Several years ago, I found myself in a forum discussion about how many words classify a story as a short story, a novelette, a novella, or a novel. There were, of course, many opinions, some garnered from college courses in creative writing, some from reading what professional authors say, and some just the opinions of different writers. At the end of the discussion, the general consensus was a story should be as long as it needs to be to contain the relevant facts, ideas, actions, and results the writer is trying to convey.
The operative word here is “relevant”. What is relevant to a story is the information the reader needs in order to “see and hear” what’s happening and to understand why it’s happening. Anything more is just filler to drive up the word count. Anything less will leave the reader confused about why the author wrote the story in the first place.
A short story really doesn’t have to have many words as long as those words tell a story. It might just tell the story in the reader’s mind, but as long as the story is told, any number of words are fine. A prime example of a very short, short story has been attributed to Earnest Hemmingway, though there are those who credit prior authors. The story was only six words long.
“For Sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
When you read these six words, they write a story in your mind. The story will be different for each reader, but those six words do tell a story. It’s just left up to the reader to surmise what happened and why, something most readers like doing.
At the other end of the spectrum is the novel, and with novels, the sky is the limit as long as the information is relevant. Most professional authors, even first time authors, are given an advance contract once they’ve submitted a story outline or story synopsis that the publisher believes will sell. That contract can specify a number of things such as the royalty that will be paid to the author per book sold, the date upon which the manuscript must be submitted, and often, the minimum number of words.
The minimum number of words varies, but as an example, the requirement for Harlequin romance novels specifies a word count between fifty thousand words and seventy thousand words depending upon in which genre the story is to be published.
That is just what Harlequin has determined their readers want and not a hard and fast rule. George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was just under thirty thousand words, and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Ronald Dahl was a little over thirty eight thousand words. At the other end of the scale is the novel “Outlander” by Diana Gabaldon with a whopping three hundred and five thousand words.
A guide from The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America categorizes stories like this:
Short story: under 7,500
Novelette: between 7,500 and 17,500
Novella: between 17,500 and 40,000
Novel: over 40,000
Again, that’s just a guide for this particular genre, but other guides are similar.
So, when you write a story, don’t be constrained by a minimum or maximum number of words. Instead, make each word count for something and let the story unfold as it will with a beginning, a plot and an ending. If it ends up being only two thousand words, so be it. If it ends up being fifty thousand or more, that’s fine too as long as you haven’t added a bunch of non-relevant information.
There are a couple of things to remember about what Noveltrove will and will not publish. Readers want enough content in a story to have an enjoyable read. For this reason, really short stories may not be published. It will depend upon the story having a recognizable beginning, plot, and ending and not the word count. What the site history shows is that there have been stories published that have only about a thousand words but were well written and readable. Poems and letters can less than a hundred words and still be published.
The other thing you might find is that when you attempt to copy and paste a very long story into the panel on the “Write a New Story” page, it might not accept it all. That’s because there is a limitation on the number of characters the site can handle in one submission. If you run into this problem, you can break the story up into two or more parts and submit each part individually. It’s usually a good idea to label each part, like “Chapter 1” or “Part 1”. That helps readers read your work in the correct order so things make sense. It’s also a good idea to submit one part per day because that will make sure the different parts land on the home page in the proper order.