The Length of a Story

[sarillia]

Is there a way to tell before you start writing whether an idea is more suited to a short story or a novel? I seem to be completely hopeless at judging this right now and I’d like to get better at it. It feels like it should be obvious but somehow it’s not for me. I look at a few of the novel-length stories I've written, and I don't know what made me think that the idea would sustain a novel, even though it did work. They could have just as easily been short stories or novellas.

I got my start in writing with National Novel Writing Month, so novels sort of became my default. Now I'm trying to write more short stories and I'm shifting my thoughts so that I assume each idea will be a short story unless it feels like it should be a novel. But I'm not sure how to judge that.

Comments

[agilebrit]

There are a few ways. I always plan for "short" because "novel" is not my natural length and never has been. But whether it's 5K or 15K or anywhere in between is really up in the air until I'm done with it and then trying to cram it into the wordcount of whatever antho I'm attempting to sub it to.

There's the MICE quotient: Is it a Mileau, Idea, Character, or Event story? If you have all four as major elements in there, you have a novel. A short can sustain one, maybe two of those, depending on how short you want it to be. Anything more and you're in novelette or novella territory at least.

There's also the notion that each character adds at least 500 words to the story. The more characters you have, the higher your wordcount will be. That being said, I've crammed five Characters, an Idea, and an Event into a story that's under 4000 words long while sustaining a murder mystery with two bodies and three perpetrators.

At the end of the day, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with the story. Generally speaking, I just outline it, and whatever length it turns out to be in the writing is the length it is. I don't worry about how long it is until I start subbing it places.