Thread: Short story?

I know this question is probably absurd but I've always had difficulty answering this for myself.

How long, by recommendation, I should a short story be? I'm not planning to get professionally published or anything like that, it's just curiosity really. I was thinking perhaps around 100-120 pages, pocket sized book around 4X6 inches. Or can they be shorter? I understand that most people will say it can be whatever you want it to be, but I'm interested in your recommendations

thanks

It's all up to you really. I think that if you're writing for you the best thing to do is to decide how long a story you want to read, and then plan for that. Myself, I only aim for 10-20 pages (3000-9000 words). If I went for 100 pages (30,000 words) I'd probably make it a stand-alone novella. As you say, it would make a nice pocketbook. I think 10-20 pages works well for me, I have time to fit in a story, develop symbols, and I (and the reader) can get through it quickly and feel good at the end.

There's another thread similar to your question, with some further thoughts on short-story size and formatting.
http://www.writingforums.com/writing...-question.html

on wiki, you can find a sort of guide to length of writings ranging from short story to a novel. As follows:

Wiki Reference

Classification Word count Novel over 40,000 words Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words Short story under 7,500 words

For me personally, anything under 20 thousand words would most likely be a short story. Though if it's 1000 words or less I tend to think of it as flash fiction.
Over 20,000 I guess it's probably a novella. But that really depends. You could have a 15,000 word novella if it felt like a novella, and you could have a 25,000 word short story if it still essentially felt like a short story.

Publishers that I've encountered will start taking books at 50-60k for Young Adult and 70k plus for other fiction.

So those are the rough guidelines I go by in my head.

This sort of thing is dealt with by word count. Anything under around 1500 or less is a short-short or flash fiction. Between about 1500 and 10,000 is a short story. Anything under about 15,000 may or may not technically qualify as a short story, but the highest wordcount I've ever seen in submission guidlines is about 10,000. Above that, we're in novellette/novella territory.

Now I didn't know these things until now. Thanks for the info!

What this all amounts to is that, instead of deciding how long you want "a short" to be, decide how long you want your story and that will tell you if you're writing a short, novelette (first time hearing that term), novella or novel.