Is This Carrying Things Too Far?

[dr_phil_physics]

The Length of Things

Different sources use different definitions, but stories of different lengths fall into different categories:

Over 80,000 words - Novel
25,000 to 40,000 words - Novella
12,000 to 20,000 words - Novelette
7,000 to 10,000 words - "Long" Short story
3,000 to 7,000 words - Short story
1,000 to 3,000 words - "Short" Short story
under 500 words - Flash fiction

Sometimes writing workshops use various tricks to get people to write economically -- Jeff Ford had the 2004 Clarion class write a 900-word story (it was originally going to be 800-words, but you know...) and I understand the 2006 Clarion class got to write genre poetry.

A New "Low"?

This weekend I got my new copy of Wired magazine, the November 2006 issue. Flipping through it, I discovered an article on six-word stories. No, honestly! You can see the text of the stories they used, plus some extras, here.

I have to say, being long-winded and long-writed (writed???) -- a wordy sonofabitch -- that I just can't see how to write something that short. I joked to Mrs. Dr. Phil, that a Dr. Phil six-word story would actually take 22 words, have 3 characters and one P.O.V. change... (grin) Unless you want to consider: "War ends. Above God smiled." Damn! I wrote that in FIVE words. Gee, maybe this Clarion training in writing short stories is BEGINNING to take hold. (double-wide-grin)

Of course, even the 33 writers they contacted had to play games with the six-word limit...

Will this do (lazy writer asked)?
- Ken MacLeod

Steve ignores editor's word limit and
- Steven Meretzky

I could pull out my favorites, but you know what? Just jump over to the article or find yourself a nice printed up copy of the November 2006 Wired magazine and enjoy some silly, short and occasionally poignant very short stories.

Dr. Phil

Comments

[wistling.livejournal.com]

What happens between 40,000 and 80,000 words?

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Well, that's debatable. The flippant answer would be YA -- Young Adult novels -- which tend to be shorter than "regular" novels. More seriously, I would suggest that a story of that length seems to be unmarketable, as it doesn't easily fit in anyone's idea of a novella or a short novel. (grin) Edit it, expand it, pair with another story and call it a collection. But your mileage may vary and a number of the electronic SF markets will take submissions of "any" length and of course you could try to serialize it, if the story is amenable to that.

Honestly, I'm picking up these break points out of my ass -- the ranges are based on a number of different sources. For some reason LJ isn't displaying the original post as I reply to your comment, but I think I also left a gap between 10,000 and 12,000 words -- in that case it's either a longer short story or a shorter novelette. Depends on the market.

Seriously, though, it's a good point and I'm not trying to be snarky here. If/When I start selling stuff and get a better handle on these things, I'll surely post "my" results for all to see. (grin) My real point here is that SIX words is way outside the long tail of the curve. (double-grin)

Dr. Phil