Fiction Lengths

The following is an excerpt from the July 22, 2005, Market Update newsletter from WRITERSMARKET.COM. You can subscribe to the email-delivered publication if you send a blank email to join-writersmarket@fwpubs.sparklist.com, or sign up online.

WHAT FICTION ARE YOU WRITING?

Since it helps to know what you're offering before you actually approach markets here's a quick list of lengths for the various types of fiction. If you aren't sure what kind of fiction you've been writing, here are the word count guidelines to help you figure it out.

Up to 1,000 words -- short-short, flash fiction or vignette
1,000-6,000 words -- short story
6,000-15,000 words -- long story or novelette
15,000-45,000 words -- novella
45,000-120,000 words -- novel (though most commonly 50,000-80,000 words)
Anything more than 120,000 will probably need to be broken up into a series of books or condensed.

Novels tend to be published by book publishers originally, though excerpts can be sold to magazines. Short-shorts, flash fiction, vignettes, and short stories are usually sold first in magazines —with the possibility of releasing a collection in book form after several have been published.

Long stories, novelettes, and novellas can be tougher to place, but the norm is for them to originally appear in magazines or collections of short fiction. [Tectag: fiction]

Listen to this article