I have often searched bits and bobs about the length of writing and what constitutes what in the writing world. It’s not often a hard and fast rule that applies (we are talking about writing here!) but i like to have an idea of what i’m doing and understand what the structure of my writing should be.
As a result i’ve done a little research (not too much because i’m quite lazy) and put together a list of some terms what they entail in relation to writing. To start here is a list of the common forms of prose that you can find about the place – by place I mean in books, magazines and the internet…pretty much anywhere you can have text (tattoos?).
Micro Fiction – 0-100 words
Micro fiction is the Haiku of prose. The challange of writing with such limited word count is quite considerable as the end result should still be recognisable as a story. This type of fiction is often popular with writers as a good excercise for honing skills and publishers as well beause it is short and cheap!
Flash Fiction – 100 – 500 or 100-1,000 words
The older sister of the Micro fiction, Flash fiction give you just that bit more to play with, whilst also providing the challenge of writing a story to a very short length and trying to constrain your writing talents into less than 1000 words! Flash fiction seems to vary in length depending on where you look, hence the different lengths above. Flash fiction again is increasingly popular on websites and blogs, and magazine publications as it is short and concise and engages readers who don’t tend to hang around for long.
Short story – 1,000-7,500 words
The big brother of the two above; the short story is a well know and well versed example of prose nowadays. The word length is generous and it is surprising the amount you can fit into a short story, especially if you have spent some time writing in the two shorter forms and tightened your writing skills. Short stories are one of the most accessible of the writing forms, these are often bought by magazines and websites and is a common form for writing competitions. A word of note that writing competitions and websites tend to edge towards a word length of 1,000-35,00 words rather than the top end of the 7,500 word limit.
Novellette / Novella – 7,500-50,000
This is traditionally the least sought after of the different lengths of writing. The reason mainly revolves around the fact it hovers in a kind of no-mans land between the well known short forms of writing and the most recognisable Novel form. The Length is also difficult to publish effectively as it’s normally too long for use in a magazine or website but not long enough for the traditional paper publication. Saying that however, electronic texts and e-mags and publishers do pick these up as it becomes easier to publicise and share such works with the masses.
Novel – 50,000 – 120,000
The most recognisable and palpable of the fiction writing forms. The Novel is a much larger length of writing and is traditionally produced in published, paper form. Although nowadays the electronic form of book for e-readers can bypass this. 50,000 words would be fairly short for a novel but no unheard of, whereas 120,000 words is edging on the large size for most books (around 500-600 pages), books this size are normally reserved for the already published and recognisable authors.
A quick search also reveals the page numbers for a paperback. Words per page (wpp) equate to roughly 250-300 for a paperback, going off this assumption (we will use 300 wpp) and using the wordcount above for the Novel your finished peice could range from around 170 pages up towards 400 pages. Though you do have to ask yourself, when is the last time you bought a novel that only had 170 pages?
writingbeard 