How many words in a typical short story?

Faizah Level 1

January 20, 2015, 2:01 pm

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How many words in a typical short story?

I am writing a series of short stories for a friend's website. She has specified at least 5,000 words each, but that seems too short. How many words is in a typical short story and how can I say everything I need to say in that short of space?

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Beverly

Beverly

A typical short story would be from 1000 to 7500 words, where as a novellette would be 7500 to 20,000 words.

Think about a short story as a one act play with one scene and one setting.

A short story will usually occur over a short period of time, anything from a few minutes to hours or even a day. The time frame for a short story is so tiny compared to what you would get in a novel. For that reason, you will be focusing on the action and present events (or recollection of previous events), rather than going from one scene to another.

10 years ago

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Tandy

Tandy

A short story is usually around 10,000 to 15,000 words and contains only brief characterizations, rather than detailed information on each character. Also, background is only hinted at, in a few lines and rarely explored.

10 years ago

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MillyBobbyBrown

MillyBobbyBrown

A short story is actually less than a novella, which you might find on Amazon. A novella could be upwards of 20,000 words or more. And, it might have chapters, while a short story is usually just one very long chapter centered around one event or happening.

10 years ago

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Akemi

Akemi

Also, a short story is more about a specific event, rather than a long storyline. A short story might be just one conversation. It's usually not as expansive as a novel.

10 years ago

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Airlia

Airlia

To get everything you want into your short story, you might want to include a summary of past historical events that affect the current storyline.

10 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

One writer told me that it depends on the type of story that you are writing. For a human drama, it can be from 1,000 words up to 5,000 words. But for an action genre of a story, you can start with 2,000 words. Action stories are longer because one scene of action requires a longer elaboration when written. Just like a punch of the hero on the villain, it is just one second in the movie but in a written story, it can contain up to 1 page. But I guess the only rule in short story is the maximum of 12 pages of a word document. Longer than that, it can be considered a novella already.

7 years ago

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