How long do short stories need to be?

First of all - start talking like an author. We never refer to work in terms of pages but in terms of words. A short story can be two words. There are two word short story contests. Also 100 word and 500 word contests. Once you start getting up in the 10 thousand word neighborhood, you are going to find anthologies and magazines won't accept you. 12,000 is about max for an anthology or magazine - by the time you hit 15 thousand words, you are approaching novella length. The way to figure page numbers is to divide the number of words by 250.

They're, Their, There - Three Different Words.

Careful or you may wind up in my next novel.

Pax - C

Kittyrog is wrong about women's mags are no longer publishing fiction. Take A Break does a monthly fiction magazine, full of short stories and so does the People's Friend. Some magazines like Womens Own and Women have the occasional reader's short story. And a short story can be as short as a page or as long as an essay, 5000 - 8000. What needed is to work out which publication is taking what, before submitting your creation.

It depends on what is considered long and what is considered short.

Well having no pages is nothing, and having 300 pages if awfully long.

So where does a short story fall in?

Maybe from 60-100, that is if you want it to be a book.

And if not, you can make it as short as you want to be as long as it makes readable sense.

Don't forget the PLOT, THE CHARACTERS ACTIONS IN THE PLOT, THE CLIMAX, AND all those other basic things.

I took some notes on 2 series book I read two years ago about how to write a novel.

If you would like those notes, feel free to send me an e-mail with your e-mail address.

I love to help dreams emerge from their tainted state of inaccuracy.

Technically, they could be two sentences, lol. I'd say 3-30 pages. It would be hard to develop charachters in the slightest with less, and more than 30 (maybe up to 50) pages may not hold a reader who was looking for a "short" story.

*Are we talking about a short story for school, or for a book piece? As an avid reader, what I consider a short story (like Albert Camus' The Stranger) is vastly different than one written for a high school class...

Somewhere I read that Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) said that seven pages was the perfect length for a short story. I couldn't find where I got that from but I found something similar:

"His preparation for writing a novel is always the same. He starts by writing a short story to encapsulate the premise of the book (Chapter 6 of Fight Club started as this short story).

“If I can’t get the premise clear enough in my mind to do a seven-page short story about it, then I’ve got to be thinking about the premise a little bit better,” he says. “It gives you a chance to really make your case, like a lawyer in court. You really have to make your case for your premise, and put together your case in a convincing, entertaining way. And do it in seven or eight pages.”" [1]

I think that seven is enough space to get your idea out, but short enough that you don't get too carried away with it. Seven pages only leaves enough room for the absolute essentials of the story.

Check the magazines you want to write for. They state their preference regarding length. The listings can be found in Writer's Market published by Writer's Digest Books. Available at your local public library. Try to get the most current copy, if you can.

I've learned that you're better off writing to suit a publication, rather than writing a piece and hoping you'll find a market that accepts the word-count you've produced.

Good luck with your story.

About 3 to 5 pages. Around 7 to 10 max. Depends on what you're writing, and the depth you want, but those are more or less how long (argh) short stories are. They rarely exceed 10 pages.

short

I have seen stories as short as three pages, but usually up to 50 pages; after that point, it turns into a novella

A few pages. But it depends on how long the story goes. You need to make sure you have a beginning, middle, and end. Make sure you have a smooth resolution.