How Long is a Short Story, Flash Fiction, Novella, or Novel?
A word count guide for fiction
From six-word stories to epic novels, fiction comes in all sizes.
But just how short is a short story?
At what point is a novel, well, a novel?
While there are no universally agreed upon word counts for types of fiction, publishers and literary awards generally categorize fiction stories by length based on these word counts.
Here’s the breakdown.
Novel
50,000 words or more
While 40,000 words or more is sometimes considered a novel, a minimum word count of 50,000 words is most commonly accepted.
In the traditional publishing industry today, the average adult novel length is 90,000 words.
Novella
20,000–50,000 words
A novella is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. Some literary groups limit novellas to a maximum of 40,000 words, but up to 50,000 appears to be the most common definition.
Famous examples of novellas are A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.
Novelette
7,500–20,000 words
Once mainly associated with stories considered trivial or sentimental, a novelette can be any story that is longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella.
Well-known examples of novelette-length stories include The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Short Story
1,000–7,500 words
A work of fiction short enough to read in one sitting. While short stories can sometimes be as long as 10,000 words, the most standard maximum word count appears to be 7,500 words.
Classic examples include Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and the short stories of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Flash Fiction
1,000 words or fewer
Also called minimalist fiction, the flash fiction genre encompasses many subgenres of very short fiction stories. While “flash fiction” has been around since the dawn of storytelling, the term itself wasn’t coined until 1992.
Subgenres of flash fiction
- Sudden fiction, 750–1,000 words
- Microfiction, 300 words or less
- Drabble, a story that contains exactly 100 words
- Dribble, a story that contains exactly 50 words
- Six-word stories, a story that contains exactly 6 words
Sources
- Short Fiction Forms: Novella, Novelette, Short Story, and Flash Fiction Defined
- Average Book Length: How Long is a Novel?
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