If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know that I believe that a work should be as short as possible, because, like a bullet, the smaller it is, the more powerful it is. I try not to have a preconceived notion of how long a story should be. I try to just write the story, keeping it as short as possible, and let the story decide its own length.
To market my works I use duotrope.com, who uses the following categories of length, which often vary from publishers’ definitions of these same categories:
- Flash fiction: less than 1,000 words
- Short Story: 1,000-7,500
- Novelette: 7,500-15,000
- Novella: 15,000-40,000
- Novel: Over 40,000
One of the first things I have learned is that there are no hard and fast definitions for each of the above categories, only generally-accepted guidelines that change over time. My rule of thumb is that flash fiction is anything under 1,000 words; short stories are generally 1,000 to 17,500-20,000; novellas are 17,500-20,000 words to 40,000; and anything over 40,000 is a novel.
Now it seems that the Duotrope guidelines are reasonably accurate with the following exceptions: short stories are still often considered to be works up to 10,000 words; novelettes are generally from about 10,000 to 17,500 or thereabouts; novellas from 17,500 to 40,000-50,000 or even higher; and novels beginning sometimes at 40,000-50,000 or even 70,000 or greater.
However, as several websites, authors, critics, and publishers point out, categories by length are often arbitrary guidelines produced by publishers. From an artistic standpoint, what determines the category of a work is its length compared to the complexity of its plot.
A short story of 2,000 words does not have space to explore character development, subplots, or multiple events. A 2,000-word short story usually describes only a single event and may give some insight into the characters. The even shorter category of flash fiction and its subcategories, such as smokelongs and microfiction, have no space for anything more complex than a good twist to its ending. Examples of some of the more famous short stories are:
- “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
- “The Lottery Ticket” by Anton Chekhov
- “To Build a Fire” by Jack London
- “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
- “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
- “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry
- “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
A novelette can have some of the complexities of a novel, but usually deals with a single event, and it is briefer than a novella. Maybe novella lite is a more appropriate term than novelette. In my humble opinion, “novelette” is either just a little more complex form of a short story or it is just a term to boost the egos of those who write a bit more complex short stories but haven’t progressed to writing novellas.
A novella can have many of the complexities of a novel, but usually deals with a single event. In the US, I think this is an underused classification, perhaps because novellas are less marketable in the US than the longer novels. That is a shame as some of the most famous and most powerful works in world literature are novellas. Here are a few examples:
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
At the other end of the scale from the short story sits the novel, which can include all the aforementioned complexities of character development, subplots, and multiple events. Examples of famous novels are:
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Unfortunately, trying to categorize a work based on its relative complexity is a complex task in its own right, which is undoubtedly why the much simpler method of categorization by word count dominates the literary world.
So what does all this mean for the writer?
There must be a balance between length and complexity in a work if it is to be considered as serious writing by the literary world. If a work is too complex for its length, it may be seen as muddled, confused, puzzling, or even unintelligible. If it is not sufficiently complex for its length, it may be seen as wordy, boring, and unnecessarily long.
The best a writer can do is to keep the work as short and powerful as possible, making the story only as complex as is necessary in order to bring out the intellectual and emotional nuances that will enable the reader to live the work vicariously. If that is done, the length and category will take care of themselves.
How will the writer know when a work is of sufficient complexity compared to its length?
There can be no hard and fast rule or guidance on this. It is subjective, therefore the writer must have an innate “feel” for this balance. The best way to develop this feel is probably just to read as much as you possibly can of the acknowledged masters of each category. Yes, you could obtain a Ph.D. in World or English Literature, but to get that, you will still have to read a lot of novels, novellas, and short stories, but you will also have to listen to a series of professors teaching the accepted views on each, when you want to develop your own creative viewpoint. I am not saying that is without merit, because in order to think outside the box, you have to be familiar with the box, which is what any degree teaches. This, of course, begs the question of how essential a college or post-graduate degree is to write well. All I can say is to look up the biographies of those considered masters of the art and find out what degrees they had. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, Flaubert, Conrad, and many others had no academic degrees. Many, like Hemingway, had experience in journalism or just felt compelled to write since they were children. This is a fascinating subject and would be well worth your time to research.
AI generated image from Pixabay
What can I say? Few people are not familiar with Poe’s tale of people trying to isolate themselves from a ravaging pandemic, a tale eerily appropriate for our time.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 