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
- subdivided, though I never can classify a story to this point until I’ve already started writing it!
- 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.
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