Why write a novella instead of a novel?

The facile answer is that telling a story in so short a space is a real challenge for a writer. For an author, writing a novella is to a novel what tatting lace is to weaving blankets: part of the telling is what’s not there.

Ironically, in writing about first-century topics we find either a wealth of information or a dearth of information. With that in mind, that leaves me developing novellas with a great deal to invent and a great deal deduced. I have to fit what I create into what is already known, and I have to do it in a way that says something new. Many novelists have told and retold familiar stories of well-known women of the Bible. My approach to writing novellas is to tell unusual stories about little-known women in the Bible that don’t ignore, retell, or reinterpret what is in scripture.

I choose for my main characters women who encounter Jesus personally. The challenge in developing them is keeping them consistent with Judaism in their initial attitudes, behavior and results and then shifting those attitudes, behaviors and results after they encounter Jesus. The shift I describe needs to be consistent with generally accepted Christian principles.

All of my main characters meet with frustration because what they believe influences what they do and creates results that they don’t want. They try to change what they have first and it doesn’t work. Even today – 2,000 years later – we, ourselves, try to change things we have thinking that it will make a difference in who we are. Jesus changes who they are first, and that makes all the difference in their lives.

The challenge of the novella is to illustrate this process in 120 pages.