What length should a "short story" be in words and/or pages?

Answer 1

A short story can be two words. In fact, there are contests for 2 word short stories all the time. There are also flash fiction stories of 100 words and 500 words. I would say anything from 2 words to about 15 - 20 thousand words is a short story. After that, it becomes a novella. Remember industry standard is based on 250 words per page. So you can figure out the length. Pax - C

Answer 2

I believe anything below 30,000 words is considered a short story. Above that it's a novella, then at 50,000 words a novel, etc.

As the first poster pointed out, a short story can be two words (or one sentence) or fourty pages of text tpyed in a regular sized font.

I can't remember who wrote this, but the shortest, complete short story I've come across is this: "When the boy woke up, the dinosaur was gone."

English class-type short stories are rather restrictive, and I'm not fond of their length (a few pages at the most, maybe a thousand words maximum).

Answer 3

For current print publications...

Micro fiction--under one hundred words.
Flash Fiction--100 to 1,000 words.
Short short--1,000 to 2,000 words.
Short story-- 2,000 to 7,500 words, in some cases 10,000

If you use Courier 12, double space, and have 60 characters per line and 25 lines per page, you can call each page 250 words rather than using an actual word count.

For online publications, word counts are often shorter than for similar stories in print.

In all cases, check the publication's writers' guidelines or submission guidelines, which will be specific about minimum and maximum word count they seek, and a whole lot more of what they do and do not want.

Answer 4

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to be read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). Other definitions place the maximum word length at 7,500 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000.

Answer 5

The length shouldn't really govern the story, but anywhere between 10 and 40 pages should be reasonable to be considered a short story. It all depends on how much you need to let your story unwind itself.

Answer 6

A few words come to mind when I hear the word "Undertaker": 1. Last Ride 2. Tombstone 3. Man in Black 4. Phenom 5. Undefeated WM streak

Answer 7

I'd say no more than 3 - 5 pages for a short story, and maybe 500-1,500 words.

I write a lot, and I hate it when a teacher assigns us short stories to write.

Answer 8

Two and a half A4 sized pages with average sized handwriting should do it.