Types of Projects

I wrote about my process, but I didn’t talk much about the types of projects I have on my schedule.  By types, I don’t mean Original, Revision, Edit… I’m referring to the length of the projects.  And that’s where things can get confusing.

Here is how I think of my projects:

• Flash Fiction – stories less than 1000 words
• Short stories – between 1,000-50,000
  • subdivided, though I never can classify a story to this point until I’ve already started writing it!
    • short story – between 1,000 and 30,000
    • novella – between 30,000 and 50,000
• Novels – anything over 50,000

Just for comparison, here is a fairly typical breakdown within the industry of what word count goes with what “type” of story.

•  Flash Fiction – under 1000 words
• Short-short stories – between 1,000 and 2,500
• Short stories – between 2,500 and 10,000
• Novellettes – between 10,000 and  20,000/25,000
• Novellas – between 20/25,000 and 50,000
• Novels – over 50,000.

50,000 is short for a novel unless it’s young adult or non-fiction, but it’s basically the cut off between novella and novel.