What is the Ideal Short Story Length? And When Does It Become a Novella?

C.S. Lewis may have preferred a long book to complement his exceedingly large tea, but short story readers prefer something they can read in one sitting, maybe even before the tea gets cold.

So what’s the ideal word count? At what point do you have to refer to your short story as a novella, or even the lesser-known novelette? And how do you give readers the brevity they crave without losing any of the depth?

As with all things in the writing craft, the answer is complicated. There are no hard and fast rules, and the preferred word count depends on a range of factors, from your chosen genre to publisher guidelines.

We’re going to talk through all those factors in this article, provide examples for each category of short fiction, and explore the best tactics for writing a great story with a limited word count.

But before we get into all that, let me offer this snapshot for the folks who really, truly just need some numbers.

• Flash fiction: 1,500 words or less
• Short story: 1,000–20,000 words (1,000–10,000 is more typical)
• Novelette: 7,500–19,000 words
• Novella: 20,000–40,000 words
• Novel: Over 40,000 words

Now, if you’re serious about writing and publishing short fiction, I recommend reading on.

Why Is Word Count Important?

If you’re a new writer, you might not love the idea of having to adhere to a word count. I get it. We want to let our stories take up as much space as they need.

But at the very least, knowing standard word count ranges helps you ensure that you’re using the right term to label your story. Plus…

Publishers use word count to determine marketability and profit

If you dream of having your work traditionally published, this is important. 

A publisher has to think about both the production costs of a book and the value readers are likely to place on books of a certain length. Bulky novels are more expensive to produce and harder to sell without name recognition, so they’re unlikely to invest in an especially long novel from a debut author.

On the other side of the spectrum, novellas and novelettes are cheaper to produce, but they’re not cheaper enough to justify the low price point. (Readers usually won’t pay very much for a short work of fiction, especially if they’re not familiar with the author.)

And book publishers usually only deal with short stories when they can publish several in one volume—either a short story collection written by a single author or an anthology of works from several authors. They’ll want to pack as many authors as they can into one anthology to broaden their audience, so they’ll favor shorter stories to keep the page count under control.

So it doesn’t matter what you write, whether it’s a short story or a novel. If you want to work with a traditional publisher, you’ve got to know the length they’re looking for.

Literary magazines need to think about page count.

Most short story writers get their start in literary magazines, and it’s extremely rare to find a lit mag that doesn’t specify word count in their submission guidelines.

This is partly because they’re trying to fit a certain number of stories within their designated page range. And, like book publishers, they also have to keep their readers in mind. 

Does their audience love them for their delicious little 1,500-word story snacks? Do they relish something a bit longer and slightly more complicated?

The answer informs their submission guidelines, and they won’t bend on those standards, no matter how brilliant your short story is.

Your readers care about story length.

Of course, how much they care varies from reader to reader. But I think it’s safe to say most people factor in the length when deciding whether a story is worth their time, especially if the author is new to them.

Now, you obviously can’t write your short story to suit everyone. Some people want flash fiction, while others like their short stories creeping dangerously close to novella territory.

What you can do is take a cue from your genre. Check out the short stories that are most like yours, and you’ll see patterns emerge. For example, science fiction and fantasy allow for longer tales, as they tend to require a little exposition and worldbuilding. Romance short stories are often more concise.

You’ll still find some variety within your genre. As always, there are no hard and fast rules, and there will always be authors who buck convention with great success. Even so, a little research will give you some sense of what your readers expect from a story like yours.

You need to know how to talk about your story.

If you say you’ve got a short story but its word count is in the novella range, you’re going to make enemies of the readers who were looking forward to devouring your book in a single setting. (I’d like to say “enemies” is an exaggeration, but… well.)

If you pitch your novella to an agent who thinks they can sell it, then send them something that’s technically a short story, you’ll have wasted their time and left an impression as unprofessional.

Knowing the appropriate length for different story formats is key to communicating about your work and establishing yourself as a legit writer.

Your story’s word count helps determine whether it even gets read.

I don’t know why I left this one for last. It’s the most important point on the list.

Agents and publishers will not even read the first sentence if your story is too long or short to meet their standards. You’ll find some flexibility with some readers, but even they can be surprisingly strict.

It truly doesn’t matter how brilliant your premise is. Decision-makers and gatekeepers have so many submissions to read already. An out-of-range word count gives them a great excuse to get one more manuscript off their desk. 

The Numbers You Need to Know

Okay, so now that I’ve convinced you that the stats matter (right?), let’s talk numbers. After I tell you a very annoying thing.

These word count ranges have overlap. Which means it’s entirely possible to write something one person would call a short story and another person would call a novelette. That’s totally fine.

While it is important to know how long a short story generally is versus other forms of fiction, you don’t have to fuss much over the exact word count cutoffs.

With that in mind, let’s get into it.

Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is extremely brief. We’re talking under 1,500 words, and honestly, most of it is under 1,000 words. As short-form content has steadily gained popularity across other forms of media, we’ve also seen flash fiction pick up steam in literary magazines and online publications.

As you can imagine, this type of storytelling only allows you to capture a single moment. These remarkably short stories contain a sense of conflict and change, even if they don’t offer the multi-step story arc we expect from longer fiction.

One very famous example of flash fiction is “Baby Shoes,” attributed to Ernest Hemingway (possibly incorrectly). Here’s the whole story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Actually, if we really want to split these tiny hairs, “Baby Shoes” would qualify as microfiction—a short story of less than 100 words. But this story illustrates what makes flash fiction so beloved: It invites the reader to engage in the story by leaving so much unsaid. The blanks are there for you to fill in.

Flash fiction length: 1,500 words or less

Popular Flash Fiction Stories

• “John Redding Goes to Sea” by Zora Neale Hurston
• “Sticks” by George Saunders
• “Three is a Rational Number” by Michele Finn Johnson
• “Taylor Swift” by Hugh Behm-Steinberg
• “Give It Up” by Franz Kafka

Short Story

The average short story lands somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 words. That said, it can be as long as 20,000. 

With more space to work with, a short story can accommodate deeper character development and a clearer story arc. You just have to limit the number of characters and the complexity of your plot, both of which impact the final word count. But we’ll get to all that later.

Though short stories are longer than flash fiction, they’re still written with the intention of being read in a single sitting, and authors typically don’t divide them into chapters. But there’s no law saying you can’t, and it’s not unheard of to see chapters or clearly separated sections in a long short story. It’s ultimately a creative choice. If it serves your pacing, go for it.

Short story length: 1,000–20,000 words (1,000–10,000 is more typical)

Popular Short Stories

• “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
• “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang
• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
• “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
• “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
• “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian

Novelette

Here’s where the word count overlap gets truly redonk. A novelette is 7,500 to 19,000 words long, which fits neatly inside the short story range. It’s not even an overlapping range, really. It’s more like a nesting range.

Kind of confusing and stressful, except that not a lot of people use the word “novelette,” anyway.  You might find literary magazines and small presses talking about novelettes, and there are some literary awards that have a novelette category. If you’re a self-published author, you might write a novelette to use as a lead magnet, using the word to signal to your readers that the story is sizable but not quite a novella or novel.

Other than that, you’re more likely to hear a fictional work of 7,500 to 19,000 words described as a long short story.

Novelette length: 7,500–19,000 words

Popular Novelettes

• The Birds by Daphne du Maurier
• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
• Graveyard Shift by Stephen King
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Novella

Finally, we’ve got our friend the novella clocking in at 20,000 to 40,000 words. Anything over 40,000 words is a novel.

Due to their length, novellas allow for greater complexity, longer timelines (or even alternating timelines), more characters, and a more significant transformation for the protagonist. 

While traditional publishers generally shy away from novellas because the profit margins are too small, there is a market for these mini-novels (or glorified short stories; pick your perspective). Self-published authors write novellas a lot, especially as lead magnets or bonus content for their most devout fans. It’s also a form of fiction that does well in e-book format, as the cost of producing an e-book is much lower than producing a print book.

Novella length: 20,000–40,000 words

Popular Novellas

• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Motar
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Appeal of Short Story Writing

There are many famous authors who’ve had wild success with novels but continually gravitate back to short stories. We’re talking people like Shirley Jackson, James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Joyce Carol Oates.

So what is it about the short story? Why are these brief tales so satisfying to write?

They help you refine your craft

No matter what they write now, many talented and successful authors will tell you they cut their teeth on short stories.

With short fiction, you’ve got no space to waste. Every sentence must serve a purpose. Your character’s personality must be clear within a couple lines, and their words and actions should make their goals and motivations obvious to the reader. There’s no room for extra plot lines, so you practice refining the single story arc that shapes your tale.

This level of focus and attention to detail does so much to advance your skills and help you understand what it really means to craft a solid story.

You (usually) complete them faster

A lot of writers love short stories simply because they get to celebrate their wins sooner. You’re likely to finish the first draft of a short story weeks or even months before you complete the first draft of your novel. The revision and feedback process also moves more quickly, as does that final polish.

They allow for more experimentation

Because of the fast turnaround, you can experiment with short stories and never feel pressured to produce a positive outcome.

Want to try writing in other genres? Have a completely out-there plot idea? Want to write a romance story narrated by the office copy machine?

The brevity of short stories allows you to dip your toes into unfamiliar waters without committing to a full novel. If you’re happy with the outcome, you can always expand the story, if that’s the ultimate vision. If you hate the outcome, no problem! You haven’t lost that much time on it. 

They’re oddly intimate

Short story writing forces you to narrow your focus. You probably have one protagonist engaged in one external conflict and wrestling with one internal conflict while surrounded by about zero to three secondary characters.

This allows you to really sit with every part of your story. You can disappear inside your main character’s feelings and perspective. You can focus on the consequences of a single conflict, without having to remember to braid the best friend’s midlife crisis into the story.

It all adds up to a deeper sense of intimacy with the story and the fictional people within it.

Appeal of Short Story Reading

We should also talk about the other side of the equation. When you understand why a reader might be drawn to short stories, you can do a better job of meeting their expectations.

So why do readers love short stories?

They don’t have to trust that it’s about to get interesting

Have you ever picked up a book with rave reviews and found yourself underwhelmed by the first chapter? Did you force yourself to give it at least twenty or thirty pages before you DNFed it?

That’s not a thing with short stories. For one thing, short story authors typically get to the conflict right away because they don’t have space to dawdle. For another, the story itself is shorter than the grace period most readers allow for novels.

They can get through more stories faster

This isn’t important for everyone, but it sure is for readers who crave that sense of completion. It’s also helpful for those with memory challenges. There’s no need to remember what happened last time, because they get to start a new story every time they sit down to read.

Again with the focus and intimacy thing

Short story readers spend about 30 to 90 minutes on a single journey with one character navigating one conflict and exploring one central theme. It makes for an experience that feels exclusive. Intimate. Personal.

And in a world where a thousand images and messages are coming at us all at once, this opportunity to immerse ourselves in a single voice for a stretch of time feels pretty precious.

Want to create that experience for a bunch of strangers out there in the wide world? Keep reading.

Short Story Tips for First-Time Authors

In the interest of keeping you in the Dabble loop, I want to start by mentioning that we actually did a Short Story Challenge, including a live show to walk participants through the writing process. You can watch every one of those videos right here. 

Now, many of the basic principles that apply to novel writing apply to writing short stories, as well. You need well-rounded characters with rich inner lives engaged in a compelling conflict that forces them to confront their internal conflict. There should be a clear beginning, middle, and end, and by the time the story concludes, something in this world should be different.

You also want to read a ton of short stories in your subgenre and know the genre tropes so you can meet the expectations of your target audience.

Having said all that, the process of writing a short story isn’t exactly the same as it is for writing a novel. Because you’re working with a very limited word count, you need to pull back on the details without sacrificing depth.

The main thing to know is that it’s not about switching to surface-level storytelling; it’s about minimizing each component of your story. Here’s what I mean:

Don’t overpopulate the story

A short story doesn’t need a big ensemble. It doesn’t need multiple points of view or several secondary characters with their own storylines.

Focus first and foremost on your one protagonist and their conflict. Fill in any characters that are absolutely necessary to support the protagonist’s story. 

Again, we’re talking absolutely necessary. In a novel, you’d have a major antagonist, some minor antagonists, a best friend, a love interest, a mentor, an awkward neighbor for comic relief, and a foil to highlight the protagonist’s strengths and flaws.

That’s too much for a short story. Focus on characters that directly contribute to the conflict or the protagonist’s ability to confront the conflict.

Limit the exposition

If your main character has a relevant backstory, make it something you can describe quickly—ideally in a paragraph or less. When you introduce the world of your short story, stick to the details that impact the plot. You can throw in a couple extra to create an atmosphere, but don’t go crazy.

If you write fantasy or sci-fi and need a little more real estate to establish your world, that’s fine. Just remember that you can’t worldbuild for a short story on a novel scale. No complex magic systems, geography lessons, or busloads of deities. 

Aim for 0–1 subplots

If your short story is 1,000 words long, stick with the one conflict. You don’t have the space to bring in any additional subplots.

On the other hand, if you’re writing a longer short story—a novelette, if you will—you can probably add one (1) subplot if it enhances the overall story by contributing significantly to the conflict and/or theme.

Focus on a single theme

The concentrated nature of short stories invites readers to spend time thinking about a single theme. While novels have the time to unfold several layers of a story, revealing different themes, short fiction zooms in on a single question.

What does it mean to live a full life? When is love not worth the sacrifice? What is the true definition of family?

Whatever message is coming through in your short story, don’t dilute it with tangential themes.

Don’t force a massive transformation

A huge character transformation can be super satisfying in a novel. That’s because you’ve got over 40,000 words to clarify how a meek nun would become the outspoken leader of a rebellion.

In a short story, however, drastic changes often feel unrealistic because there’s not enough time to justify them. That’s not to say you can never pull them off in a short story. In “The Story of an Hour,” the protagonist comes to see her marriage as a prison and suffers heart failure, all in less than 1,000 words.

But people typically don’t change at a fundamental level over a period of a few days, and most short stories don’t cover a longer timeline than that. However big your character’s internal transformation is, make sure you can show it convincingly in the space you have.

And don’t underestimate the power of a small internal change in the context of a short story. “A Temporary Matter” is essentially about an already emotionally estranged couple determining the fate of their marriage, and it’s part of a Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection.

It also helps to highlight the external changes in a short story, and you can do this by making sure your opening and closing images reflect a change. 

The bustling town square from the beginning of the story is now eerily silent. The tie your protagonist tied so carefully 2,500 words ago now lies abandoned in a gutter. The once-empty hat stand now holds the love interest’s cowboy hat.

This is what a short story does, after all. It zooms in and reveals the unappreciated depths of small moments.

The Long and Short of It

In the words of Henry David Thoreau: “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”

Drilling a story down to its most essential and compelling parts takes more work than you might expect. But it’s also an excellent way to sharpen your writing skills. Short stories force you to select the most impactful words and separate the crucial from the irrelevant. Everything else you write will benefit from that practice, no matter what the word count is.

We’re always here to help along the way. Join our free community in the DabbleU Campus or level up with DabbleU Academy, where you get access to exclusive live events, extensive workshops, self-guided courses, and loads more.

In fact, a free 14-day trial of Dabble Writer includes two weeks of access to DabbleU Academy. So click here to sign up and see what we’re up to. We’d love to help you on your journey to literary greatness.