Hello everyone, I love writing stories, but most of the time when I write the end result is far too long to be considered a short story (up to 10,000 words), but there is not much chance of me making them into full length books due to my minimalist style. What should I be doing with these? What would you call them?
Well, I guess I'd call a ten-thousand-word short story something other than a 'minimalist style'. I've never read a short story that couldn't be tightened up length-wise. Maybe when you have been here long enough, you could post a paragraph or two in the workshops and we can take a look.
You would call that a "novelette" as modern conventions go, but there is no strict standard on how many words constitute a short story, novel, or novella. Personally, I would still call it a short story. Ten thousand words is not long at all.
In this interview Stephen Kings says Anne, a novelette, was too long for a magazine but it ended up published in a short story collection. That might be the way you have to go.
If all else fails, self-publish them. There's a market for stories of any length as ebooks, though novels generally sell the best.
10k words is still within short story limit. Once you are significantly over that, like 15 or 20k you have a novelette. 30-60k is a novella (roughly) and 65-70k and above is a novel, but most bestsellers are at least 90k. One thing you can do is write a novel that consists of related long-short stories. You can have three or even five, they can work together quite well. Also if you had ten stories of 10k words, you'd have an average-length book, so I don't see a problem. Write how it feels best, edit etc. and whatever you end up with, it'll work out as long as it's well-written.
