what counts as a short story?

what would be described as a short story? (min. number of words and max. number of words) my novel so far is 11,500 words so short or long story?

R x

*moved to Fiction Discussion*

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In my opinion, there is no law set in stone. There's no minimum or maximum. Generally good sense works here. Something under 1000 words is usually considered flash fiction, that is, fiction produced on the spin. Short stories are usually between 1000 and sometimes up to 10,000 words, although those at the upper limit are quite long.

You said you were writing a novel, and it's 11,500 words thus far: that would not be considered a short story, and not just because of its word length -- the very fact that you're writing a novel and it's not completed means that it won't be a short story when it's finished. If you finished it at something like 5,000 it might be, if you finished at 11,500 it would be a long short story, if you will. But I wouldn't consider your novel anything but an uncompleted novel.

A novel is not considered a short story no matter the word count at the moment, because it's obviously not a complete story yet, right? A novel is different than a short story. You could post what you have so far in the proper forum, however, regardless of word count.

The word count of short stories can vary, but I'm not sure what the standard number is. Sorry.

According to Wikipedia:

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that it must be able to be read in one sitting (a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" of 1846). Other definitions place the maximum word length at 7,500 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000.

Stories shorter than 1,000 words fall into the flash fiction genre. Fiction surpassing the maximum word length parameters of the short story falls into the areas of novelettes, novellas, or novels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story

What Jack said.