Is it long enough?

Well, I have two answers for this. 1. If the story is long enough to have a beginning, a middle, and an ending, it's long enough. 2. If, however, you want to sell your short stories, or enter them into contests, the right length is whatever a magazine of contest wants.

I don't know that there is a true "sweet spot" for any type of short story, but I find short stories between 2,500 and 3,500 words are far and away the easiest to sell, at least when writing for adults. For MG, I find stories from 1,000 to 1,500 words are the easiest to sell.

I also know there's nothing wrong with making a short story come in at a desired length. Writing for publication is a business, and you give a business what it wants, or they won't take it. If a magazine of contest wants a short story between 2,000 and 3,000 words, then that's what I give them.

I hate it when some writers say a story should be as long as it "wants" to be, or as long as it "should" be. That's nonsense. It's an excuse not to make stories a given length. It's an excuse to fail. A story doesn't want anything. It's an inanimate object, and the only "should be" is however long the writer decides to make it.

I'm ecstatically happy to cut or lengthen a story, if it means making a sale. I can make it an equally good story to whatever length a magazine wants it.

maceleon said:

urban fantasy short stories

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James' advice is good. So do some research to find what length urban fantasy leaning mags are seeking. That'd give you a pretty good answer.

Around 3k seems to be the desired length these days. For myself, I often find that too short for an enjoyable read. But the story should be the length it needs to be to satisfy the reader.

ETA: One problem I have seen again and again with shorter stories is that the writer panics as the wordcount climbs and truncates the ending, leading to stories with long build ups, decent middles, and sudden stops. Better to write the story then trim it overall than to short-change on the ending.

Buffysquirrel said:

Around 3k seems to be the desired length these days. For myself, I often find that too short for an enjoyable read. But the story should be the length it needs to be to satisfy the reader.

ETA: One problem I have seen again and again with shorter stories is that the writer panics as the wordcount climbs and truncates the ending, leading to stories with long build ups, decent middles, and sudden stops. Better to write the story then trim it overall than to short-change on the ending.

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I suspect 3k, plus or minus five hundred words, has always been the easiest length to sell. It was way back when I wrote my first story.

As for panicking as word count grows, is see this at just about every length. This is one thing I think practice usually fixes. Write enough short stories, and this tendency goes away.

Ah, I've fallen foul of 'stories were so much longer in the good old days' .

If you're writing for fantasy/scifi mags, they like the longer ones, too. I've seen them up to 10K or longer. (Of course they're technically no longer a 'short story,' but you can still sell it as short fiction.)

I do this all the time, but my genre is mystery.

jaksen said:

If you're writing for fantasy/scifi mags, they like the longer ones, too. I've seen them up to 10K or longer. (Of course they're technically no longer a 'short story,' but you can still sell it as short fiction.)

I do this all the time, but my genre is mystery.

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Sure, but when stories get that long, you'll seldom see a new writer's name on it. It's possible, but most SF and fantasy magazines reserve those long slots for writers with known names. This doesn't mean a new writer absolutely can't sell one, but it does mean it's brutally tough, and not a good place to start.

Jamesaritchie said:

I hate it when some writers say a story should be as long as it "wants" to be, or as long as it "should" be. That's nonsense. It's an excuse not to make stories a given length. It's an excuse to fail. A story doesn't want anything. It's an inanimate object, and the only "should be" is however long the writer decides to make it.

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I love you for saying this. Currently I'm in hiding from a number of Facebook groups giving really really bad advice.

Is it normal to write a 9000 word story, and then realize you only needed 3000? I get the impression I'm not a very efficient writer, if I'm throwing out 2/3 of the piece. Or should I just call it "my process" and accept that I'm going to spend a lot of time cutting?

amniehaushard said:

Is it normal to write a 9000 word story, and then realize you only needed 3000? I get the impression I'm not a very efficient writer, if I'm throwing out 2/3 of the piece. Or should I just call it "my process" and accept that I'm going to spend a lot of time cutting?

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It's extremely normal. I think most writers can overcome it, but, yes, it is normal.

What's not normal is realizing you're doing this. When most new writers turn out a 9,000 word story that should be 3,000 words, they find an excuse to leave it at 9,000 words.

I've always decided how long I want a story before I start writing it, and use the first two or three pages to control length by where and how I start.

I think I got really lucky very early on by having a number of editors ask for stories that had to be given lengths. I had to write a 1,500 word story each month for a year, and also had to write several 3,000 word stories, and several 5,000 word stories. Right in the middle of this, an editor asked for a 15,000 word story. Honestly, I never had any real trouble controlling length, but I have no doubt having to do so early on helped.

Jamesaritchie said:

I hate it when some writers say a story should be as long as it "wants" to be, or as long as it "should" be. That's nonsense. It's an excuse not to make stories a given length. It's an excuse to fail. A story doesn't want anything. It's an inanimate object, and the only "should be" is however long the writer decides to make it.

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Or the writer's using a metaphor to describe an intuitive process of determining the story's length rather than a rational one.

Buffysquirrel said:

Or the writer's using a metaphor to describe an intuitive process of determining the story's length rather than a rational one.

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Whatever the writer is doing, the result is a story he can't sell, and refuses to change.

Jamesaritchie said:

Whatever the writer is doing, the result is a story he can't sell, and refuses to change.

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Writers who refuse to change anything will probably never sell, true, but there's no reason why the result of an intuitive process should be worse than the result of a rational one.

Buffysquirrel said:

Writers who refuse to change anything will probably never sell, true, but there's no reason why the result of an intuitive process should be worse than the result of a rational one.

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I think the marketplace would disagree with you.

Jamesaritchie said:

I think the marketplace would disagree with you.

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How would the marketplace know?

Buffysquirrel said:

How would the marketplace know?

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The marketplace always knows. The marketplace is editors, and editors generally how how and why a writer wrote this or that. After a while, when you hear enough stories, when enough writers tell you enough things, you learn to tell just from the story itself. I'm not sure "intuitive" is the right word, or even that "rational" is, but I know it's irratiopnal to think a story has any desire, that a story wants anything, that a story is anythinhg more than a construct by the writer.

I know any story can be told well at any length, and we're not arguing short story versus novel, but short short versus short story versus a little bit longer short story versus a novelette.

"Intuitive" is a great thing, if it means doing something the right way and the smart way through intuition. "Intuition" is a horrible thing if it means doing something however you like, getting it wrong, but claiming intuition played any part in the process.

Writers never get to judge their own stories. The marketplace does this and unless a writer's intuiting fits the marketplace, it isn't intuition at all, it's just stubbornness.

Having been an editor on and off, I have at times thought I knew what a writer was thinking, or how something came about, but I put it down to arrogance . If a story works, if it's the right length, if you want to buy it, why worry if the writer used the I Ching to choose to make it 4k long? Or even to direct the plot.

And honestly, metaphors aren't intended to be rational. And that's all "the story wants" is: a metaphor.

I agree with the 3k but it definitely depends on preference

3k tends to be the sweet spot for many contests and magazines. However currently there are plenty of magazines and websites that want very short stories or flash fiction that are not specifically geared toward Urban Fantasy but I'm sure would take it. So, I don't think a story can be "too short" in the current market...