1. RogerDodge

    RogerDodge New Member

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    Short story or a novel

    Discussion in 'Genre Discussions' started by RogerDodge, Mar 21, 2015.

    I don't know what the difference between a short story and a novel, can anyone explain this to me.
     
  2. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    A short story is a story that's short, or bellow around 40,000 words. A novel is a work of fiction over 80,000 words.

    A novella is usually between 40,000 and 80,000 words.
     
  3. RogerDodge

    RogerDodge New Member

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    Thanks Lord Lemex.
    one more question.
    When typing out your chapters, do you use a white background with black ink or do you use a dark background with say a white ink.
    This will be on a word processor.
    I am thinking of trying a black background, will let you all know what I think, will have to check the print out colour or change it back.
     
  4. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    White background, black ink. I don't see why you would bother wasting so much ink to make your paper black, or white ink if you have black paper - but still, what's the point? And I'm not sure most publishers I know of would accept that anyway.
     
  5. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    There are different definitions of story length in various places. Different publishers define things differently, and expectations vary from genre to genre.

    In general, though, you could probably say that a short story is less than about 10K words, a novella is between 10K and 50K, and novels are over 50K. That said, there are lots of genres where you'll have trouble selling a 50K word story as a novel.

    In what genre are you writing?
     

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