Got a 'Big Question/Please Help

[mdmkay]

I normally write for children so I'm familiar with the word counts for the different groups...BUT...for some reason (unknown to me at this minute) I've been writing like a insane person on this adult fiction that I'm hoping is only going to be a short story and I pray to God not a novel. I can't seem to stop it though, if I'm not writing it I'm thinking about it. Needless to say it's driving me a bit nuts. What I need to know is what is the longest word count for a short story. I realize is depends on who or what your submitting to but I already have 2700 words and I'm not even through the first scene yet. At this point I'm not sure where or when to end it....usually when I write like this I just keep writing until it comes to more or less and natural place where I can end it. I know this post makes me sound either stupid or just crazy but I really do need help.

[aka eraser]

mdmkay, this discussion (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13201) might help.

[pixiejuice]

yes, that is a good discussion.

Short stories generally top off about about 7500 words. But don't forget that if you do write more words than that, you'll probably end up cutting a good chunk of them in the editing process.

And I have seen stories in journals published as "short stories" that were around 8500-9000 words.

[mdmkay]

Thank you so much Frank and Pixiejuice. I haven't a clue yet about this story. Occasionally I'll have a mind dump that a story or even a poem will demand to be written and won't leave me alone until I do it. I would gripe about it more but this is usually where I do my best work (don't ask me why that's just the way it works for me). I guess it doesn't matter at this point what the word count ends up being because until the story gets told it isn't going to leave me alone but its already at approx 7500 and I haven't gotten the first chapter (oh no did I say first chapter?????) I meant scene...scene finished. You wouldn't believe at this point how powerful it is (heaven only knows what it'll be when I finish up though).

Btw if you haven't check out Franks Baron's website please do you'll love it. I just absolutly love Frank, not only do I think he's a good man but he's also one heck of a writer. I look forward to his newletter every week even more than I do the Sunday comics and that's saying something.

[Jamesaritchie]

I normally write for children so I'm familiar with the word counts for the different groups...BUT...for some reason (unknown to me at this minute) I've been writing like a insane person on this adult fiction that I'm hoping is only going to be a short story and I pray to God not a novel. I can't seem to stop it though, if I'm not writing it I'm thinking about it. Needless to say it's driving me a bit nuts. What I need to know is what is the longest word count for a short story. I realize is depends on who or what your submitting to but I already have 2700 words and I'm not even through the first scene yet. At this point I'm not sure where or when to end it....usually when I write like this I just keep writing until it comes to more or less and natural place where I can end it. I know this post makes me sound either stupid or just crazy but I really do need help.

Short short--under 2,000 words.
Short Stroy--2,000-7,500 words.
Novelette--7,500-17,500 words.
Novella--17,500-40,000 words.
Novel--anything over 40,000 words.

But the main thing is wghat length magazines want. The most common length for print magazines in 4,000--6,000 words, and it's darned tough selling anything longer than this.

[Susie]

Hey, Md & all,

Did you ever think about having it as a novella? It's 7,000-40,000 words. Just a thought.:) That way, you'll have more room to develop your plot, etc. without having to write a novel. Hope that helps.

Warm regards, Susie:)

[write4details]

There are not "cutoff" lengths to call something a certain type of fiction. Part of "what it is" is what you see it as, not a number.
If you look through submission pages, you see that a lot of magazines accept fiction up to 10,0000 words.
The cutoff between "short fiction" and "flash fiction" or "short shorts" is also arbitary...and depends upon what the mag or contest accepts.

Don't have any pre-conceived notion about length...if it wants to be longer, let er rip. Who knows what you have going here?

[Jamesaritchie]

There are not "cutoff" lengths to call something a certain type of fiction. Part of "what it is" is what you see it as, not a number.
If you look through submission pages, you see that a lot of magazines accept fiction up to 10,0000 words.
The cutoff between "short fiction" and "flash fiction" or "short shorts" is also arbitary...and depends upon what the mag or contest accepts.

Don't have any pre-conceived notion about length...if it wants to be longer, let er rip. Who knows what you have going here?

Of course some magazines giggle the numbers a little, but the numbers I gave are not arbitray. They've been the standard for nearly a hundred years, and are used by nearly every magazine editor out there.

You'd darned well better have a pre-conceived notion about length, unless selling what you write isn't of any importance. "Let er" rip" is usually what writers do who either don't know anything about story structure, or don't really care whether or not what they write sells.

First, magazines are put together like jigsaw puzzles, and every piece has to fit. It's not as easy as just adding pages for longer stories. This would put a magazine out of business overnight. Nor is it as easy as just cuting something else to make room for somethign longer.

Even more important, the difference between a short story and a novelette/novella/novel is not primarily one of length, but of structure and story elements. A 100,000 word short story is still not a novel, and would bore the bejeebers out of anyone who tried to read it.

In order to write publishable fiction at these various lengths, you first have to know what is required of each length. Robert E. Forward did NOT write 20,000 word short stories. If he had, he would have gone unpublished, and no one today would have heard of him. What he did write was short novels, and these are very differenrt things than long short stories. The structure is different, the story is different, the plot elements are different, the pacing is different, and the connecting threads running through the novella do not weave the same pattern as threads in a short story weave.

Read issues of Analog and Asimov's. They contain short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and they, like nearly every other magazine out there, use the specific lentgths I quoted. And when you read these three types of fiction, you should be able to clearly see that length is only a small part of the difference between the three. If you can't, you're in trouble.

And magazines want what they want, not what writers want to give them. You pay far too much attention to submissions guidelines. Just because submission guidelines state that a magazine uses fiction of up to 10,000 words in no way, shape, or form means they want a short story of this length, or that you can sell them something this long, or even that they've ever bought something this long.

Submission guidelines should be read, but they are only guidelines, and they seldom mean what new writers try to make them mean. This is why you must read issues of the magazine itself to really understand the guidelines. There is no substitute for reading the magazine.

Now, when a magazine say it takes fiction up to 10,000 words, what it means most of the time is that three years ago, it bought a 10,000 word story, and may again in three more years, if that 10,000 word story comes from a writer with a name big enough to look good on the cover, and to make readers buy the magazine.

It also means that the 10,000 word story needs to come from a writer who knows the difference between a short story and a novelette, which isn't just length.

The first rule of reading guidelines is to ignore the upper and lower limits for fiction. Odds are a thousand to one against selling the magazine anything at either of these lengths. Especially the upper limit. These lengths are nearly always reserved for special circumstances and special writers.

To stand any real chance of selling to a paying magazine, the writer must know the preferred length, and submit a story very close to this length. Guidelines will sometimes state preferred length, but most often do not because the editor rightfully expects the writer to read several issues of the magazine before submitting fiction. When you do this, you can see the preferred length for yourself.

And you can see what the editor means by "literary," "mystery," "mainstream." etc. His idea of what a literary or mainstream or mystery or SF story is will likely be very different than your own. The only way to know what he or she means is to read several issues of the magazine.

If you really want to be a selling short story writer, at least to paying magazines, you must read the magazine, you must write to preferred length, and you must understand there is a difference between short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels, and the difference is far, far more than just length.

"Let 'er rip," and thinking that a short story, a novelette, and a novella are the sames things at different lengths is just a good way to increase your collection of rejection slips.

[mdmkay]

Thank you all for the input it was all very valuable and you can bet that I copied and printed out those word counts for short stories-novels to tape above my computer. I just normally do children's books so this one has kind of taken me by surprise but it so darn interesting at this point that I can't quit. I know that I'm weird as far as writing because I tend to just follow my characters through the story and kind of see where they take me (yes, I do put alot of a thought into it...I don't want to wind up with a bunch of character sketches without a good story thread but when I'm actually writing and not doing the brainstorming I just let my characters guide me.......does that even make sense???? I never know what the word count will be or even what it will be until I'm done...I can always go cut things down to size if I have to or even fatten things up if I need to but thats after the skeletal story is finished). OK so I'm a dork when it comes to how I write but it works for me.

[Jamesaritchie]

but when I'm actually writing and not doing the brainstorming I just let my characters guide me.......does that even make sense???? I never know what the word count will be or even what it will be until I'm done...I can always go cut things down to size if I have to or even fatten things up if I need to but thats after the skeletal story is finished). OK so I'm a dork when it comes to how I write but it works for me.

I write the same basic way you do. I just let the characters do what they wish, and write it all down.

But I always know what the word count of the story will be. I think you'll find that with a bit of experience you'll soon learn how to control length without even thinking about it consciously.

Length is really about structure, and once you master structure, length gets to be pretty easy to manage, even on the first draft.