The story goes that Hemingway once bet a group of men $10 dollars each that he could make them cry with a short story of no longer than six words, and he won. For a moment I felt very grounded in the question. The story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” felt like an answer to the question.
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." is a six-word story, popularly attributed to Ernest Hemingway, although the link to him is unlikely. It is an example of flash fiction.
Jesus Wept: "The Shortest, Short Story Ever Written and Published," Guinness World Records book… In a 2 worded sentence in a book in the New Testament portion of The Holy Bible, God Himself revealed both the Divinity and the Humanity of His only Son, Jesus Christ, with "Jesus wept."
One very short story – often attributed to Ernest Hemingway but actually the work of another writer – is just six words long: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'.
A short story is any story between 1,000 and 10,000 words. A tale of fewer words than that is considered flash fiction. More than 10,000 is a novelette, followed by a novella, then a full-blown novel. Exact word counts are not hard and fast rules, but a rule of thumb — just an average length.
Flash fiction. Flash fiction is generally used as an umbrella term that refers to super short fiction of 1,000 words or less, but still provides a compelling story with a plot (beginning, middle, and end), character development, and usually a twist or surprise ending.
Novelettes are longer short stories, generally between 7,500 words and 17,500 to 20,000 words, or up to about 100 pages.
Short stories can range in length, but typically they are between 1,000 to 7,500 words long. That is roughly the equivalent of anywhere between three to twenty-five pages. Whether a story is labeled as “short” depends on its content and word count rather than page count.
How Long Should a Short Story Be? The average short story should run anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words, but they can be anything above 1,000 words. Flash fiction is a short story that is 500 words or less.
In the traditional publishing world, 20,000 words isn't considered a book-length story. Even if you are self-publishing, you may want to follow the tried-and-true guidelines for storytelling.
In general, the Safe Zone for adult fiction is 70,000-100,000, and the Safe Zone for adult nonfiction is 60,000-90,000 words. Less than that and your book is probably too short.
30,000 words are enough for a novella but would be considered too short for most fiction novels or a nonfiction book. As you can see, having the right number of words per page is important to its success.
In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu) by Marcel Proust – 1.5 million words. French author Marcel Proust began writing In Search of Lost Time in 1909, completing the entire volume set in 1922.
Generally speaking, a short story can be anywhere from 1,000 to 7,500 words, though stories around the 3,500-word mark seem to hit the sweet spot for many writers. As for page and average word count, using the industry standard of 250-300 words per page, a short story can be about 4 to twenty-five pages long.
A short story is a work of prose fiction that can be read in one sitting—usually between 20 minutes to an hour. There is no maximum length, but the average short story is 1,000 to 7,500 words, with some outliers reaching 10,000 or 15,000 words.
50,000 words is 100 pages single-spaced or 200 pages double-spaced. Typical documents that are 50,000 words or more include full-length novels. It will take approximately 167 minutes to read 50,000 words.
A 40,000 word count will create about 80 pages with single spacing or 160 pages double-spaced when using normal 1-inch margins, 12 pt. Arial font, and a standard A4 (letter size) page size.
But if all you're after is a quick answer, here they are: Novella: 17,500 – 40,000 words. Novelette: 7,700 – 17,500 words. Short Story: Less than 7,500 words.
A 70,000-word book is about 280 pages. An 80,000-word book is about 320 pages.
On average, novels are around 90,000 words long. One book page generally contains 250-300 words, so a 90,000-word book amounts to 320 pages.
The word count ranges from 10,000 to 40,000 words. It may contain between 100-200 pages.
However, the word “short” can mean different things, but generally speaking, a short story can be anywhere from 1,000–15,000 words, but most publications only publish short stories between 3000–5,000 words. Anything less than 1000 words is categorized either as a flash fiction or a micro-fiction.
A short story is a piece of fiction between 1,000-4,000 words (although it can go as high as 15,000 words). Simply put, it's a story you can read in one sitting.
The short definition of flash fiction is any fictional story that's under 1,500 words long. Some journals may have a different definition of flash fiction length, but most accept 1,500 words as the standard maximum word count.