Lewis.

Charlie was a hired ranch hand who had fallen in with bad companions, although in his case it didn't take much to get there. Seeing the high rate of financial return and the low work requirements for dealing dope, as opposed to pulling calves and tending livestock for other people, Charlie became an entrepreneur at a low rent motel. Unfortunately, his desire for easy money put together with his ignorance of the downside to this type of business soon had him sporting some shiny, new wrist jewelry.

So, when I got to Question #3 with Charlie, his reply was, "Well, I used to steal slicks."

Now, I had no idea why anybody would want to steal bald tires, and it must have showed in my response.

"Slicks?"

"Yeah," said Charlie as he proceeded to educate me about "slick" being a reference to an unbranded calf, one which still had a slick or unmarked hide, and therefore was easy to sell to an auction barn with loose requirements. His tale went something like this.

In the dark of night, Charlie and one of his hard-up-for-cash, thieving partners would park their pickups and livestock trailers on a lonely country road not too far from a pasture gate. They'd saddle up their horses, open the gate and ride through some rancher's vast grass land until they found part of his herd. Naturally, they picked a ranch which hadn't gotten around to branding yet.

Rounding up as many "slicks" as the two of them could handle, they herded them back to the gate and into the livestock trailers. Afterwards, they drove all night to a stock yard down in Nebraska where a one-eyed stock dealer would purchase the calves with no questions asked. However, there was one midnight roundup which still bothered Charlie.

They'd gathered up some slicks and were headed back to the pickup when it started raining hard, and finally got down right miserable trying to keep their small herd together. Spying a deserted ranch house nearby, the two partners decided to pen the calves up inside the house and shut the door. Then, they'd go home, get dried out and rested up, and come back in the morning to retrieve their ill gotten gains.

The next morning, Charlie's partner failed to show up and get him. Charlie waited until well after daybreak before deciding to drive out to the deserted ranch house and load the calves up himself. But, when he arrived at the abandoned house, it was empty. Later, Charlie heard that his so-called partner had been spending lots of money in the local bars down by the Rez, As Charlie sadly lamented, "There really is no honor amongst thieves." And, that was the end of his tale, but not the end of the story.

Years later, on one of the Custer Trail Rides, that ole cowboy, that I'd helped round up his beef and then trail them off goverment pasture and over to his ranch land, came up to me in camp.

"I hear you know Charlie Lewis," he said.

"That's right," I replied. "How do you know him?"

"I hired him straight out of college to help me at calving time."

That was news to me. I had no idea Charlie had ever gone to college. The old rancher soon clued me in that "college" was a local euphemism for prison, because it was an institution where those in attendence got educated into all types of crime.

I had to admit, he had a point.

"Yeah," he continued, "and when we got done with calving that year and I got to tallying up the count, I happened to mention in front of Charlie that we were a couple of calves shy."

I immediately began to wonder if the rancher suspected Charlie of being up to his old tricks.

"Nope," replied the rancher, "Charlie was so happy I'd given him a job so he could get out of college a few months early that he made me an offer on the shortage."

"Don't worry about the missing ones," Charlie is reported to have said. "I know where I can get you a couple of slicks to replace those two."

The old rancher hurriedly declined Charlie's generous offer, but I've often wondered how Charlie turned out after that. Last I heard, he had a good job working for an interstate company. Could be an interesting situation, depending upon how often they update their inventory.

The Asparagus Bed

I've had out of town guests the last week and a half.   New composition was out of the question.  So, for your reading enjoyment (I hope), a story of mine that was published in "Green Prints", a gardening magazine, in August of 2002.  Also, historically, the first appearance of Officer Grant Tripp...

     By the end of May, Mary Olson’s future asparagus bed was five feet wide by eight feet long and getting deeper every day.  It looked, we all agreed, just like a grave, and the only question was what to bury in it.  Most of us put her husband at the top of the list, but not Mary.

     “Not on your life!” Mary cried.  “I plan to be eating from this patch for twenty years, and that means I’ve got to lay down enough fertilizer to feed it all that time.  Now you tell me, would you want to be eating off of Ed for twenty years?”  You couldn’t argue with that.

     Nobody had ever seen Mary work so hard.  She’d come home from working at the water treatment plant at four, and head straight for the back yard.  Felix, her cat, was right behind her as always, silent and stiff-legged. He was eighteen years old and he followed her like a dog.  She’d pet him a bit, set her beer can on top of the fence post, pick up the shovel, and have at it.

     She dug it all by hand.  The shovel was way too tall for her, but she wouldn’t use the short kind because they threw her back out.  She wore big heavy work boots and tied her head up in a bandanna to keep the mosquitoes out of her ears.  Her hair, linen yellow and tightly permed, poofed up over the bandanna just like a poodle’s.  From the neck up she looked like Rosie the Riveter; from the neck down like Roseanne.

     You never saw anyone dig so carefully.  She kept the sides straight as a ruler, sifted the dirt clean of trash, and clipped the roots away instead of hacking them with the shovel.  The cleaned dirt went into a big pile by the hole, the roots and trash into a paper sack.  She took her time, and since Ed always lingered down at Mellette’s Lounge, she had plenty of it.  Two hours and two beers, with Felix curled up in his favorite spot under the lilacs, watching her sweating hard, creating the ultimate in cat boxes.  Well, don’t you think that’s what he thought about it?

     God knows what Ed thought about it.  Maybe he didn’t.  As long as he had his dinner hot and ready whenever he floated on home, he didn’t care.  Mary said his favorite meal was frozen fish filets, microwaved to perfection, so the menu wasn’t hard to plan.  She bought them by the case, along with boxed macaroni and cheese dinners and canned green beans, and that’s about what they lived on, because Ed wouldn’t eat anything else and neither would Mary.

     Which is why I wondered about the bed.  I mean, if Mary had finally developed a yen for fresh asparagus, all she had to do was go out and hunt it in ditches like the rest of us.  Instead, there she was, every afternoon except rain and Sundays, digging away.  Oh, well.  Actually, it turned into quite a tourist attraction.  Everyone dropped by sooner or later.  Mary would stand back and sip her beer while Felix hid and we all looked and nodded and wondered, by the time it was a foot and a half deep, if it wasn’t deep enough.

     “I’ve got to go down another foot or so,” Mary said.  “That’s what double digging’s all about.  Then I can work in a couple of good thick layers of manure covered with dirt, and then I can lay out my roots.”  We all nodded like we’d just finished doing the same ourselves.  “I want it to last my lifetime at least, so I’ve got to do it right the first time.”  And we all nodded again like it was gospel.

     She dug the bed two feet deep.  She dug the bed three feet deep, and the kids started asking if she was digging to China.  She dug the bed four feet deep and we started worrying a little, especially when Ed went off to the VFW one night and never came back.  No one even remembered seeing him arrive.  After he was missing three days, Mary called the police and Grant Tripp came out and talked with her while she worked the bed.  They talked about the weather, Ed’s gambling, asparagus, Ed’s drinking, Mary’s cousin (Grant’s wife’s brother-in-law), Ed’s gambling, the weather, and Ed’s drinking.  It was only after Grant got back in his car that he realized Mary had been filling the asparagus bed in instead of digging it out.
    Things got a bit strange after that.  Folks started giving Mary funny looks everywhere she went, like they were trying to gauge if she was big enough to lug a dead man around, and she certainly looked like she was.  After a while she quit going out much, except to get groceries and beer, and when she did she jerked and snapped and glared at you when you spoke to her.  She was way too sensitive about everything, I thought.  I mean, it wasn’t our fault we couldn’t quit thinking about that hole in her back yard.  

     That’s why it was a real psychological relief when Judge Dunn okayed the warrant to search Mary’s house and property.  Grant was there the next day, with two officers, two workers from Hegdahl’s Construction, and a back hoe.  The officers went inside while the back hoe went to work outside.  Mary stood by her back steps and watched them with a face like granite.  And her face collapsed like a mud slide when they dug up Felix.

     We’d all been so worried about Ed that no one had noticed that Felix hadn’t been around for a while, either.  He was so old he must have just died in his sleep, and Mary had buried him in the back yard, the way most of us do, in his favorite spot.

     Well, everyone felt awful, looking at poor Felix, lying in the middle of all that mess.  Mary’s back yard looked like someone had taken an egg beater and whipped dirt everywhere.  It was piled two feet deep in the lilacs alone.  Grant and the back hoe boys offered to help clean it up, but Mary said she thought the cure would be worse than the disease, so everyone went home and left her to it.  It wasn’t until after dinner that it finally dawned on people that Felix’s favorite spot was under the lilacs, not in the bed.  The back hoe was back out at Mary’s the next day.

     This time Mary didn’t come out, and I can’t say I blame her.  I mean, she knew what was out there, and she knew they’d find it, even if they had to tear those lilacs apart.  But Mary hadn’t had time to dig under those tough, tall lilacs.  She’d dug beside them, and the backhoe didn’t have far to go before Ed’s body was found. 

     Mary went to jail, and her sister sold the house to the Corsons, a farm couple from Canova.  They’ve lived there for ten years now, and every year, that asparagus bed comes up thick and lush and mouth-watering.  Not that anybody picks any of it.  I mean, we all know Ed wasn’t under there that long, or that near, but as Mrs. Corson says, you can’t be too careful. 

But I’ll tell you what, Mary knew what she was talking about.  You do your asparagus bed right the first time, double-dug and heavy on the fertilizer, and it’ll last a lifetime.  

THE END

NOTE:  The inspiration for this story was that I dug an asparagus bed in my back yard, by hand.  I have no living resemblance to Rosie the Riverter or Rosanne (yet), but other than that, it's fairly accurate, down to the beloved cat watching me dig the world's largest litter box.  Many, many people came by and watched me dig, because around here most people get their asparagus wild, from ditches.  Many people, beginning with my husband, commented how the bed looked remarkably like a grave.  Many people suggested that my husband watch out.  My husband is still on the right side of the soil, but the asparagus bed did not make it - a winter from hell killed almost everything, including my lush, thick asparagus bed...  It almost broke our hearts.  Back to the ditches...