Young Writers Society

How long would you deem a short story, versus a novel? Is there anything in between?

Here you go! A list of recommended word counts by genre/age group.

In the future, you can find out answers to this by goggling terms like "recommended word counts", which is how I found that list ^^

Hey @CupcakesForRealMen! This is one of those interesting questions that you really want a proper answer to and you get answers like "how long is a piece of string", and Google doesn't always help either.

I've always heard that a short story is 10,000 words or less, a novel is 50,000 words or more and anything in between is a novella. But of course, that isn't always true! Roald Dahl wrote a short story, (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) that's nearly 70 pages long - I'm not sure how many words, but certainly more than 10,000. But because he said it was a short story, and because he's Roald Dahl, we all just roll with it.

Novellas are funny creatures as well, to be honest, personally I'm never 100% sure where they stand. Sometimes they can be published alone but more often than not they can't. They can also fit into anthologies the way short stories do. So really a novella functions as either a really long short story, or a really short novel!

DrThomas wrote:Hey @CupcakesForRealMen! This is one of those interesting questions that you really want a proper answer to and you get answers like "how long is a piece of string", and Google doesn't always help either.

I've always heard that a short story is 10,000 words or less, a novel is 50,000 words or more and anything in between is a novella. But of course, that isn't always true! Roald Dahl wrote a short story, (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) that's nearly 70 pages long - I'm not sure how many words, but certainly more than 10,000. But because he said it was a short story, and because he's Roald Dahl, we all just roll with it.

Novellas are funny creatures as well, to be honest, personally I'm never 100% sure where they stand. Sometimes they can be published alone but more often than not they can't. They can also fit into anthologies the way short stories do. So really a novella functions as either a really long short story, or a really short novel!

Thank you so much for this! This was truly helpful. I suppose I'm writing a novella in that case,

Rosendorn wrote:Here you go! A list of recommended word counts by genre/age group.

In the future, you can find out answers to this by goggling terms like "recommended word counts", which is how I found that list ^^

Thanks. This was super helpful!

Also there's Flash Fiction which is one of my favourites- because it's fun to write. XP Flash Fiction is basically a really short, short story, and it's generally more of a scene than a story. Or at least that's what I've come to know it as. They're generally around 500 words and around there.

Yeah, the place I linked is more a general guideline if you're looking to be published for the first time. There are exceptions, as @DrThomas mentioned, but they are exceptions for some reason or another— famous names, well established, and/or the publication house/author deciding to make whatever rules it wants. Doesn't make them any less valid, though. Word count limits do have a ton of variance even among "established" sources, so check out a few of them.

If you're looking towards publication, word count recommendations give you the best shot at finding the appropriate market (and each publication channel will give different ones). If you're not, then do whatever you want ^^

Holysocks wrote:Also there's Flash Fiction which is one of my favourites- because it's fun to write. XP Flash Fiction is basically a really short, short story, and it's generally more of a scene than a story. Or at least that's what I've come to know it as. They're generally around 500 words and around there.

Thank you!