How to Write a Novel: What are you writing? Short story, novella, or novel
Many new writers ask how long their story should be. There are two approaches to figuring out the best answer:
(A) Start with your target word count and construct the story within those constraints.
For example, you want to write a 90,000-word thriller to submit to agents, or a 3,000-word short story for a competition with specific word count guidelines.
(B) Start writing and see what it turns into.
There might only be enough in your idea for a short story, or it might expand into a wide-ranging novel of over 120,000 words. You might not know which it is until you get started, especially if you are a discovery writer.
Both methods are valid, and you will probably use both along your author journey.
There are, however, some rough guidelines for word count, although each category can vary depending on the situation.
Flash fiction is under 1,000 words.
Short stories range from 2,000 to 5,000 words. If you’re submitting to an anthology, a specific publication, or a competition, they will specify word count.
Novellas range from 20,000 to 40,000 words.
Novels are anything over 50,000 words, and length will vary by genre and reader expectations. Romance is often closer to 50,000 words with thrillers, crime, and mystery usually around 70,000 to 90,000 words. Beware of writing an epic fantasy under 120,000 words!
Go back to your list of books like the one you aim to write. Check the page count and assume around 300 words per page. Multiply together to get a rough estimate of the number of words in the book.
IT by Stephen King is a doorstopper of a book with 1,088 pages in the paperback version — over 300,000 words for what is a sprawling, coming-of-age, epic horror novel.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is a slim 108 pages, around 32,000 words, making it a literary women’s fiction novella.
Questions:
• Do you know the length of the story you want to write?
• Go back to your list of comparison books. How long are they? What is the reader expectation in the genre?
