One of Menlo’s new English electives, Novella Workshop, isn’t just another writing class — it’s a storytelling marathon. While traditional classes in the department focus on writing essays or analyzing books, Novella Workshop pushes beyond this to explore the art of long-form fiction. The class dares scholars to make complete novellas, stories that are around 80 to 120 pages long, within a single semester.
English teacher Oscar King IV, who created and currently teaches the course, saw a need for students to explore longer narratives. “There aren’t as many opportunities to do sustained, long-form work,” he explained. “You don’t get a lot of classes where you’re writing a novel the way we read novels.”
The course is made to help students enhance their creative and technical writing skills, while still offering tools to master long-form writing.
King structured the class so students with a variety of different writing styles can find success in it. “Some people want to outline the whole thing, while others are like, ‘I don’t know what’s happening in chapter five. I’m only on chapter two,’” he said. “The goal is to give students tools and let them pick what works best.”
The class has been a challenge for junior Kinsey Nam. “I was daunted by the idea of writing a 120-page book at first,” Nam said. “And I knew I probably wasn’t gonna be great at it, but I thought it would be cool to have the experience and have something to show for myself.”
So far, the class has exceeded her expectations. She’s already made a variety of improvements in her novella, and she has drastically improved her writing since her novella journey began.
A major challenge of the novella form is balancing brevity and depth — and being able to identify these qualities in one’s own work. “It’s like cooking,” King said. “How do you know if a soup is good? You taste it. How do you know if something is too long or shallow? You ask your peers.”
For Nam, balance has been a tricky obstacle to overcome. “In regular English classes, we learned to go deep into our writing,” she said. “But in a novella, you can’t focus on all of the small details. You have to move the plot forward.”
To improve her novella, workshopping and peer editing are a consistent help for Nam. “Reading other people’s novellas has really helped me make my own,” Nam said. By the end of the semester, all students will have not just a polished story, but a manifestation of all their hard work: a physical copy of their book.
Nonetheless, King makes sure students know that the overall takeaway for the class isn’t perfection, but growth. “The work of art isn’t the book, […] it’s you,” he said. “Do you have a better grasp of style, plot and character? Have you gained confidence? That’s what matters.”
