Writers' Dream Coach

Doorstopper Novel

With this post, we move into the realm of beliefs about your product: The STORY

First of all, many beginning writers I know believe they must write at least a novel. A real book. Something “big”. And a series is even better! Yes, even with stories, size seems to matter in a certain way.

For a while, especially in Fantasy, bigger was better, no questions asked. If not the single book, then the series. It had to be huge. Doorstoppers, at least three for a series, but five were better. Maybe even ten, or a dozen. Imagine the size of that world, the headcount of the cast and the number of subplots to fill that many pages… it’s daunting!

Bigger is better!

And then you have the other extreme: Short stories.

There isn’t a clear definition of length for short stories by word count – officially – but lengths of 2,000 to 7,500 words are commonly mentioned. It “should be readable in one sitting” is an informal definition. However, many, many magazines have word count limits for the short stories they accept, and those limits have gone down considerably in the last 20 years. I’ve seen several go below the 2,000 words that were the lower limit of actual short stories.

Flash fiction has become popular, including the  “drabble” (100 words) or even “Twit Fic”, confined to the 140 characters that Twitter allows. That’s about 23 words, btw. And I have seen stories told in such few words.

Shortest is best!

So how do we know? Continue reading →