Story Lengths

[Sablesword]

First, a short rant: The length of a story is properly measured by word count. Saying that a story is so many "pages" long is clueless, and worse, leaves the reader clueless. The length of a page can vary. Even a printed page of a standard-sized mass-market paperback can vary by more than a factor of two. So use word count: MS Word even has a handy built-in function, so you can get your word count with the click of a mouse.

Now that that's out of the way...

A modern novel typically runs 100,000 words or so, give or take some thousands. My own two
"Cern" novels are both about 100,000 words, for example.

Big fat epics, trilogies, and series may run to multiple hundreds of thousands of words. So if you have dreams of writing an epic, you now know what you're up against.

The minimum length for a story to be considered a "novel" is in the range of 40-50,000 words. "National Novel Writing Month" (November, each year) sets a goal of 50,000 words. The "best novel" category for the Hugo (science fiction award) is 40,000 or more words.

A "novella" is the category shorter than a novel. The minimum length to be considered a novella is 17,500 (Hugo award) to 20,000 words, with the maximum being "still too short to be considered a novel."

A "novelette" is the next shorter category. These have a minimum length of 7,500 to 10,000 words, and have a maximum of "shorter than a novella."

A "short story" is under novelette length - less than the minimum 7,500 to 10,000 word minimum for a novelette. A story at least 1000 words long is a "normal" short story, while one shorter than 1000 words is a "short-short" and one under 100 words or so a specialized very-short form. The very short stories can be thought of as "stunt" pieces.

Almost all of the stories posted here (including my own) are on the short side: "Short story" length, or even short-shorts. Only a few of my very longest tickle stories break into novelette territory, and none break into the novella range. (The Cern novels are full, true novels, but aren't tickle stories.)

 

[ElFewja]

After doing a quick bit of research, there are a lot of subdivisions of short story at the very least, which makes sense. I didn't jot down the names or the word counts, but I at least know that Hemingway was referenced (for obvious reasons), and that the term flash fiction was used.

I still disagree to a lesser extent, as the academic world operates on several very strict writing styles (for lack of a better word), like MLA, which gives page count reliability, much more so than word count. Not that many people seem to know MLA; I'm embarrassed to say that even in my 400 level courses (decently high level; would say that most people are not going to take courses of a higher level) have a loose understanding of MLA, if any (a course I was in just this semester, which is supposed to be a culmination of the humanities for all persons that have a humanity related degree, had at least one person who had never heard of MLA before).

Again, I feel that word count is still a loose measurement for story length, depending upon such things as emphasis on detail and dialogue, which may or may not limit the over all scope of the plot and thus prove misleading. But, even thinking that, word count is still the standard used by... I want to say non-academic sources? It's more relevant, but I disagree with the idea as a whole. There simply is not enough context as to how long a story may be, based on word count alone, but the same can be said for page count or any other sort of measurement by itself.

But yeah, I operate under the ideology of 12 pt font, Times New Roman, double space, which I'm sure isn't true for many people. Without thorough citation as to font, spacing, extra enters, word count, and page number, it would be difficult to truly assess a works length without taking a first hand look.

I am over analyzing again.

Etc.