Novel/novella/novelette word-count guidelines

[Deleted]

I've post this list of guidelines - which I devised for my own use - elsewhere, but it can be handy, so I thought I'd pop it up here:


100 words: Drabble

100-1000 words: Flash Fiction

1000-2500 words: Vignette

2500-7500 words: Short Story

7500-17,500 words: Novelette

17,500-40,000 words: Novella

40,000-150,000 words: Novel

150,000 upwards – Epic (OK I made this one up, but I find it useful).




Any other suggestions or alternative definitions welcome.

[Daniel]

Cool. I asked about something like this in another thread some time ago. Your categories seem like a reasonable extension of the SFWA categories.

I've heard of drabbles, but I'm not familiar with them. Are they usually 100 words exactly, or are they 100 words or fewer?

[Becca Mills]

Nice! This is good to know. The "novelette" has always confused me.

[Deleted]

Apr 30, 2015 15:20:01 GMT -5 Daniel said:

Cool. I asked about something like this in another thread some time ago. Your categories seem like a reasonable extension of the SFWA categories.

I've heard of drabbles, but I'm not familiar with them. Are they usually 100 words exactly, or are they 100 words or fewer?

I think 100 words give or take a few. The purpose is simply to allow the writer to express something in a succinct or pithy way.

[Alan Petersen]

I was just reading Tor's guidelines and they're using similar word counts

What We're Looking: The Imprint is looking for complete, original science fiction and fantasy stories of between 30,000 and 40,000 words. We are seeking stories with commercial appeal that take advantage of the particular strengths of the novella format. We will consider stories that are slightly shorter than 30,000 and slightly longer than 40,000, but we won’t look at anything under 17,500 words.

www.tor.com/page/submissions-guidelines#novellas