Sablesword
TMF Master
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2001
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An older essay-on-writing of mine, ported from Tickle Theater (slightly edited)
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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. But a shorter novel can be as little as half as long. Harlequin romance novels are standardized at 55,000-60,000 words, and my third novel (Tickle Witch) comes in at 69,365 words.
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.
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.
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 either here or on Tickle Theater (including my own) are on the short side: "Short story" length, or even short-shorts. Of my own tickle stories, only two or three break the 10,000 word mark (with Tickle Witch, of course, being a full-length novel.)
===========================
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. But a shorter novel can be as little as half as long. Harlequin romance novels are standardized at 55,000-60,000 words, and my third novel (Tickle Witch) comes in at 69,365 words.
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.
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.
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 either here or on Tickle Theater (including my own) are on the short side: "Short story" length, or even short-shorts. Of my own tickle stories, only two or three break the 10,000 word mark (with Tickle Witch, of course, being a full-length novel.)
