Short Stories, Novellas, Novels, Oh My!

Sometimes it's difficult to know into which category your writing will fall. If you're like me, you allow your first draft to unfold organically or with an outline, paying little attention to the word count at the bottom of the screen. So, you don't stop at 3,000 or 5,000 or 30,000 words just because you've hit the word count stop point. You let the story happen as it needs to, with as many or few words as it needs to be.

That's the easy part, right? Then you revise, edit, and revise again. You read it out loud, give it to critique partners and file it into a drawer for three weeks so you forget about it.

After all this - when the work is done - how do you know what to call it?

I'm not talking title, I mean when someone asks you what you wrote, do you say it's a novel, novella, or short story? What makes each of these categories?

Well, traditionally, a short story is a piece under 12,000 words.
A novella is a piece from 17,000 to 50,000 words.
And a novel is a piece from 65,000 to 120,000 words.

But traditional guidelines are not always the norm. I've found that many lit mags won't take short stories over 5,000 words. There are a few that accept up to 7,000 words, a slimmer section that take up to 9,000 and only a handful who want stories under 12,000.

Similarly, agents and publishers like to see (in adult works) novels from 70,000 words to 90,000 words. Any less and you don't have enough plot or conflict or characterization. Any more and you can't edit yourself. (One exception, of course, is fantasy or Sci-Fi, when the novel can be up to or over 100,000 words.)

And novellas? Well, where can you send those other than to contests with steep entry fees or to a self-publishing company?

When your work falls outside the norm, what do you do?

1) Revise and edit. Get your short story down under 7,000 words or bump that novella up to novel status.

2) Hope. Send your work off to agents or lit mags and pray that they love the story enough to look past your word count. Of course, this method only works if you've gone through your manuscript with a fine toothed comb and can justify every sentence, every word and its existence.

3) Try untraditional. Is your story too good to not share, but not the norm for publishers? Think about posting it online or in a blog in increments. You probably won't make money or have any pub credits, but you may get a lot of hits on your story. And one of those could be an agent who is now watching your incline as a writer.

Those are the facts of piece lengths and realistic expectations in this industry. But if you're doing something new and interesting that needs to be seen, don't be discouraged if it isn't the norm. Power on until the story you need to tell is out there.