The length of a story has more impact on the nature of a story than people realize. In a previous post, I wrote about how there is a minimum number of words necessary to do a story justice. This is particularly the case when working in the short story form. However, what many writers don’t realize is that the length of the story will help to define the expectations of a reader when it comes to world building, character development and pacing. There will also be a literary expectation imposed by word counts.
With the publishing industry, you have six broad categories for story length: flash fiction, short stories, novelette, novella, short novel and long novel.
It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty and explain the difference between these different categories and the reader expectations involved.
Flash Fiction (typically 40 to 500 words)
Flash fiction comprises of story snippets that are complete within themselves, ranging from 40 words to 500 words. Some will argue that flash fiction can be up to 1,000 words, but at that length, you are starting to crossover into short stories.
Writing flash fiction takes a specific talent. Never make the assumption that because you can write short stories that you can write good flash fiction. There’s a skill that builds layer upon layer, and the style of writing required is rarely seen in longer forms of work. Each word needs to take full advantage of metaphors and multiple meanings of words. As such, most flash fiction will be literary in nature.
This is one form of writing that I have never mastered myself, and I won’t edit it, but I do enjoy reading a good flash fiction.
Short Story (1,000 to 8,000 words)
Short stories are nominally between 1,000 to 8,000 words. Saying that, I have seen some short stories as long as 10,000 words. If you are getting up to 15,000 words, you are moving into the novelette range. Most publications for short stories will restrict submission to anywhere between 1,500 to 5,000 words. Saying that, I have seen one that specified 5,000 words to 10,000 words. (Anything under 5000 words would be rejected by that one publication.)
Short stories must be complete within themselves. They can be part of a bigger world, a slice of life for the character, but a reader should be able to pick up a short story and instantly understand the world that the story is in and feel like the story is over when they get to the end.
As mentioned in the post Is my story too short?, the number of words you have at your disposal will dictate the number of characters and the MICE elements that you can have in the story. If you try to do too much, the story will feel incomplete. While the MICE quotient was discussed in detail in that previous post, just as a reminder, MICE stands for Milieu (stories about getting out of a location that the characters might be trapped in), Inquiry (stories that ask questions and seek answers), Character (internal conflicts of a character) and Event (characters reacting to external events).
If your story is say 2000 words or less, then you are likely looking at a single character with a single MICE element. However, stories that are getting up to 8000 words will have the space to play with a larger cast and more MICE elements.
Please refer to the post Is my story too short? for a full discussion on the MICE quotient and the impact that the number of words in a short story has on the cast size and the number of MICE elements that you can incorporate.
Novelette (up to 20,000 words)
The novelette is the true hybrid between the short story form and the novel form. Like the short story, novelettes must be complete, but because they have more word counts, they can delve deeper into the world.
Stories of the novelette length border on the historical limitations of publishing in print. Something that is 20,000 words would have been somewhere between 60 to 80 pages, depending on the typesetting used, putting the book at approximately half a centimeter (5 mm or 0.2 of an inch) in thickness. Printing a spine on a book that thick can be done, but it requires careful layout for the cover. IngramSpark requires a minimum of 48 pages in uploaded files before they will print on the spine. KDP (aka Amazon) require 100 pages before they will print on the spine.
However, the introduction of the eBook reader has seen an increase in the stories of this length. Most writers tend to use them as leader magnets (something that you get for free if you sign up for a newsletter), and readers do seem to like them. It’s just long enough to get a proper taste of a given world, but it’s not too long that you’re investing hours, if not days, into reading a story that you may or may not enjoy.
Those who write science fiction or fantasy might be interested to know that the Writers of the Future contest will accept submissions up to 17,000 words. Only new writers (those without any publications of note) are eligible.
Novella (up to 40,000 words)
Novellas are like novelettes in the sense that they are the hybrid between the short story form and the novel; however, novellas are up to 40,000 words. In many ways, these can be considered short novels, but the word counts are such that they would be treated differently within book stores.
Novellas have found a home within the digital publishing world. Again, many writers will use novellas as leader magnets. However, publishers like Tor.com specialize in publishing novellas. (Be advised that at the time of publication for this post, Tor.com was closed to unsolicited submissions. They do occasionally have open submissions, where you don’t need an agent, but those opportunities are rare.)
The Short Novel (50,000 to 60,000 words)
Anything that is 50,000 words or longer is classified a novel, but I have to put the classification of a short novel in a different category to the novel for a reason—a historical reason.
Short novels are in the order of 50,000 to 60,000 words. Middle grade books typically fall into this category. So too does certain genres within adult fiction, such as romance, crime noir, and westerns. Many pulp fiction stories fall into this category too. However, in some book stores, adult works of this length are clarified as magazines.
Think about Mills & Boon romance novels. The longest of these will be 65,000 words, but most are in the order of 50,000 words. Any printed copies have a short shelf life, sitting on the shelves for at most 4 months. There is always a limited print run, and the price of them falls into the same bracket as a magazine. (Historically, they were first sold at the street-corner magazine stand, and only for that month.)
While the internet era has changed the mentality towards the short novel, the treatment is still there within certain book stores.
A reader’s expectations of a short novel will depend on the genre and the age category. It really comes down to knowing your genre.
The (Long) Novel
As mentioned above, anything that is 50,000 words or longer is a novel, and there is no upper limit as to how long a novel can be. The opus novel can easily clock in at over 150,000 words. Terry Goodkind’s first novel, Wizard’s First Rule, was over 290,000 words. The first book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, was also over 290,000 words.
Yes, fantasy and science fiction are known for large word counts, a function of the world building, but writers should keep in mind publication costs when writing an opus novel. Let’s ignore the fact that something that large will likely have developmental editing issues (even Terry Goodkind has significant issues with repetition, and he still does), but the actual cost to print a book that size and ship it around the world can make publishing something over 150,000 words not worth it. The cost of editing dramatically increases when you are looking at manuscripts of this length.
Regardless of the length of story that you are writing, understand that there will be a limitation on your character- and world-building imposed by your word counts. There is no way you can develop the same level of world-building found in a 100,000-word novel into a flash fiction or a short story. It’s just not possible.
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Copyright © 2019 Judy L Mohr