Novel, serial novel, novella?

If one story covers three books (such as The Lord of the Rings), it's a trilogy. (Or duology for two books, or whatever.)

If it's separate stories set in the same world around the same characters (such as Dresden Files), it's a series.

Some series have elements of both, such as Harry Potter. Each book stands alone, but they do tell a single story arc.

There are other variables, too.

The difference between a novella and a novel is length (by word count), and the cut-off between the two is pretty grey, plus can vary between genres.

It's hard to advise you on your situation, because 'pages' is pretty meaningless -- there are bazillions of ways to format a page, affecting the word count per page. An actual word count would be more helpful.

scifi_writer said:

Good point. Part one is 54,000 words (sci fi/space opera). It's not the same three main characters as the Harry Potter series, but each part shifts focus between a small group of characters all in the same world. From a word count perspective, I think that falls into novella, but I don't want to give the impression that each part stand absolutely alone. They mostly do, but they're meant to connect eventually into a large, multi-character story arc.

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Okay, for SF/F, I'd say 54K is a novella. If they're all around the same length, I'd call it a novella trilogy.

Unless, of course, it's for kids (either YA or MG), in which case I'd call them novels.

One note: there is a difference between a serial and a series. In a series you have complete stories in the installments, and there is an overriding story arc to encompass all the individual books. harry potter is one good example. There was a conflict resolved in each book, but the overriding conflict with Voldemort wasn't resolved until the final installment.

In a serial, you are getting a chunk of the story with no resolution. it's like the story being dolled out chapter by chapter, no small story arc, only the overriding one. The only recent large serial that is coming to mind is Karen Marie Moning's Fever books. Read reviews of those to see the downside of a serial.

John Scalzi also just wrote a serial called The Human Division. It was released in weekly ebooks of around 10K words each (I believe), and has since been published in a single volume, print and ebook.