Story Length Guidelines
The art of storytelling has been around longer than the written word, and through the ages, names have been created to describe different story lengths. Even the addition of social media has changed the face of short stories. I believe the term flash fiction began in the early ’90s and as it has gained in popularity, there has been a push to create new names for varying length of short pieces. Today’s post will look at different names for stories and the word count for each type. From nanotale to novel, I’ll provide an easy guide to understanding the word count for each story variation.
Note: There is quite a bit of discrepancy and interchanging of names of these story lengths in the writing world. Some of these names are still a bit obscure and difficult to track down a concrete word-count. Many literary magazines will use different names to define the same story length compared to another magazine, but they’ll also give you a word count. This outline should provide writers with a good starting point though.
Nanotale: Sometimes called the six-word story; the nanotale starts today’s list as the shortest story. Although short, these tales usually have a lot of weight in what’s not said. One of the most popular examples of a nanotale is “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Twitterature: As you may have guessed, this term came about for flash fiction pieces on Twitter. As Twitter has a character count limit, the parameters of the length for a twitterature is set by that as opposed to a normal word count. Twitterature started out as a 140-character count story, but as of last year, the word count has been extended to 280 characters. It is also sometimes called twiction for Twitter fiction.
Dribble: A dribble or minisaga are 50-word stories. A minisaga can be a shorter piece based on a long story.
Nanofiction: Although I have seen nanofiction used to describe a wide range of short stories all the way up to 300 words, it also describes a very specific story length of exactly 55 words.
Drabble: Up to 100 words.
Postcard fiction: Also called postcard stories or postcard shorts, these stories, as you may have guessed by the name, are short enough to fit on the back of a postcard. Usually 250 words or less.
Microfiction: 300 words or less. This term includes all of the story lengths up to this point, so many times it will be used interchangeably with any of the previous story types.
Quick fiction: Under 500 words.
Sudden fiction: Also called immediate fiction or short shorts, sudden fiction includes stories that fall between 500 and 750 words.
Flash fiction: This term covers all of the previous categories. Flash fiction is traditionally any story under 1,000 words. All the stories that fall under this umbrella rely heavily on implications. Much of the story is drawn from the assumptions readers are led to make.
Short story: Falls within the range of 3,000-7,499 words.
Novelette: This varies a bit. Novelettes run around 7,500-17,499 words, but can be as high as 20,000 words.
Novella: The range for novellas varies a bit too. It usually falls between 17,500-39,999 words, but can be as high as 50,000 words.
Novel: Novel length is highly dependent on genre, but can be as low as 40,000 words and as high as 110,000 words. I write horror and psychological thriller stories, and my rule of thumb is 80,000-100,000 words.
There are several other terms for story lengths, some commonly used but very hard to determine the word length being described so I didn’t include them. Let me know if there are other story names that come to mind and their word count.
Interesting post, Mandie. I wonder about the “through the ages” part as defining stories by word count, page length, etc, seems to have originated fairly recently, possibly only in the last 100-200 years. Most books written in ancient Rome, for instance, were hardly what we would call a good pamphlet nowadays, though there were many exceptions, such as the works of Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, who both wrote in a similar time as Plato.
It would be interesting to see who started deciding that stories would be a certain length, and classing them, but I imagine it has something to do with the invention of the printing press.
I agree that word count specific names are more recent, and the names for pieces that fall under the flash fiction umbrella have been growing rapidly since the ’90s. It’s more of an observation that the language used to describe stories has evolved over time and continues to do so. Oral traditions were around long before books. Fables describe short stories that teach a lesson. Anecdotes and myths tend to be short stories as well. Long before the term flash fiction came around, there were stories told and written that would fall under this classification. But the printing of stories and criteria of word count limits certainly exploded the creation of names describing stories of different lengths. I find it interesting how the language used to describe stories has changed so much. Whether it’s story length or genres. Even the number of genres and sub-genres are increasing so quickly. It’s incredible to think of the possibilities available to writers when creating stories, whether it’s experimenting with word count or story type. Sometimes when I think that every story there is to tell has already been told, I realize how quickly the writing stage is changing and the possibilities of writing something new seems possible.
Wow, that’s useful and informative. Thank you for doing the leg work on that topic, Mandie. And thank you for stopping by my blog and commenting (and as soon as WP is talking to my computer, I’ll get to see it).
Thank you for stopping by and reading it. I was intrigued and a bit frustrated by how many other names there are for flash fiction pieces for which I couldn’t track down the specific length they described. I’d find them listed on websites and several blogs, but no one spoke of the word count for them. I suspect that they are merely other words for flash fiction and don’t refer to a specific length.
Hopefully, the comment I left you is worth the wait once WP starts working for you. 😃 Have a great evening!
Great post, Mandie 🙂 I’ve just finished drafting up my next book and it’s quite a bit shorter than my usual stuff, coming up at about 50k. I’m thinking it’s totally sitting in novella territory with its toes sticking beyond the lines of novel 😀
I’ve noticed a trend, especially among the local authors in my area, where authors are writing shorter and shorter novels. I tend to have a bit of Stephen King syndrome, where my novels tend to run long. More on the 120,000 word end, where I then have to cut it down to make it fit into my target word count (still working on that part).
I’ve successfully written one horror novelette, but even that, I was aiming for a short 3,500-word story, and although I cut 2,000 words from that story, I still couldn’t get it anywhere close to the short story range. I’m still working on figuring out how to craft short horror stories. General fiction, I can craft flash fiction pieces with no problem, but not horror. Maybe one day.
Great and informative post, Mandie!
Thank you! 😃
You’re welcome. 😄