Recently I started working on a short story which will soon be a giveaway to my newsletter subscribers. Except I ended up writing a novelette!
What is a novelette, you ask? And are you suddenly wondering about the definition of a novella or even a short story?
I’m here to demystify some of the forms of fiction for those of you who are readers and not writers.
A Short Story is typically defined as a work between 1,000 and 7,500 words. (A few sources even go up to 10,000 words.) To give you some context for this, a 7,500-word story in 12-point font, double-spaced, on an 8 x 11.5 page would run somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 pages, depending on things like lengths of paragraphs. This means a 1,000-word short story would be more in the neighborhood of 5 pages.
Many authors will include some kind of short story as a giveaway for signing up for their newsletter. It’s a quick read. But beyond that, it feels like the short story form is rare these days.
A Novelette falls between 7,500 and 17,000 (or 19,000, depending on your source!) words. This kind of work goes beyond a short story but remains shorter than a novella. Because it contains a greater word count range, the story can have a bit more scope or depth than a short story, but the plot and characters will still be relatively straightforward. This is the length in which I’ve found myself in my current story.
A Novella generally runs between 17,000 and 40,000 words. This length allows for more secondary characters and even a subplot. Often you find novellas as an “extra” story to a series, either as a prequel or an epilogue, or the story of a minor character within a series. You might, like me, read a lot of novellas around Christmas, since many authors will put out a Christmas-themed novella. Below you’ll see examples of novellas from some of the authors on this blog!
Of course, a Novel is considered a full-length work of fiction, but the word count definition of a novel is more nebulous. It’s basically anything over 40,000 words. My novels for Guideposts came in between 60-65,000 words. My Bethany House novels were all around 90,000 words. There are authors on this blog who have topped well over 100,000 words in their books! Fantasy books often exceed even that.
These are just the “accepted” guidelines. Obviously there are books which get labeled differently, but you get the gist.
As an author, I most enjoy writing novels, but I got my start in short stories. I have indie-published two historical romance novellas and now I can add novelette to my repertoire of literary forms. Some stories don’t need an entire novel to tell. And some can’t be told in anything less. The job of an author is to figure out what form serves the story best.
I hope this breakdown has helped you understand these forms of fiction in a bit more tangible way.
Do you have a preference—short story, novelette, novella, novel—in your reading?