Therefore, you should consider creating and focusing on one event.Īnd you only have a few paragraphs at most before you set that event in motion. However, in a short story, you probably should limit yourself to one main event. In a novel, you have complete freedom to create a world and a series of events, or acts. The length of a story affects its structure.
However, it could also be argued that these limitations make the story more complex. In one way, a short story could be said to be simple because it contains fewer characters and less of a plot. A headline from The Guardian says it best: “ You Can’t Speed Read Literature.” How Is a Short Story Different Than a Novel?Ī short story is different from a novel because of what it doesn’t have. These numbers ignore two things-retention and enjoyment. Some say that 250, 300, and even precise numbers such as 238 for non-fiction and 260 words per minute for fiction are attainable. For example, if the average reading speed for literature is 130-150 words a minute, a 2,000-word story can be read in 15 to 20 minutes.Ī note about reading speed: Surf the net, and you’ll find several different numbers thrown around when it comes to reading speed. However, from a reader’s perspective, and Poe’s definition, a story can be read in one sitting. Literary magazines and publishers dictate the manuscript length, and most won’t accept works above 5,000 words. Prose poetry is also under 1,000 words.įrom a practical perspective, editors and publishers dictate story length.
Anything above that is considered a novella, and a story under 1,000 words is flash fiction. The acceptable definition is that a short story is between 1,000 and 7,500 words. Edgar Allen Poe, who is considered the father of the modern short story, wrote that if a reader cannot read it in a single sitting, it is too long. What a Short Story Is and How It Differs From a NovelĪ short story can be defined by length, content, or the reader’s experience.
0 kommentar(er)
