I'm just wondering. I've recently entered a competition for short stories where the word limit is 55. This in my opinion, though a worthy and fruitful endeavour, does not constitute a short story. Luckily the competition was called The Short Short Story Competition to avoid such a problem. I've read short stories on this site that I would consider stories, beginning, middle and an end etc, that weigh in at under 1000 words - which is still not many. Does that constitute a short story? I've read classic 'classic' short stories, which read like plays, and 'classic' short stories which take between an hour and six to read. Your thoughts please.
About twenty to sixty pages would be a full-fledged short story. ...But that would explain my lack of posting them I suppose.
size is not determined by number of pages, but by total word count... here's a list of the various limits [subject to some variation, depending on whose list you use]:
Mammamaia is pretty much on target with her post, I believe. Mammamaia listing "about" is ever so important as the ranges vary to a certain degree, usually depending on the market you're looking at. Some say 5000 words, others say 7500, some say short stories up to 10,000. But the majority of markets seem to indicate between maxes 5000-7500 words consituting a short story. Usually anything less that 1000 (sometimes 1500) is considered flash fiction. One more opinion to add to the mix. Terry
the most important thing is to always check each venue's guidelines, to see what they consider the 'right' size range for the piece...
i think that it should be at least 5 -10 notebook pages because some children stories are short stories and that's how long htey are
that doesn't have anything to do with appropriate size for adult market short stories, bf... and no one in the publishing industry counts pages, btw... they only go by word count...
