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A short story is an entirely developed theme, but significantly more concise and less detailed than novels. Usually, people can’t read books in one sitting with no break. But one can easily read a short story in one sitting. Short stories are those tales that parents often tell their children before they sleep. This blog post will discuss how long is a short story. We’ll also learn how to compose a typical short story in 2023.
Page Contents
There are three types of short stories
I) Micro Fiction (5 to 350-word count)
II) Flash Fiction (500 to 1000-word count)
III) Traditional Fiction (1500 to 5000-word count)
In this article, we’ll discuss the Traditional Fiction type.
Why is Word Count Important?
When you are new, readers will aggressively judge you for your work. If they read your story and find the word count overwhelming, they’d bounce back and won’t come back to reread your stories. They might consider you a layperson who does not know how to differentiate between a novel and a short story word count. That is why you need to take care of the word count in your short stories.
Determine the word count of a short story
Brian A. Klems, the editor and author of a known magazine suggests that ‘ When you’re writing, though, don’t impose a words limit on yourself. Let the story flow without interruption. Wait until you finish the first draft to go back and tighten it to a reasonable short story length.’ For example, a short story by Frank Arthur, a British novelist, ‘Twenty Minutes with Mrs. Oakentubb,’ has almost a word count of 4000.
Pages in a short story
There is no parameter to know how long is a short story in pages. It depends on the word count of your story. You can write stories up to 10,000 words, but we don’t recommend this length for your short story. It’s better to keep the word count to the maximum of 7500 words. However, if you think your short story requires more word count and increasing it won’t bore the readers, you can write 10000 words. A story with a word count of 5000 has 10-12 pages. For example, a famous short story by Flannery O’Connor, an American novelist, ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’, covers 13 pages with a word count of 6500.
Below we’ll talk about how you can write a short story.
8 Important Things in Story Writing
1. Ideas to Write Short Stories
It all starts with an idea. You write about what you often imagine, or you imagine it in a horror condition, or when you are happy. Pick any of such instances and write on it. Choose the emotion that you feel with more passion. People often relate moments when they were joyful, and in their childhood when they were sitting alone getting scared in the dark, or if they had experienced a natural disaster, or if the group of dogs in childhood surrounded them. Pick any of these ideas and then write on it.
2. Captivating start of the story
It doesn’t matter if your first sentence or starting paragraph isn’t interesting enough. It is necessary, but composing it when you write is not essential. After writing some text, you can develop a fantastic opening line or paragraph in the middle or end. Giving two or three ideas, any writer would give you enough information to start by.
3. Different ways to start a story
You can start the story in any format you like. You can begin by first describing the history of characters and continuing it, or start with an intense action that grabs the readers’ interest. Whatever way you start your story, it should be captivating enough to get the reader’s attention; otherwise, many people will not read further. Think like this: Have you ever watched a movie that has a bland start? People probably switch to watching something else without watching it.
4. Sit down to write
Many writers never start writing anything and worry that they aren’t getting any good ideas to get started. Often when you sit down, pick up the pen or open the WordPad on your computer to write, you get ideas at that moment. Do this and brainstorm, and there are high chances that you would get something, to begin with.
5. Separate it from the Novel
You don’t need to describe each detail about characters in the story or describe the location as we read in novels. You need to give an overview and focus on the story more. Try reading more short stories and analyze how they differ from books. Focus on providing fewer details than novels but perfectly describing the plot and scene. Read a lot of short stories for this purpose.
6. Title of your Short Story
Choose a title that is not very long but conveys the outline of your story perfectly and precisely. When a person reads your short story, he should relate the story title with what he has read in the book.
7. Learn New Things
Never be hesitant about learning new things. It means that if you have time to improve your writing or learn about types of writing, go for it. However, don’t lose the uniqueness you have in your writing style, but don’t take it as a plunge to avoid learning new writing styles of writing. It’s up to you if you agree with anything taught to you. It’s not mandatory to follow all the techniques they have taught you. Use your knowledge too. Don’t think you can’t be a better writer than a writer born years ago and had an established name in the market. You don’t need to compare. Respect them, but know that they are also humans. They had their knowledge. You can benefit from it. Also, recognize your understanding of writing.
There are courses that famous authors are teaching online, for example, Jerry Jenkins.
8. Read after you write
After you complete your short story, read it from the perspective of an unknown person who is reading it for the first time. Keep in mind that you are reading a short story and see if you can quickly finish it like most short stories. See if it resembles the levels you had read in your childhood or seems longer than them.
Avoid these Things
1. Copying a Famous Author
Don’t copy your favorite author. People love him and love his work. Don’t think that imitating his style could get you the same riches and respect as your famous writer has. People like originality and uniqueness. People won’t respect a person who imitates another person hoping to get the same output.
Moreover, every writer has a unique artist who separates his writing style from others. You need to write in your style. Even if you have recently begun your writing career, you don’t need to emulate any famous writer. But you can do it only if your writing style naturally relates to him otherwise.
2. Elaborating the scenes and Characters
Another difference between novels and short stories is that novels describe the life stories of almost every character. In contrast, short stories focus on describing the details of the main character or protagonist. However, tell the history of your main character. For example, what happened to him, who he was, what he has become, and relatable things.
Beginning of Writing Career
Short stories often become the starting point of a writer to become a writer. They apparently write a story out of nowhere, but they observe it around them, take inspiration from movies, and then compose a novel. That’s where the spark ignites, and they write more. It is not necessary, and it’s not the case that every person who writes a short story must have an interest in writing or have some favorite writers. Even if he’s passionate about a sport and writes a story, his story could get clicked in readers’ minds.
Tips for Fiction Writers
1. Unfinished Stories
You can write incomplete stories. It may seem absurd, but it creates a lifetime curiosity in readers’ minds to discover what would happen next. Some people often imagine their own story after reading the incomplete story. It only occurs when the story is fascinating; otherwise, it would not work well. You can write another part after months or years. You can also not write it at all. If you have something to tell and it’s exciting, then you must publish another part of your short story.
There are some stories, people automatically demand for their second part. The storyline, the plot, or the character attract them so much that they need to hear another part of it. We are not talking about novel writing in this blog post, but here is an example of the famous novel Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. The villain of this novel, Rupert of Hentzau, was so charismatic that Anthony Hope wrote another book on his name Rupert of Hentzau, in 1898, four years after he wrote Prisoner of Zenda in 1898.
2. Edit After You Write
This is very common advice you hear in both fiction and non-fiction. Write without caring for grammar, sentence structure, or such mistakes. Write in your flow. If you care about these things while you write, it will disturb the flow and fluency in your writing. You would have dedicated time to edit your text after you had completed your manuscript. Don’t worry about correcting mistakes while you are writing.
How to Publish Short Stories?
Publication of your story is crucial if you want to start a career in stories. Just like books, you can publish your short stories on platforms like Amazon Kindle, and you can also publish them traditionally. You can adopt the following ways to publish your short story.
- Submit your short story to a famous magazine.
- Take part in the short stories contest, and if you win, you will get the cash prize, and your short story will be published.
- To self-publish your story, you can also submit your short story on Amazon Kindle in the category of short reads.
We don’t recommend selling your short story to someone paying you good money, but not letting your name appear on your short story, especially if you plan to start your career as a novelist or short story writer.
Final Word
We have learned what short stories are and how they differ from novels. The primary difference is that short stories don’t elaborate on details compared to novels. A novel is like a film that shows each and everything, for example, the way a person walks, the way someone picked up a water glass and threw it at the wall with frustration expressed on his face, and then he starts to take long breaths. You can imagine a short story be like a short time. Instead, a short story would tell that Max picked up a glass of water and threw it at the wall. We have also learned how many pages is a short story.
Short stories have an average length of 9 to 13 pages, with a word count that ranges from 1500 words to 7000. You can sell your short books on Amazon kindle and to popular magazines. If you have written a short story, you can contact our Mczell Book Writing team, and we’ll edit it and make the perfect book word count that a story has, at very affordable rates.
