by Marie Valentine, Book Editor and Proofreader
What is a Short Story?
A small serving of literature is easily recognized in the short story, which deals with an episode of brief related scenes and a single character.
A short story has no minimum word count. There are short stories told in paragraph “flash fiction” forms, some even as short as the 140-character limit of a single Tweet.
The maximum length of a short story varies from publisher to publisher. Some might consider the max to be 7,500 words and anything beyond being in the novelette or novella category, while others will allow their short stories to wax longer, up to 15,000 words.
A short story’s classification often depends on place of publication. Writers often publish short stories in magazines in their entirety. Some authors write short stories and create compilations or collections of their stories.
Between a short story and novella is the longer short story, the novelette, ranges from 7,500 – 20,000 words, while a novella is longer. It’s often seen as too long for most publishers to insert into a magazine yet too short for a book of its own. This is a challenging length but lends itself to small chapbook publications. Novelettes can be compiled into collections, like short stories.