How long is a short story? A question for the ages

Question: How long is a short story?

Answer: The short story usually falls between 1,000 and 15,000 words. At around 15,000 words, the novella is born. We are addressing the modern short story, not the ancient tale, fable, or sketch. There is no exact word length for a short story. To understand the word count for different prose pieces, it is necessary to look closer at a variety of literary forms.

The modern short story originated and took its current literary form in the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Nikolay Gogola increased it. Some consider the modern short story, in its current form, as the only American literary form. Disputed by the 1700s publications of works by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, these examples could still be considered gothic tales.

Either way, the short story, in its current state, is a very youthful literary form. Even though stories have been told by word of mouth since the beginning of time, the conventions, etiquette, and restrictions on the modern short story only existed about 150 years ago.

From short fables to lengthy narratives that fall short of the next category, it may be easier to understand the nuances of a short story if we look at other forms that play a role in our everyday writing.

Long Novel 200,000+

• Question. What is a long novel? Or how long is too long for a novel?

Answer: A novel can never be too long, but once you are over 200,000 words, you are writing a Long Novel (some say Russian Novel). Many authors write these long novels. Stephen King, L. Ron Hubbard, David Foster Wallace, and many others have written excessively long novels.

Is it true that many famous authors have written long novels? It is not advisable to take up this practice. Long novels, especially first novels, can take much work to publish. Avoid the long Novel when writing, at least until you’ve built a name for yourself. Many long novels have trouble gaining popularity among readers due to the dedication and time it takes to read them. We do live in the soundbite, quick bite, internet-condensed world.

Novel 50,000$-200,000

• Question: How long should a novel be?

Answer: Novel length can vary greatly. At about 50,000 words, a Novella becomes a novel; at about 200,000 words, a novel becomes a long novel, so between 50,000 and 200,000 words is generally considered a traditional novel.

Let’s dig deeper with some examples. When we look at the lengths of famous and enduring novels, we see that length varies greatly. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 comes in at 49,500 words. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye comes in at 73,404, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee sits at 99,121. These 3 novels are outstanding examples of “famous” works of literature (in my opinion), and you can see that there is no set length.

In the table below, you can see the best NY Times sellers for the last 10 years. It’s hard to say there is much of a trend here. The majority of these books are between 130-150 thousand words. None of the books reach Long Novel status.

You can’t say these novels are abridged by any means. Six of the 10 are over 150,000 words, but they manage to stay under 200,000. It’s not a number you would expect to get from the Snapchat generation. I always feel like looking at other writers’ works helps me feel better about my own when I find commonality.

So, how long should a novel be? The answer is at least 50,000 words. If you are asking for lengths of works that are best-selling (at least over the last 10 years), 94-190 thousand words is acceptable as an answer range.

Novella

• Question: How long is a novella?

Answer: A novella is generally 15,000-50,000 words. It’s not that simple, the lines are a little more blurred, but as a general rule of thumb, this is an acceptable answer. Some try to say that the cut-off here for a short story is 7,500 words. This is just too short for a novella. Here are some famous short stories. They are over 7,000 words long, and no one would call them a Novella.

Words: 7226 – Edgar Allan Poe – The Fall of the House of Usher

Words: 7396 – Edgar Allan Poe – The Purloined Letter

Words: 7419 – Thomas Bailey Aldrich – Marjorie Daw

Words: 7446 – Richard Harding Davis – The Consul

Words: 7805 – Jack London – A Piece of Steak

Words: 7876 – Guy de Maupassant – Miss Harriet

Words: 8080 – Mark Twain – The Private History of a Campaign That Failed

Words: 8426 – Richard Connell – The Most Dangerous Game

Words: 8881 – Carl Stephenson – Leiningen versus the Ants

Words: 8970 – Willa Cather – Paul’s Case

Words: 9601 – Thomas Nelson Page – The Burial of the Guns

Words: 10669 – Edith Wharton – Souls Belated

Words: 11870 – Edith Wharton – Afterward

Novellas are a publisher’s tool when you think about it. Take a look at these famous Novellas.

In the table above, you see very famous Novellas, and all of them fall between 20,000 and 50,000. You can see it’s not an exact science here, but as a general rule of thumb, 15,000-50,000 are decent numbers for novellas.

Flash Fiction

• Question: How long can flash fiction be without being considered a short story?

Answer: Generally, Flash fiction is between 100-1000 words.

Flash fiction has become ever more popular these days. You see it on the web everywhere, and honestly, what better format could you have for cellphone reading than a quick 100-1000 word story? If you want a quick read, something you don’t have to scroll your phone 100 times, flash fiction may be one of the oldest and most popular forms of fiction. They, of course, started as fables or parables and have, in the last 50 years, picked up the conventions of the modern short story. Since the advent of the internet, the popularity of flash fiction has boomed. The essential requirement here is a beginning middle, and an end. We publish a lot of flash fiction here at EWR: Short Stories.

Honestly, we are still defining flash fiction. Some say this is the story’s final form, but others argue for microfiction. There is a difference between the 2.

Microfiction

• Question: How long is a piece of microfiction?

Answer: Generally, anything 100 words and under.

Microfiction, in the last 10 years, has become very popular. Contests of 1 and 2 sentences stories, plus the Twitter story, have pushed writers to come up with shorter and shorter stories. Any story with a beginning, middle, and end can be a micro fiction story. They still follow the conventions of the modern short story and tend to be very popular on the web, but they are rarely found, by most accounts, in print. EWR also publishes a lot of microfiction; please look at our horror contest.

So if you were wondering what the best short story length was, I hope this deeper look into fiction forms was helpful.