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Hemingway

Let’s close this series of literary genres with the favorite of many readers – fiction.

Fiction is characterized by stories that are not true, stories with events, people, and sometimes even invented places and worlds, which teach us so many about our reality. Thus, a play like Hamlet is also fiction, as well as films, TV series, and comics. But today, we will focus on fiction as we see it in books.

With the rise of book distribution, and access to cinema, television and the internet, fiction has become one of the most marketable things today. Addressing several themes, fiction has a river of subgenres or genre-fiction like, Science Fiction, fantasy, romance novel, chick-lit, dystopia, suspense, detective novel, among others.

In terms of narration, we can highlight four different types of stories:

Novel: inaugurated in ancient Greece, with its peak in the 18th century, the novel is characterized by longer narratives, between 55,000 and 120,000 words (You can have more words than that, but they usually constitute Sagas). The best-seller “Cartas Salgadas” by our beloved CEO Alexandra Vidal is a novel, which tells the incredible story of Ana Gorcieux during WWII. Although the book has several interesting historical nuances, it is a work of fiction.

Novella: Novellas are shorter narratives, having between 30 and 50 thousand words. They are faster to read, with similar themes of novels. Novellas are an excellent way to start a career as a novelist.

Short stories: short stories are much shorter narratives than novels, and can have between 1.5 thousand and 30 thousand words. Short stories bring several important themes, and usually focus on two, three characters – unlike the novel, which has many more! They also bring a main theme, and it’s a great way to start a career. Today, several anthologies are publishing short stories on various subjects. You can enter the publishing market for a much more affordable price.

Flash fiction: flash fiction (or short fiction) is a genre that has become very common because of platforms like Twitter and Instagram, which limit the number of characters that can be posted at a time. This kind of narrative is composed of a few words, and the example that opens this post, a flash fiction by Hemingway, is one of the most famous examples.

So, enjoyed this post? Then here’s a challenge! Write a flash fiction today, post it on Instagram and mark @publisher.livra!